explanations for obedience

• Milgram shock experiment- tested obedience to authority, pps administered to increasingly severe electric shocks to another person, who was actually an actor, as they answered questions incorrectly. Despite hearing the actor's acreams, most participants continued administering shocks, demonstrating the powerful influence of authority figures on behaviour.
• Milgram key takeaways- aim- the experiment studied obedience to authority, exploring whether individuals would obey instructions to harm another person because an authority figure told them to. Method- participants were instructed to administer increasingly intense electric shocks to a 'learner' who feigned pain and distress
• conclusion of milgram- milgram's use of deception raised serious questions about the ethics of psychological research, participants believed they were causing real harm, leading to potential emotional distress.
• throughout the procedure- there was an experimenter who provided prompts ' the experimenter requires that you continue' whenever the teacher was reluctant to go on
• 65% of pps went up to 450 volts and 100% went up to 300 volts, the behavioural responses of the participants were also noted eg shaking, crying, sweating
• the results of milgrams study showed that destructive obedience is not a result of nationality or personal factors but is instead made possible by specific situational factors, these included- prestigious Yale uni, prompts by lab coat experimenter (legitimacy of authority figure), and the agency theory (just obeying orders)
• limitations of Milgram's study- been accused of lacking internal validity- pps may have realised the shocks were fake and were simply playing along
• limitations of milgram's study- ethical issues- pps deceived, pps distressed (psychological harming), right to withdraw was not tacitly given
• 65% of pps delivered the full 450 volts in Milgram's study
• 100% of pps in milgrams study delivered a minimum of 300 volts
• Milgram- proximity- in subsequent studies, Milgram found obedience declined if the participant was physically closer to the learner, eg when the participant and the learner were in the same room, obedience fell from 65% to 40%
• Milgram- uniform- found that the situational variable of uniform was highly influential in the result of obedience, when the original experimenter's grey lab coat was replaced by a man in normal clothes obedience fell drastically from 65 to 20% of pps administering the full 450 volts to the learner
• milgram- location- obedience dropped in turn of when the location of the original study at yale university compared to a run down office
• asch unanimity variation- introduction of a non-conforming confederate, gave either the correct answer or a different incorrect answer. conformity dropped, social support can reduce the pressure to conform and allow us to be independent.
• task difficulty variation by asch- asch made task more difficult, by making the difference between the line lengths smaller, in this variation asch found the rates of conformity increased. Supports ISI, as the task becomes more ambiguous in this variation, conformity rates increased. as the task becomes more ambiguous people tend to look for others for guidance and to assume they are right,
• evaluating asch- lacks mundane realism of the task due to it being conducted as a lab experiment, also lack of temporal validity as was conducted in 1951- a year/decade where mccarthyism was high so participants in this time period may have hightened the pressure for participants to conform