GRAVE (Milgram)

• Generalisability (population validity): Despite them all being US males, they had a wide range of backgrounds also he found similar results with female participants and cross-cultural results also tended to be similar (Blass 1999)
• Reliability: A standardised procedure was followed; same script/verbal prompts were used for every participant (or was it Gina Perry, 2012)
• Application to real life :Numerous real-life examples of having to follow authority figures (see Ecological Validity)
• Experimental validity: 45V shock was given to naïve participants to increase their belief also the equipment and screams were realistic and participants were in clear distress - implying they belief
• Orne and Holland (1968): Suggest the situation is too strange to seem credible; if it was about punishment and learning, they wouldn’t need a teacher and if the researcher was aloof, it indicated the learner was fine; argued the participants displayed demand characteristics
• Ecological validity: Giving electrical shocks to strangers isn't likely to occur in real life (high internal but low external value - Arson and Carlsmith, 1988), most important challenge for social psychologists is balancing control and realism
• Population validity: A volunteer sample was used, so participants may have been more compliant/authoritarian in character
• Application to Real Life: When done outside a lab in a run-down office block, obedience fell but was still high also similar results from Hofling et al. (1966) field experiments and Sheridan and King (1972)
• Ethics - deception: Obedience experiment (not memory), no shocks, and no heart condition, so no informed consent; necessary for experimental validity (reduce demand characteristics); also full debrief and re-introduction to the unharmed ‘learner’
• Ethics - consent: Milgram asked experts before and no one predicted the level of obedience (presumptive consent), yet as the results became clear, Milgram continued with 18 variations, totalling 636 participants
• Ethics - withdrawal: It was difficult, replicated real-life, and milgram said it/disobedience was possible, evidenced by the 35% that stopped experiment and refused
• Ethics - protection from harm: Participants were distressed, but argued it was more 'momentary excitement' than harm (but cost-benefit analysis), and milgram maintained people would not have cared for the ethical issues had there been lower levels of obedience
• Ethics - protection from harm: Milgram reassured participants; obedient participants were told their behaviour was normal and disobedient participants were told their behaviour was desirable
• Ethics - protection from harm: Sent a questionnaire: 92% responded, 84% were glad to have taken part, 2% regretted, and 74% learned personal importance and an independent psychiatrist to assess psychological damage a year post-experiment (found nothing)