Obedience: Milgram’s research

• Milgram’s baseline procedure

  40 American men volunteered to take part in an experiment in Milgram's lab and they were told that they were in for a memory study. They made the study that the pps were always the teacher and that the confederate who they met in the lab was always the learner. The learner was in a separate room from the teacher, and the teacher and the experimenter who was wearing a grey lab coat were in the same room. The teacher had to ask the learner questions and if they got it wrong they were shocked ranging from 15-450 volts. 
• Baseline findings

  All of the participants shocked the learner up to 300 volts. 65% of the pps went up to 450 volts meaning that they were fully obedient. 12.5% stopped at 300 volts.

  Other data

  Milgram asked some psychology students what their predictions were for the research and they came to the conclusion that they think that 3% would shock up to 450 volts.

  Conclusions 

  Milgram drew that the american men are not ‘different’ from the germans as they were willing to harm another person
• Limitation is that the procedure may not have been used for what it was intended to test for. Milgram reported 75% of his pps believed that the shocks were genuine. Orne and Holland 1968 argue that the pps behaved as they did because they didn't believe in the setup so they were play-acting. Perrys 2013 research confirms this because she listened to tapes of Milgram’s pps and reported that only half of them believed that the shocks were real, ⅔ of these pps were disobedient. This suggests that the pps may have been responding to demand characteristics to fulfil the aims of the experiment. 
• However, Sheridan and King 1972 conducted an experiment like Milgram’s. The pps gave real shocks to a puppy. 54% of the males gave the shocks and 100% gave shocks to the puppy that they thought was fatal. This suggests that the effects in Milgram's study were genuine as people behave obediently even when the shocks were real.
• Strength findings replicated in a french documentary that was made about a reality tv show. Beauvois 2012 focused on a game show especially made for the programme. The pps in the ‘game’ believed that they were in the pilot episode of a new show ‘the game of death’. paid to give fake electric shocks  ordered by the presenter to the other pps who were actors. 80% of the pps delivered the maximum 460 volts to an apparently unconscious man. This supports Milgram’s original findings about obedience to authority and demonstrates that the findings were not due to special circumstances.
• Limitation is that the conclusions may not be justified. Haslam 2014 showed that milgram's pps obeyed once the experimenter delivered the 1st three prods. However every pp who was given a fourth prod without exception disobeyed. According to the social identity theory the pps in milgram's study only obeyed as they identified with the scientific aims. When they wwe blindly ordered to obey the authority figure they refused. This shows that the SIT may provide a more valid explanation of milgram's findings as milgram himself suggested ‘ identifying with science’ is a reason for obedience.