Milgram study

• Milgram's study - Aim

  • understand the behaviour of those Germans who followed orders to kill over 10 million people in holocaust
• Milgram's study - sample

  • volunteer
  • 40 men aged 20 - 50
  • from new haven
  • unskilled workers to professionals
  • offered $4 to participate
• Milgram's study - procedure

  • participant introduced to confederate and watch ed confederate was strapped to machine after rigged draw of roles - a real shock given to teacher to make them believe
  • 'teacher' told he had to give shocks to 'learner'
  • shocks increased up to 450V and switches labelled with level of danger
  • voice recording played of learner screaming and shouting with every shock - went silent eventually
  • experimenter told participants to continue when asked to stop
• Milgram's study - results

  • 65% of his sample administered full shock
  • 100% continued to 300V
  • participants observed to tremble, sweat, bite and nervously laugh
• Milgram's study conclusions

  • americans obediant to legitimate authority
• Milgram's study - generalisation

  • only used men which means results can only be generalised to men
  • however, there was a wide range of skill levels and ages so more representative sample
• Milgram's study - reliability

  • used a standardised procedure
  • eg, same actors played the confederates, the number and timing of mistakes were all the same
  • experimenters responses were tightly scripted - voice recording = the same
  • means the study is replicable.
• Milgram's study - validity

  • participants may have only obeyed as they did not believe the shocks were real
  • Orne and charles argued this as the tasks were very odd and unbelievable even in the 1960s
  • questions internal validity of findings of the study as milgram was not testing what he intended to test
• Milgram's study - application

  • applied to improve pilot training
  • Tarnow - first officers often fail to monitor and challenge errors made by the captain due to their legitimate authority.
  • training first officers to challenge authority of captain could prevent 20% of plane crashes
  • led to training to improve cockpit behaviour and potentially save lives
• The impact of differing prods

  • milgram believed that his results showed that people were very obedient. However, an analysis by Haslam (2014) shows that participants who were given prod 4 - 'you have no other choice, you must go on' - disobeyed. This challenges the conclusion that people are highly obedient to authority because when participants were told they must blindly obey, they didn't
  • Milgram himself suggested in his conclusions that obedience was related to identification with important scientific research ('the experiment requires that you continue') People don't just simply obey, they obey if they identify with the authority figure
• Personality and life experiences - individual differences

  • Elms (2009) found a positive correlation between the maximum shock delivered in the milgram studies and participants' scores on the F-scale which measures the 'obedient personality'. This suggests that behaviour in Milgram's study was influenced by individual differences
  • An analysis of the post-study interviews also reveals that life experiences affected how people thought and felt whilst taking part. EG, a participant in a later study dropped out at 210V. She had grown up in Nazi Germany and explained 'perhaps we have seen too much pain' (Milgram 1974) - suggesting that we all bring something of our past to new situations.
• Issues and debates

  • Milgram's study raises ethical issues and for many people this is a major downfall in his research
  • Baumrind (1964) presented an argument that just because someone volunteers for a study does not take away the researcher's responsibilities towards them. Baumrind felt that the level of psychological harm was unacceptable. Milgram claimed to have debriefed his participants, which goes some way to mitigating the harm. However, perry claims that some of Milgram's participants elft the study believing the learner may have actually died
  • These are critical issues as deception could lead the general public to lose faith in authority and could also jeopardise the reputation of psychological research