milgram - obedience

• aimed to see if people would obey an legitimate authority figure's orders to harm another individual
• sample was 40 white, males aged 20-50 years from New Haven, USA who volunteered for the experiment
• volunteers told aim was 'punishment on learning' - LIE
• volunteers assigned roles of teacher, confederates were learner and experimenter
• word association tests, wrong answers = (fake) electric shocks administered to learner from teacher
• shocks increased in 15 voltage increments to a maximum of 450 volts
• participants given verbal prods and prompts by experimenter if they hesitated when giving the shocks
• 65% of participants went up to 400v
• 100% of participants went up to 300v
• concluded that obedience is situational and not dispositional (affected by environmental factors not personality)
• X lacks ecological validity - carried out in a lab under artificial conditions
• reliable findings - conducted in a lab with heavily controlled conditions
• X gender bias - only used american men
• X unethical- participants deceived and didn’t know the shocks were fake