burger 2009: contemporary study

• aim of burger

  to investigate if personality factors such as empathy and desire for control affect obedience & if milgrams study findings can be replicated over 40yrs later
• participants

  • 29 men and 41 women who volunteered aged 20-81
  • asked if they had taken any psychology courses to screen out individuals who knew about milgrams obedience research. people who had knowledge of study were excluded
  • participants who found the study distressing and who had high anxiety/depression were excluded based on interviews conducted using a mini international neuropsychiatric interview
• procedure

  1. ppts introduced to confederate/researchers - white caucasian
  2. told verbally they can leave at any time & signed consent forms
  3. confederate told to learn words from word pairs as learner & teacher told to deliver shocks every time answer was wrong
  4. told to increase shock levels for every wrong answer
  5. pre-recorded sounds played after 75V (grunts of pain) & 150V (my hearys starting to bother me now)
  6. researcher instructed to prod ppts if hesitant to continue such as:
• prods used

  1. please continue
  2. this experiment requires you to continue
  3. it is absolutely essential you continue
  4. you have no other choice but to continue
• 7. experiment stopped after ppts reached max 150V or researcher ran out of prods to give

  8. after experiment, ppts were debriefed and told shocks were fake

  9. ppts did 2 questionnaire - empathic concern & desire for control
• findings

  • obedience rates lower than milgram - 70% ppts pressed 150V compared to milgrams variation 5
  • no major difference between obedience of men & women in empathic concern score but defiant ppts who stopped before 150V had high desire for control
• conclusion

  • level of obedience shown in milgram were not era bound or male bound so experiment was reliable as results were replicated
  • lack of empathy is not the reason people followed orders to harm others
• strength

  • high internal validity
  • screening procedure meant none of burgers participants had knowledge of milgrams research - asked if they took psych classes & 5 admitted awareness of milgrams study so dropped out
  • suggests demand characteristics would not have affected the study and obedience is a direct response to authority figure
• strength

  • generalisable
  • subjects were from age of 20-81, 29 males and 41 females so population validity
  • therefore findings in obedience to authority figured can be applied to wider age range
• weakness

  • poor mundane realism
  • participants shocked learners which is unlike everyday examples of obedience (e.g: teacher quieting class)
  • therefore findings on obedience to authorities may not apply to everyday outcomes
• weakness

  • findings not applicable to real world obedience
  • elms (2009) claimed that because burgers experiment ended at 150V it was before participants felt intense internal conflict
  • therefore study does not show whether a person would continue to demonstrate obedience even if they believed they were causing serious harm