Obedience: Milgram's research

• situational attribution: suggesting that a person's behviour is caused by something about the situation they are in
• dispositional attribution: suggesting that the reason for a person's behaviour is something about themselves, such as their personality.
• Milrgam (1963)

  Aim: he was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction, if it involved harming another person
• Procedure 1:

  • recruited 40 male ppts through newspaper ads and flyers in the post to test how punishment affects learning
  • ppts were ages 20-50 years old and ranged from unskilled to professional
  • were offered $4.50 to take part and they were paid on arrival of the lab
  • was rigged draw for their roles in the experiment ('learner' was always the confederate (Mr Wallace) and the teacher was always the naive ppt
  • there was an experimenter (a confederate) wearing a white lab coat
  • ppts were told that they could leave the study anytime they want
• Continuing procedure 2:

  • the learner was strapped into a chair in another room and wired with electrodes (stated he had heart problems)
  • teacher was required to give the learner an increasing severe shock every time he made a mistake on the learning task involving learning word pairs
  • shocks were demonstrated to the teacher, but the shocks were not real and just pre-prepared audio played at a specific time
  • shock level started at 15V (slight shock) and rose 30 levels- 450V (danger-severe shock)
• Continuing procedure 3:

  • When the teacher got to 300V (intense shock) the learner pounded on the wall and then gave no response to the next question.
  • The same happened for the 315V shock, but afterwards there was no response from the learner
  • When the teacher turned to the experimenter for guidance, the experimenter gave standard instructions: "the absence of a response should be treated as a wrong answer."
  • If the teacher was unsure then standard prods were given
• 4 prods:

  1. please continue
  2. the experiment requires that you continue
  3. it is absolutely essential that you continue
  4. you have no other choice, you must go on
• Results:

  • they found that no ppts stopped below 300V
  • 5 ppts stopped at 300V
  • 65% continued to the highest level of 450V
  • Qualitative data was also collected such as observations that the ppts showed signs of extreme tension e.g. sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting their lips, digging their fingernails into their hands -three even had 'full-blown uncontrollable seizures'
  • Ppts were debriefed and assured that their behaviour was entirely normal, they were also asked to do a follow-up questionnaire; 84% felt glad to have participated
• Conclusion:

  he concluded that under the right circumstances ordinary people will obey unjust orders
• Limitation: lab experiment

  One weakness is that it was conducted as a lab experiment in an artificial setting. E.g. it has been argued that ppts acted as they did because they didn't believe that the shocks were real (demand characteristics). Subsequent researchers have listened to recordings of the study and confirmed that a number of ppts had doubts about the reality of the shocks. This is a weakness because it lacked internal validity as a direct cause and effect cannot be established and so we cannot support the internal validity of Milgram's conclusion about obedience to authority.
• Strength: highly replicable

  The results were found to be replicated in real life scenarios. E.g. The Game of Death is a French reality tv documentary that includes a replication of Milgram's study. Ppts were paid to give fake electric shocks to other ppts (who were actors) when ordered by the presenter, in front of a studio audience. 80% of ppts delivered the maximum shock to an apparently unconscious man. This behaviour was almost identical to Milgram's ppts. This is a strength because it suggests that it can be replicated to a high degree of accuracy.
• Strength: Results from field experiments support Milgram's findings. E.g. Hofling (1966) conducted a study in a hospital, nurses were phoned by "Dr Smith" asking that they give a drug to a patient, this went against hospital regulations because: nurses aren't supposed to take instructions over the phone, instructions from an unknown doctor, dosage of drug was twice that advised 21/22 nurses obeyed. Is a strength because field experiments showed that individuals obey orders from an authority figure. Showing that obedience to an authority figure occurs in real-life as Milgram's results indicated
• Limitation: only used white middle class males

  Milrgam's research can be criticised for being androcentric. E.g. the experiment used all male ppts-therefore only assessing how men would react to the situation and their level of obedience. Blass (1999) studied replications of Milgram's study. Consistent with Milgram's own findings, 8/9 found no evidence of any gender differences in obedience. This is a weakness because Milgram's results cannot be generalised to people other than men as it is possible that women, for example, would be more or less obedient than men in this kind of experiment.