obedience

• obedience definition

  a form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order, the person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority, who has the power to punish when obedient behaviour is not forthcoming
• Milgram's research

  aim: to see why so many people obeyed in WW2, how far will people go to obey an authority figure even if it goes against their morals and involve hurting someone

  procedure: 40 American men gave false electric shocks to a 'learner' who they could not see in response to instructions from an 'experimenter' (an authority figure), the shocks increased with every wrong answer the learner gave

  results: 100% of participants gave shocks up to 300V where as 65% gave the highest shock of 450V, many participants showed signs of anxiety such as sweating
• Milgrams research evaluation strength

  research support - the study was replicated in a french documentary Beauvios(2012) showing that the original findings about obedience to authority were not just due to special circumstances
• Milgrams research evaluation limitations

  the study may not have been testing what it intended to, 75% of the participants said that they believed the shocks were genuine but Perry(2013) argued that half of them knew the shocks were fake suggesting that the participants were responding to demand characteristics, trying to fulfil aims of the study