Introduction to Milgram

• Stanley Milgram


  Researcher who worked with Solomon Asch on investigations into social conformity
• Asch Conformity Experiment


  1. Room full of stooges (plus one participant) gave the answer to a simple question

  2. All stooges gave the incorrect answer

  3. Over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participants never conformed
• Hofling Hospital Experiment (1966)


  • Field study on nurses, unaware they were involved in an experiment
  • Dr. Smith (the researcher) phones nurses at a psychiatric hospital (on night duty) and asks them to check medicine cabinet to see if they have the drug astroten
  • Nurses were told to administer 20mg of drug to a patient called 'Mr. Jones'
  • Medication was not real, though nurses thought it was
• In the Hofling Hospital Experiment, 21 out of 22 (95%) nurses obeyed doctor's orders and were about to administer medication to patient when a hidden observer stopped them
• When other nurses were asked to discuss what they would do in a similar situation (i.e. a control group), 31 out of 33 said they would not comply with the order
• Strengths of Hofling's study

  • High levels of ecological validity, as it was conducted in a real life environment
  • Nurses unaware of experiment so no demand characteristics
  • High level of reliability, as study followed a standardized procedure
  • Control group was used which allowed comparisons to be made
  • Participant variables were minimized
• Weaknesses of Hofling's study

  • Control group comprised 33 nurses, whereas there is only data for 22 nurses in experiment, indicating a high rate of attrition
  • Study broke ethical guideline of deception, as neither doctor was real
• Sheridan and King (1972) repeated Milgram's experiment, but used a real puppy as the victim instead of an actor
• In the Sheridan and King study, 20 out of 26 volunteers kept pushing the shock button right up to the maximum voltage, despite the puppy's distress
• During the Nuremberg Trials of 1961, Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann used the "Befehl ist Befehl" ("an order is an order") defence for his role in the Holocaust
• Conformity


  When a person acts with the intention of their behaviour matching that of the majority, occurring through social pressure
• Obedience


  The act of obeying orders from a superior, occurring through a hierarchy of power or status
• Milgram proposed a situational explanation for the obedience seen in the Holocaust, suggesting that anyone in a similar situation would perform harm or murder under the orders of an authority figure
• Dispositional attribution


  Assigning the cause of behaviour to some internal characteristic of a person
• Situational attribution


  Assigning the cause of behaviour to some situation or event outside a person's control