Milgram 1963

• Autonomous state


  People direct their own actions, and they take responsibility for results of those actions
• Agentic state


  People allow others to direct their actions and then pass off responsibility for consequences to person giving orders. They act as agents for another person's will.
• Agency theory


  • 2 things must be in place for a person to enter agentic state:
  • Person giving orders is perceived as being qualified to direct other people's behavior (seen as legitimate)
  • Person being ordered about is able to believe that the authority will accept responsibility for what happens
• Milgram: 'When in the agentic state, the participant "defines himself in a social situation in a manner that renders him open to regulation by a person of higher status" and "no longer views himself as responsible for his own actions but defines himself as an instrument for carrying out the wishes of others"'
• When participants were reminded that they had responsibility for their own actions


  Almost none of them were prepared to obey
• When the experimenter said that he would take responsibility


  Many participants who were refusing to go on did so
• This shows the capacity for man to abandon his humanity, indeed, the inevitability that he does so, as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures
• Sample


  • Forty men aged 20 to 50 from a range of occupations volunteering to take part in a study of "learning and memory" at Yale University

  
• Research Method


  • Laboratory experiment - controlled observation
  • ALL variables can be controlled
  • Operationalised = maximum voltage given
• Procedure


  1. General intro from experimenter about punishment and learning

  2. Choice of who was to be 'teacher' and 'learner' by taking a slip of paper (but ppt was always teacher)

  3. Both teacher & learner taken to room next door. Learner strapped to a chair, and electrodes attached to his wrist

  4. Sample shock of 45 volts given to teacher, and further instructions confirmed legitimacy of the apparatus

  5. Teacher reads out word pairs, and learner responds with an answer by pressing a button so it was displayed on a screen in the teaching room

  6. If the learner is right → the next word pair is presented. If the learner is wrong → the teacher was to give an electric shock

  7. The stooge responded in a fixed way at each voltage level

  8. As the 'learning' progressed, the 15V shock increments increased

  9. If the teacher showed doubt or did not continue, the experimenter gave a 'prod' - an instruction to continue

  10. The study progressed with 'prods' until either the teacher pressed the 450V switch, or until the teacher refused to continue and tried to leave the room

  11. The ppt was then given an open-ended interview and a debriefing

  12. During the whole experiment, observations were made through a one-way mirror. Often, photographs and videos were taken
• Conclusion – The impact of situational factors
• Real-World Applications


  • My Lai
  • Srebrenica
  • Abu Ghraib Prison
• Ethics


  • Informed consent
  • Deception
  • Confidentiality
  • Right to withdraw
  • Protection from harm
  • Debrief
• 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
  • Nurse checks and sees maximum dosage is supposed to be 10mg
  • When they spoke with the 'Doctor', they were told to administer 20mg of drug to a patient called 'Mr. Jones'
  • Medication was not real, though nurses thought it was. Drug itself was a harmless sugar pill (a placebo) invented just for the experiment
• If nurse administers the drug, they will have broken 3 hospital rules:
• In the experimental group, 21 out of 22 (95%) nurses obeyed doctor's orders and were about to administer medication to patient when a hidden observer stopped them
• Only 1 nurse questioned identity of researcher ("Doctor Smith") and why he was on ward
• 11 nurses who went to administer drug admitted to being aware of dosage for Astroten. Other 10 did not notice but judged that it was safe as a doctor had ordered them to do so
• 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 as nurses in experimental and control groups were closely matched
• 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. Some nurses were left distressed by study so lacked protection from harm
• Sheridan and King (1972) repeated Milgram's experiment, but used a real victim - a cute, fluffy puppy that was really getting shocked
• 20 out of 26 volunteers kept pushing shock button right up to maximum voltage, despite the puppy's distress
• Milgram became an assistant professor at Yale University in 1960 and was given a grant to conduct research into the power of social influence on behaviour
• 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
• Eichmann, a leading Nazi officer, used the "Nuremberg Defence" of "Befehl ist Befehl" ("an order is an order") during his trial
• Milgram proposed a situational explanation for the obedience of Nazi war criminals, suggesting anyone in a similar situation would perform harm or murder under the orders of an authority figure
• Dispositional attribution


  Assigns the cause of behaviour to some internal characteristic of a person (e.g. personality, motives, beliefs etc), rather than to outside forces
• Situational attribution


  Assigns the cause of behaviour to some situation or event outside a person's control rather than to some internal characteristic