Obedience Milgram

• Obedience is a type of social influence which causes a person to act in response to an order given by another person. The person who gives the order usually has the power or authority to punish.
• Milgram's procedure:

  • 40 males ages 20-50
  • Told the p's the study was about memory
  • introduced to another p when arrived who was a confederate
  • fixed draw in which the p was always teacher
  • Could not see only hear learner
  • Each standardised protest was coordinated with a particular voltage that went from 15v-450v
  • The learned was given an electric shock each time they made a mistake increasing by 15v
• Milgram's findings:

  • 12.5% stopped at 300v which is where the learner became quiet
  • 65% continued to 450v (fully obedient)
• Ethical issues:

  • Wasn't really given informed consent as they didn't know shocks were not real, the learner was a confederate, true aims of study etc so were also deceived
  • They didn't really have RTW as they were prompted to continue throughout the experiment e.g. the experiment requires that you continue, making it difficult to leave
• Strength:

  • Good external validity as the study reveals something important about the relationship between an authority figure and the p. Milgram argued that the lab experiment accurately reflects wider authority relationships in real life supported by Hofling's study of obedience in nurses. This is where an unknown doctor telephoned nurses to administer medication above the maximum daily dosage to patients. 21/22 nurses obeyed and were then stopped reflecting obedience in a real-life setting
• Weakness:

  • Study has been criticised for not actually testing obedience as the p's could have guessed that the shocks were not real and argued by Orne and Holland the p's behaved as they did because they didn't really believe in the set-up and were merely play-acting. Therefore, has low internal validity.