Baseline

• Aim

  • Milgram wanted to investigate if ordinary people would follow orders and give an innocent person a potentially harmful electric shock.
• Sample 

  •  He asked male participants to take part in a study of memory and learning (which was a lie). The advert offered a $4 incentive.
  • 160 participants were selected, each condition had 40 males 
  • Volunteer sample 
  • Wide range of occupations and were white middle class backgrounds 
• Results 

  • 100% of participants went up to 300v 
  • 65% went up to 450v
• Conclusions

  • Milgram found that ordinary people are obedient to authority even when asked to behave in an inhumane manner
  • Milgram found that individuals do not have to be classified as evil or bad in order to comit a harmful act; an authrotiry can influence them to do so
• Improvements to be made 

  • Conduct study in a more real life setting as a lab experiment does not explain obedience in real life so lacks ecological validity of administering shocks in real life
  • Use a more realistic task of obedience on teaching and learning ⇒ to understand obedience in real life teaching settings 
  • Use a more representative sample of both females and males to understand and generalise obedience levels to the american population