Milgram's Baseline Study

• What was the aim of milgrams baseline study?

  • He wanted to understand the behaviour of Germans in the Holocaust
  • He wanted to see if ppts would follow orders from authority figure whilst experiencing moral strain
• Who were the participants?

  • 40 male americans
  • 20-50 years old
• How was the sample obtained?

  Newspaper ad for a 'memory research test' - volunteer sample
• What was the method?


  teacher told to administer an increasingly sever electric shock onto the learner every time they got a question wrong on a word pairing task
• What was the electric shock voltage range?

  15v to 450v
• What happened if the teacher refused to carry on?

  they were encouraged to carry on through a series of phrases
• What are two examples of prompts used?

  - Please carry on

  - you have no other choice, you must go on
• What voltage did all PP's go to?

  300v
• What % went to the full 450v?

  65%
• What % stopped at 300v?

  12.5%
• What did these findings show?

  Showed americans were just as obedient to follow extreme orders
• Strength - supporting evidence (Hofling 1966)

  Studied nurses on a hospital ward and found 21 out of 22 nurses obeyed orders from a 'Dr Smith' to administer a drug, which went against hospital policy
• Weakness - Lacks internal validity


  Many suggested the likely situation was that the PP's realised the set up wasn't real so were just showing demand characteristics
• What did MIilgram argue to the criticism of lacking internal validity?


  He reported 70% of participants said they believed the shocks were real
• Weakness - ethics


  Major issue was the potential psychological harm to patients
• How were the ethical issues overcome?


  Cost benefit analysis - the benefits to society were seen to outweigh the potential harm caused to a small number of participants
• The experiment was conducted at Yale University.
• Each participant received $4.50 for their participation.