situational factors in obedience

• Milgram’s research was based on the idea that it wasn’t ‘evil people’ who do awful things such as the holocaust, but its due to obeying others. Milgram did a study on this with 40 participants, over a series of conditions. The pt were told it was an experiment on memory. There were 2 confederates, one as the experimenter and one who was biased to always be the ‘learner’ from drawing lots and so the pt was always the teacher. The teacher tested the learner on the ability to remember word pairs.
• Every time a wrong answer was given, the teacher was told to shock them in increasing electric shocks, starting at 15 to max of 450, going up by 15. In the voice feedback study, the learner gave mainly wrong answers. At 300 they pounded on the wall, at 315 there was no response. No response= wrong answer and continue to shock. The experimenter said phrases such as ‘it is essential that you continue’. Before the study college students predicted 1 in 200 would go to the full shock level. 65% of pt went the full way. All participants got to 300 volts with only 12.5% stopping there.
• ). In the proximity condition, teacher and learner were in the same room. Obedience in this fell to 40%. When the teacher had to put the learners hand on a shock plate, obedience fell to 30%. When the experimenter gave the instructions over the phone, fell to 21%, some just repeatedly gave the lowest shock level. When the experiment was held in a run down office, obedience was at 48%. Bushman found uniform helped, Asked to do something by business man 48%, a police officer 72% and a beggar 52%.
• An issue with this study is the suspected lack of realism.

  Perry discovered that many of Milgram’s pt were sceptical at the time about whether the shocks were real. On of Milgram’s assistant divided the participants into the ‘doubters’ and the ‘believers’ of the shocks. He found it was this latter group who were more likely to disobey the experimenter and only give low intensity shocks.

  This challenges the validity of the study and suggests that people may be more likely to disobey the authority if real harm is involved.
• It is questioned on whether Milgram’s study has historical validity.

  Blass carried out a statistical analysis of studies carried out between 1961 and 1985. He found no more or less obedience than the ones conducted earlier. Burger 2009 found almost identical levels of obedience to the ones Milgram found some 46 years earlier.

  These findings suggest that Milgram’s study does have historical validity and applies as much today as it did when conducted.
• An issue with this study is the ethical issues involved.

  Milgram used deception in his study to try and make sure that the participants didn’t know what the purpose was. This is an ethical issue as he wouldn’t of been able to get informed consent from the participants which would be an issue if they get harmed or left with distress etc from the experiment.

  However, hiding the real intention did make sure the experiment was higher in validity and will be fine as long a the participants were full debriefed after the study.
• Durkin and Jeffery 2000 demonstrated that young children's understanding of police authority was dominated by social cues.

  Children aged 5-9 were asked to identify who was able to make an arrest. Options were a police man in normal clothes, a normal man in police clothes and another different uniform. Children tended to select the man currently wearing the police uniform. 

  The findings suggest that children's initial perceptions of authority are dominated by superficial aspects of appearance which are more accessible than socially conferred status.