Situational Variables affecting Obedience - Milgram

• outline Milgram

  - 40 males,20-50 yrs old, volunteers via newspaper for a study on 'memory'

  - ppts = teacher, confederated = professor and learner, ppt told by professor to deliver electric shocks (15-450V) when learner answered correctly

  - 300v = learner voiced distress and refused to go on

  - ppts unaware that they were not actually administering an electric shock
• results, Milgram

  - ppts distressed but obeyed

  - 100% to 300V, 12.5% stopped at 300V, 65% to full 450V
• outline Milgram's replications

  - proximity: obedience dropped to 40% when learner was in the same room as the ppt

  - location: obedience dropped to 47.6% when conducted in a rundown office block (lack of LOA) compared to Yale University

  - uniform: professor replaced by confederate in normal clothes, obedience dropped to 20% (lack of LOA)
• A03 Milgram

  - lacks ecological validity and mundane realism

  - Hofling: 21/22 real nurses obeyed a confederate Dr phone call order to give double the max dose of an unfamiliar drug, field study = high ecological validity, mundane realism

  - Bickman (1974)