Obedience:

• Milgram (1963)


  40 males

  20-50 year olds volunteered through a news paper article to take part in a study on memory and were introduced to confederates: a learner and a professor in a lab coat. The learner was strapped to a chair in another room with electrodes on their head.They were told to deliver shocks (15-450V) if the learner answered incorrectly. At 300V the learner made a noice and at 350V the learner didn't indicating death. If the pp refused to carry on the professor would encourage them to carry on.

  results:

  100% carried on till 300V

  12.5 stopped at 300V

  65% went all the way
• Milgram

  Proximity

  • when the proximity changed to having the learner in the same room obedience dropped to 40%
  • when hand was held on the plate it dropped to 30%

  Location:

  • when it took place in a run down office block conformity dropped to 47.6% due to a lack of LOA (lack of legitimate authority figure)

  Uniform

  • when the professor wore normal clothes it dropped to 20%
• Other data:

  Before the study Milgram asked 14 psychology students to predict the pp behaviour

  The students estimated that no more than 3% of the participants would continue to 450 volts

  This shows that the findings were unexpected - the students underestimated how obedient people actually are.

  All pp in the baseline study were debriefed and assured that their behaviour was entirely normal. They were also sent a follow-up questionnaire - 84% said they were glad to have participated.
• Conclusions:

  Milgram concluded that German people are not different

  The American pp in his study were willing to obey orders even when they might harm another person

  He suspected there were certain factors in the situation that encouraged obedience, so decided to conduct further studies to investigate these
• Baseline results:

  Milgram also collected qualitative data including observations such as: the participants showed signs of extreme tension; many of them were seen to sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan and dig their fingernails into their hands;

  three even had 'full-blown uncontrollable seizures.