Obedience

• Define obedience

  A type of social influence whereby somebody acts in response to a direct order from a perceived authoritative figure
• Name the study which investigated obedience

  Milgram (1963)
• Describe the sample in Milgram's study

  40 male volunteers
• How many confederates were there and what role did they play?

  2 confederates - one the experimenter, who issued the orders to the participant, and the other who was rigged to be the ‘learner’ - instructed to deliberately give the wrong answer
• What role did the naïve participant play?

  The teacher - tested learner on ability to learn word pairs. If learner got answer wrong was issued increasingly strong electric shocks
• What was the range of electric shocks?

  15 volts to 450 volts
• What were the results of Milgram’s experiment?

  x All participants went to 300 volts x 65% continued to maximum level of 450 volts
• What were two ways in which the participants were deceived?

  1, They thought they were randomly assigned to learner and teacher, whereas it was rigged so confederate was always learner 2, Naïve participant thought they were issuing real electric shocks
• State one way in which Milgram (1963) addressed this deception


  He debriefed participants at end of study and sent a follow-up questionnaire
• What conclusion can we draw from this experiment?

  People are willing to obey orders from an authoritative figure even if it goes against moral principles