Milgram (1974) study of obedience

• Stanley milgram advertised in a local paper for men to take part in an experiment concerning memory and learning, to be conducted at the prestigious yale University in America
• 40 men aged between 20 and 50 volunteered. They were paid $4.50 simply for turning up; payment didn’t depend on staying in the study
• When participants arrived they were told that there would be two participants, a learner and a teacher
• The experimenter drew lots to see which participant would take which part of the experiment
• the participant wasn’t told the true details of the research. the truth was that the other participant was in fact a confederate of the experimenter, and the experimenter was also a confederate. The true participant always ended up being given the role of the teacher
• The teacher was told to give electric shocks to the learner every time they gave the wrong answer and the shock intensity was increased each time, however, the apparatus was arranged so the learner never actually received any shocks but the teacher was unaware of that
• At 180 volts, the learner yelled “I can’t stand the pain” and by 270 volts the response had become an agonised scream
• The maximum intensity of shock was 450 volts. If the teacher was unwilling to give shocks, the experimenter urged him to continue, saying things like “it’s absolutely essential that you should continue“
• Milgram (1974) asked 14 psychology students to predict what participants would do. They estimated that no more than 3% of the participants would go up to 450 volts. In fact, about 65% of Milgram’s participants gave the maximum shock
• One of the most striking cases of total obedience was that of Pasqual Gino, a 43 year old water inspector. Towards the end of the experiment, he found himself thinking, “good god he’s dead. Well, here we go, we’ll finish him. And I just continued all the way through to 450 volts”
• Other participants found the experience very distressing. They were seen to “sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan and dig their finger nails into their flesh”
• Milgram reported that three participants had “full blown uncontrollable seizures“
• At the end of the experiment all participants were debriefed by being told the actual nature of the study. They were introduced to the learner and assured them that he experienced no actual shocks
• They were told that their behaviour was entirely normal and, when interviewed later by questionnaire, 74% said they had learned something of personal importance
• Perry (2012) discovered that many of milgrams ps had been sceptical at the time about whether the shocks were real. One of milgrams research assistants had divided the ps into what he called ‘doubters’ and ’believers‘. he found it was the latter group who were more likely to disobey the experimenter and give only low intensity shocks. This challenges the validity of milgrams study and suggests that when faced with the reality of destructive obedience people are more likely to disobey authority
• blass (1999) carried out a statistical analysis of obedience studies carried out between 1961 and 1985. By carrying out a correlational analysis relating each study’s year of publication and the amount of obedience it found, he discovered no relationship whatsoever. This suggests that milgrams findings still appear to apply as much today as they did in the early 1960s
• Mandel (1998) challenges the relevance of obedience research as an explanation of real life atrocities, claiming that milgrams conclusions about the situational determinants of obedience aren’t borne out by real life events. They concluded that using obedience as an explanation for these atrocities serves only as an alibi, masking the real reasons behind such behaviours