Milgram

• Aim of the Study

  To investigate the power of an authority figure and find out if ordinary people would obey the demands of a perceived legitimate authority figure, even if the demands were morally wrong.
• PROCEDURE

  • Laboratory experiment, Yale University, to see how punishment affects learning.
  • Volunteer sample of 40 male participants, aged 20-50. Paid $4.50.
  • The participant was always the ‘Teacher’ and there was two confederates-one acted as a ‘learner’ and one as an ‘experimenter’.
  • The first confederate ‘The Experimenter’ was wearing a white lab coat and the second confederate was participant Mr Wallace.
  • The ‘learner’ gave wrong answers and received fake shocks starting at 15 volts and going up in 15volt steps until 450volts.
• FINDINGS

  • All participants obeyed and gave shocks up to at least 300volts.
  • 12.5% of participants stopped at 300volts.
  • 65% of participants continued all the way to 450 volts.
• Proximity variation


  the Experimenter gave orders to the Teacher via a telephone in a different room - the participants were in the autonomous state and believed they were responsible for their own actions and therefore less likely to obey
• Location variation


  Milgram repeated his study in a run-

  down office block - fewer people obey the instructions given to them as they did not value the experiment with the same integrity as they did at Yale University.
• Uniform variation


  In one condition the experimenter was dressed as a security guard. In another condition the experimenter

  wore normal clothes - Uniforms are easily recognisable and convey power and authority
• Limitation (milgram)

  There is low external validity, both ecological and population in Milgrams research. The ecological validity is low because they were highly controlled lab experiments
• Strength (milgram)


  Control of variables- One strength of research into situational variables affecting obedience is that we can make a direct comparison between levels of obedience in the two variations studied.