Milgram

• Procedure


  40 male participants recruited using a local newspaper advert were paid $4.50. The genuine participant was paired with a middle-aged man (confederate). The genuine participant was always 'teacher' but thought they were randomly allocated. They were instructed to shock the 'learner' every time they made an error on the word pairs starting at 15V and going up 15V each time until 450V. As the shocks increased the 'learners' response became more dramatic. If the teacher objected to shocking the 'learner', the experimenter responded with a series of verbal prompts.
• Findings

  65% of participants obeyed the orders of the authority figure to give the maximum shock of 450V labelled XXX. 100% of participants gave shocks up to 300V labelled intense shock. Participants continued to obey the authority figure despite repeatedly arguing to stop.
• Conclusions


  People show very strong levels of obedience to an authority figure, even when their orders go against normal moral codes.
• Strength

  • argues the relationship between experimenter and teacher was no different to obedience in wider settings - simply involved a person with lower status following instructions from an authority figure - Hofling found nurses would follow instructions from doctors but not nurses - can be generalised to different settings.
• Limitation

  • Low internal validity - did not accurately measure what was intended - researchers believe participants guessed the shocks were fake - this suggests that the study may not have been measuring obedience.
• Limitation

  • ethical issues - deception, psychological harm and right to withdraw - participants believed the shocks were real and showed signs of stress. The verbal prompts made it unclear that they could withdraw - This was a betrayal of trust and could make participants less likely to volunteer for future research.