MILGRAM

• Milgrim – Obedience (1963)


  Study on response to obedience in authority
• Milgram's study


  • IV - the voltage of electric shocks
  • DV- the degree of obedience displayed by each participant by the shock level
• Procedure


  1. 40 ppts were always given the role of a teacher (established by a fixed hat pick)

  2. Learner (a confederate) was taken to another room and the participant watched him get strapped to the shock machine

  3. Ps were given real 45v sample shock

  4. Teachers were asked to read word pairs and each incorrect answer would get a shock increasing it every time by 15V

  5. Learner (Mr Wallace) produced a recording of response & at 30lB he pounded the wall and stayed silent after that

  6. The teacher was shut down by prods such as 'please continue' 'the experiment requires you to continue'

  7. It finished when 450v was reached or if the p refused

  8. They were then debriefed
• The shocks weren't harmful
• Results:

  -100% to 300v-65% obeyed to 450v-35% disobeyed in total

  • Qualitative and quantitative data
• Controls:

  -How the room was set-The shock machine-The prods-Feedback from the learner-The draw
• Milgrim’s explanation:

  -Prestigious environment-Believed the experiment was worthy-Victim has volunteered and therefore willing-Participants felt obligated as they had been paid -Believed to be Fairly allocated to the learner/teacher role-Participants were new to the situation -Shocks were painful not dangerous
• Conclusions:

  -People are more likely to obey legitimate authority figures even if it's against their morals(Rejects Germans are different hypothesis.)-People show signs of discomfort and stress when following destructive obedience-People obey because of situational factors that cause them to abandon their autonomy 
• Evaluation:

   Unethical- psychological harm, deception, no informed consent, right to withdraw was not clear

       Reliable- been replicated many times, procedure proved to be consistent 

       Lab experiment- high control of extraneous variables, not true to real life as in artificial setting

       Low ecological validity- artificial environment   Sampling bias- only men, from the same area- not representative of wider population
• Links to area/perspective:

  Falls into social area because it is revealing the extent to which people’s behaviour can be influenced by other people around them: his ppts did not want to administer high voltage electric shocks to the ‘learner’ but, in the face of the prods from the ‘experimenter’, they went against their desires and behaved in the way that was requested of them. 
• Link to key theme:

  In relation to the key theme of responses to people in authority, Milgram’s study would appear to tell us that obedience to those in authority – even when they are asking us to cause harm to someone else – is much more common than we would like to believe.