Evaluation

• Research support

  • Milgram's findings were replicated in a French documentary
  • 80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of 460V
  • Identical behaviour to Milgram's research
• Low internal validity

  • Milgram reported that 75% of his participants said they thought the shocks were genuine
  • However, Orne and Holland argued that they didn't really believe in the set-up and so were play-acting
  • Gina Perry's research confirms this - she listened to tapes of Milgram's experiment and found that only about half of them thought the shocks were real
  • This suggests that participants may have been responding to demand characteristics
• Alternative interpretation of findings

  • Limitation - blind obedience conclusions may not be justified
  • Haslam et al - participants obeyed when given first three verbal prods, but when given the fourth, 'you must continue', they disobeyed without exception
  • According to social identity theory (SIT), participants in the study only obeyed when they identified with the aims of the research
  • When they were told to blindly obey an authority figure, they refused
  • This suggests that SIT may be a better explanation for Milgram's findings