Original study

• Participants


  • 40 male participants
  • Ages 20-50
  • Range of different jobs
• Confederates


  Mr Wallace was the learner, the experimenter was another confederate
• Experiment procedure


  1. Participant told they could leave the study whenever

  2. Learner strapped to a chair and wired with electrodes

  3. Participant told to give learner electric shock every time he made a mistake

  4. Shocks started at 15 volts and ended at 450 volts

  5. Labels above some shocks describing how dangerous they were

  6. After 315 volts, learner pounded on the wall and that was their final response

  7. When participant turned to experimenter for assistance, experimenter stated that the absence of a response should be treated as a wrong answer

  8. Experimenter had 4 prods to use to encourage participant to continue
• No participants stopped below 300 volts
• 12.5% stopped at 300 volts
• 65% continued to 450 volts
• Participants showed signs of extreme tension, sweating, tremble, bite their lip and three had 'full blown seizures'
• Participants were debriefed and the majority were glad to have taken part
• Participants had guessed that the electric shocks were fake, so Milgram may not have been testing what he intended to test
• Another study gave real electric shocks to a puppy

  54% of males and 100% of females gave what they thought were fatal shocks
• Milgram's study could be genuine
• Milgram argued that the lab based relationship between experimenter and participant reflects real life authority relationships
• A study showed that the obedience levels in nurses in a hospital to unjustified demands made by doctors was very high
• This means that Milgram's study could be generalised to real life
• Replication have supported Milgram's research findings
• In a French documentary contestants were paid to give the presenter (fake) electric shocks and 80% gave the maximum 450 shocks which was similar to Milgram's results
• This supports Milgram's theory on obedience
• A psychologist criticised Milgram's deceptions, participants believed that the roles were randomly assigned but it was fixed, also the participants believed the shocks were real
• This could cause the participants to not volunteer for future research