Milgrams research

• Participants were given instructions from a 'teacher' (the confederate) on how to give the shocks
• The participants were told they were taking part in a memory test, where they had to teach another person words by giving electric shocks when they made mistakes
• Milgrims experiment was conducted to investigate the extent to which people would obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.
• Milgram wanted to see if people would obey authority figures even if it meant harming someone else
• The experiment aimed to explore whether obedience is due to fear or respect for authority figures, or if it is simply because we are socialised into accepting authority as legitimate.
• The experiment also explored the role of situational factors such as group pressure and conformity in influencing behaviour.
• In the first phase of the experiment, the participant is asked to read out a series of word pairs to the learner (confederate). The learner then has to remember as many of these word pairs as possible. If he makes a mistake, the teacher gives him a shock. Each time the learner gets a question wrong, the voltage increases by 15 volts until it reaches 450 volts - this is supposedly lethal.
• The second stage involves the participant being taken into a separate room and reading out the questions again. This time there are no verbal responses from the learner but instead the participant can hear screams coming from behind a wall. These screams get louder and more frequent as the voltage increases.
• The third stage involves the participant having to turn up the dial themselves. They have to do this despite hearing the screams getting louder and seeing the learner writhing around in pain.
• The results showed that most participants continued to administer increasingly strong shocks despite hearing screams and protests from the victim.
• At 300 volts, the learner began to scream and bang on the wall demanding to be released. At 315 volts, he refused to continue answering questions and demanded to be let go. However, at every stage, the teacher was encouraged to continue by the experimenter over the intercom.
• What were Milgrams findings?

  All continued to 300V,5 refused to continue after this point.

  65% continued to 450V
• What were the 4 main prods used?(procedure)

  please continue,

  the experiment requires that you continue,

  it is absolutely essential that you continue,

  you have no other choice, you must go on
• What was Milgrams procedure?

  -40 American males aged 20-50 responded to an advert in the New Haven Newspaper for an experiment into memory and learning(paid 4.50 dollars for participating)

  -2 conf- experimenter and learner.

  -pp allocated teacher role and was sat infront of a shock generator in an adjoining room.

  -learner had to respond to a set of word pairs,wrong answer=shock

  -they deliberately gave 3 wrong answers for every 1,no comment until 300V.
• What did his research indicate?

  1.The agentic state may have been a reason for obedience

  2.Legitimacy of authority
• Provide strengths of Milgrams Study

  Research support- findings were replictaed in a french documentary reflecting reality TV.Participants in the 'game' believed they were contestants in a pilot episode for a new tv show 'The game of death', where they were paid to give fake electric shocks.80% of the participants delivered the max. shock of 460V to an apparently unconscious man.
• Social identity theory

  Participants only obeyed when they identified with the scientific aims of the research. When they were ordered to blindly obey an authority figure, they refused.