obedience

• define obedience

  individual follows order or command from authority figure even if it's against personal beliefs
• who studied obedience?

  Milgram
• aim

  how far people would go in obeying authority figure even when asked to perform harmful actions
• method

  • participants = 40 male volunteers, aged 20 to 50, recruited via advert
  • task = administer electric shocks to a learner when they gave a wrong answer
  • authority figure = experiment instructed participants to continue with shocks
• findings

  • 65% administered 450V shocks
  • many participants showed signs of distress
• conclusion

  obedience to authority leads people to perform actions they would normally consider unethical or immoral
• strength - reliability

  • controlled lab setting
  • eliminates extraneous variables so high internal validity
  • demand characteristics can still influence participants
• weakness - ethical issues

  • deception and psychological harm
  • deceived about true aim leading to significant emotional conflict
  • in debrief, 84% said they were glad to have taken part
• weakness - lack mundane realism

  • artificial task
  • low ecological validity
  • holocaust and my lai massacre suggests relevance to destructive obedience