Milgram

Procedures

1. Milgram selected participants for his experiment by newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University. 2. At the beginning of the experiment, they were introduced to another participant, who was a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram). 3. They drew straws to determine their roles - learner or teacher - although this was fixed and the confederate was always the learner. There was also an "experimenter" dressed in a gray lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram). 4. Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used - one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator. 5. Milgram obedience Mr Wallace The "learner" (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the "teacher" tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices. 6. The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger - severe shock) 7. The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose), and for each of these, the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock, the experimenter was to give a series of orders/prods to ensure they continued. 8. There were four prods and if one was not obeyed, then the experimenter (Mr. Williams) read out the next prod, and so on.

Results

65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e., teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.

Agentic State

A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure, i.e. as their agent. This frees us from the demands of our consciences and allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure.

Experiment Design

Lab experiment

Weaknesses

Lack of ethics

Debriefing

Milgram did debrief the participants fully after the experiment and also followed up after a period of time to ensure that they came to no harm. Milgram debriefed all his participants straight after the experiment and disclosed the true nature of the experiment.

Ecological validity

Milgram's study lacked ecological validity as it was carried out in an artificial laboratory environment; therefore, findings cannot be generalized to real life obedience

Background

One of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.

Conclusions

Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up. People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and/or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school, and workplace.

Situational Hypothesis

States that a person's obedience depends more on their situation

Dispositional hypothesis

States that a person's obedience depends more on them and what's in their character

sampling method

The subjects were chosen from volunteers who had responded to a newspaper article. This means the sample was self-selecting

Autonomous State

Where individuals are seen as personally responsible for their actions

participant details

all participants were males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional, from the New Haven area.

Strengths

excellent reliability, given the similar results gained on the two repeats

DV

he dependent variable was compliance.

Right to Withdraw

pressured participants to continue/did not give them another choice

Aim

researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.

Psychology Investigated

the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.

IV

the degree of physical immediacy of an authority.

deception

the participants actually believed they were shocking a real person and were unaware the learner was a confederate of Milgram's.