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MILGRAM ETHICS (Situational explanations -
which may make study less…
MILGRAM ETHICS
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Generalisation
Milgram had poor generalisation, all his PPs were white males who lived in the same area. Some people say that this is poor as the results may be 'time-locked' and also that they were all American, so may be different in other cultures.
Variation #8 tested women and Milgram found the same result 65%. This supports the idea that the original sample was representative
Burger found high levels of obedience in 2009 and so did Meeus and Raajmakers in the Netherlands, suggesting og study was accurate
Reliability
Very reliable as it has been replicated many times, one sample is Burger in 2009, showing the same results 50 years later.
It is easy to replicate as milgram had aspects of standardised procedure in his study. For instance, the verbal 'prods' used by the experimenter the tape-recorded responses from the confederate.
Application to real life
This study demonstrates how obedience to authority works and can be used to increase obedience in schools and prisons
It can be used to explain why SS officers killed millions in the concentration camps and the holocaust, as they were obeying orders from authority to do so
Validity
It can be said that Milgram lacked ecological validity as his experiment was in a very artificial environment,i.e one the PPs would not find themselves in everyday
May be valid as PPs didn't know the task until they were doing it therefore didn't come with pre-conceived ideas about what/how they should act
Ethics
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The main defence is that the experiment wouldn't have been valid if the PPs knew they were being tested for obedience
Milgram did extensively debrief his PPs and sent a questionnaire out a year later in which 84% said they were glad they had taken part
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They were deceived as they believed it was a memory study and also that the shock they were administering were real
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The prods made it difficult for the PPs to withdraw as 4 had to be given before they could leave and by this point PP already reached 450V