Milgrim 1963
Sample
Method
Results
Evaluation
Aim: To investigate what level of obedience would be shown when participants were told by an authority figure to administer electric shocks to a other person
40 participants
All males
Aged 20-50 years
All from New Haven, USA
Self selected sampling method
Paid $4.00
Laboratory experiment/controlled observation: no independent variables
Controlled, covert, event sampling, unstructured, non-participant observation
Dependent variable: Obedience (highest shock administered) and nervous behaviours shown
Background
Authority figure: Male, wearing lab coat, prompt giver, confederate, biology teacher
Participants deceived: believed they were taking part in study on memory and learning
Yale University
Milgrim was behind one way mirror observing
Shock generator: 30 switches from 15V-450V
Participants received 45V sample shock
Learner supposedly had to remember word pairs and teacher shocked learner each time they got one wrong
Prompts given by experimenter: 'Please continue,' 'The experiment requires that you continue,' 'It is absolutely essential that you continue, and 'You have no choice, you must go on.'
At 300V and 315V teacher hears banging on the wall from learner, then silence/no answers
Participants were debriefed and most said they were happy to have taken part
Holocaust: Wanted to see if Germans were different or whether we were all obedient towards authority figures (sample were all men)
60% went to 450V
100% went to 300V
3 had full blown, uncontrollable seizures
14 showed nervous laughter
Agentic state: Handing over the responsibility of your behaviour to the authority figure.
Ethical considerations: Participants were debriefed, uninformed consent, seizures, remained confidential, prompts prevented withdrawal.
Situational explanation/determinism/nurture/holism: prestigious university, authority figure, volunteered themselves, paid, novel situation
Usefulness/applications Explained holocaust/demonstrated reasons behind obedience, used in education/work places, International Criminal Court could predict problems, showed 25% of plane crashes were due to pilots obeying orders.
Scientific: Objective (one way mirror), laboratory experiment, quantitative and qualitative data, nominal level data, primary data.
Reductionism: Authority figure
Spiritual/moral issues/socially sensitive research: willing to electrocute to the point of harming/killing someone because an authority figure told them to
Free will: 35% disobeyed
Individual diversity: 100% went to 300V and explained holocaust
Social diversity: similar to Germans, but only males
Ethnocentrism/sampling bias: Only males,only from New Haven but can be generalised to other Western cultures
Standardised/replicable/reliable/high control/high internal validity/low ecological validity
Snapshot study