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Obedience - Milgrams Research - Coggle Diagram
Obedience - Milgrams Research
Obedience : A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order . The person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority, who has the power to punish when obedient behavior is not forthcoming
Milgram (1963) wanted to find an answer to why so many germans supported hitlers plan to slaughter over 6 million jews in the holocaust . He wanted to know whether germans were different - were they more obedient ?
Procedure : 40 males were recruited through newspaper adverts and they were told the study was about memory . The participants recruited were between 20 and 50 years old and ranged from unskilled to professional . They were paid regardless of when they left the study . A confederate ' Mr Wallace ' was a confederate learner and the participant was the teacher . There was also an experimenter ( a confederate dressed in a white coat ).
The teacher was required to give the 'learner' a increasingly severe electric shock overtime they made a mistake on the learning task and these shocks were previously demonstrated to the teacher .The shocks obviously weren't administered on the learner after that .
The shock level started at 15 and increased 30 levels to 450 . When it reached 300 volts the 'learner' pounded on the wall and then gave no further responses . The teachers were told that an absence of response should be considered a wrong answer . If the teacher felt unsure about continuing the experimenter used prods such as 'you must go on'
Findings
No participants stopped below 300 volts , 65% continued to the highest level of 450 volts
Qualitative data was also collected such as observations that the participants showed signs of extreme tension
Before the study milligram asked 14 psychology students to predict participants behavior and they estimated that no more than 3% would. continue to 450 volts
Participants were debriefed and assured that their behavior was entirely normal , they were sent a follow up questionnaire and 84% said that they were glad to have taken part
Evaluation
Low internal validity: It could be argued that participants behaved the way they did because they didn't believe in the set up so lacked internal validity. Gina perks research in 2013 confirms this as she listened to the tapes and many expressed their doubts about the shocks . However when real shocks were given to a puppy , participants still obeyed - 54% of males and 100% of females . This suggests that the effects of milgrams study were genuine , milgram reported that 70% of participants thought the shocks were real .
Supporting replication : ' The game of death ' is a documentary about reality tv and it includes a replication of milligrams study . Participants believed they were contestants in a pilot episode for a new game show and they were paid to give fake electric shocks to other participants (confederates )when ordered by a presenter . 80% of participants delivered the maximum of 460 volts to an apparently unconscious man . Their anxious behavior was identical to the participants in milligrams study
Good external validity : Appears to lack external validity as it was completed in a lab but the central feature was the relationship between the participant and the authority figure . Milgram said that the lab environment reflected wider authority relationships in real life . Eg Hofling studied nurses on a hospital ward and 21 out of 22 obeyed to unjustified demands by doctors .This suggests that findings in this study can be generalized to other situations
Social identity theory : According to this theory the key to obedience lies in group identification . In milligrams study participants identified with the experimenter - the science of the study . When obedience levels fell this is because the participant was identifying less with the science and more with the victim . The first three prods encouraged the participant to carry on because of the science but the last prod just demanded obedience . Every time the 4th prod was used the participant quit
Ethical issues : Milgram deceived his participants because he led them to believe that the roles of teacher and learner were random but they were actually fixed and that the electric shocks were real when they were fake
The Milgrim Paradigm
Aims
To test the 'germans are different' hypothesis which claimed that germans are highly obedient and that Adolf hitler could not have exterminated the jewish people and other minority groups in the 1930s and 1940s without the cooperation of germans
To see if individuals would obey the orders of an authority figure that incurred negative consequences and went against ones moral code
Conclusions
The 'germans are different' hypothesis is false
Suggests that obeying those in authority is normal behavior in a hierarchically organised society
