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Obedience - Ethical Considerations and Methodical Criticisms of Milgrams…
Obedience - Ethical Considerations and Methodical Criticisms of Milgrams study
Psychological harm - EC
Exposed participants to extreme stress , for example the physical reactions such as seizures
However only 2 percent had regrets about being involved and 74 percent said that they learned something . A thorough debriefing was carried out where participants met the unharmed learner and they received psychiatric assessments - none showing signs of long term damage . The study can be justified as a cost-benefit analysis as the short term damage is outweighed by lack of long term damage and valuable results obtained
Perry (2012) claims that debriefing didn't always occur as milligram was worried about news of the study becoming common knowledge before he had finished his work .
Baumrind ( 1964 ) accused milgram of abusing his participants rights and feelings
However Baumrinds criticism assumes that the outcome was expected but milligram was very surprised by the high obedience rate - milligram asked 40 psychiatrists to predicts the % of people who would go up to 450 volts , they said 1%
Deception / Informed Consent - EC
He deceived his participants as he said that the study was only concerned with memory and learning
Electric shocks were only mentioned once participants had already agreed to take part
Mr Wallace was a confederate who never received any electric shocks . The researcher was also a confederate
Milgram defended the use of deception by debriefing his participants
Deception was necessary is participants were to behave realistically , otherwise results could not have been generalized to real life situations
Right to withdraw - EC
No explicit right to withdraw was given to participants before the study started and attempts to withdraw were met with verbal prods that encouraged them to continue
Milgram argued that they did have the right to withdraw as 35% of them exercised this option
Inducement to take part - EC
Advert stated that they would be paid $4.50 each for taking part which may have lead participants to believe that they had to take part
However the advert also stated that the money would be paid upon arrival and no participant claimed they thought they had to obey to get paid
Internal validity - MC
Would lack internal validity if participants didn't believe shocks were real
Orne and Holland ( 1968 ) criticised the internal validity of milligrams study as they believed participants delivered shocks because they knew they weren't real . However 75% of participants in interviews said they thought shocks were real . This is supported by the extreme physical responses . Perry (2012) traced as many of the original participants as she could and claimed that the true figure was about 50%
External validity - MC
Androcentrism - Only males were used so cannot be generalized to females . It would be assumed that women would be less obedient to orders with destructive consequences but research suggests that the opposite is true . This may be because their gender roles are submissive
Research - Sheridan and King (1972) got male and female participants to give real electric shocks to a puppy every time it responded to a command wrong and participants believed shocks were increasing by 15 volts every time . The shocks were mild but enough to make puppies howl . Eventually and anaesthetic gas was pumped in to make the puppies unconscious to make participants think they were dead . 54% of males and 100% of females obeyed up to 450 volts - supporting the idea that milligrams study was androcentric
Cultural bias - Only used American participants so results can't be generalized to people of other cultures . Research has backed up this with varying levels of obedience found between different cultures - may be because of cultural differences regarding authority
Research - Meesus and Raaijimakers ( 1986 ) found the highest recorded obedience level with the milgrim paradigm of 90% in Spanish participants . Kilham and Mann (1974) used the pilgrim paradigm to find the lowest cultural obedience rate of 28% among Australians . Mantell ( 1971 ) used the pilgrim paradigm to find a relatively high obedience rate of 80% in Germany
Historical validity - It has been suggested that the high rate of obedience found in the milgram study was a product of American culture being very authoritarian and obedient during the early 1960s
Ecological Validity - Milgrims paradigm has been criticized for how unrepresentative it is of real life occurances
