Social - Burger 2009
Conclusions
Procedure
Results
Aims
To find out if the same results will be found as in the original Milgram's study, more than 40 years later
To see how much personality traits such as empathy and locus of control affect obedience
To see if the presence of a disobedient model would make a difference to the obedience of the participant
Sample
Volunteer sample recruited through a newspaper adverts. They were paid $50 before the study started
There was a 'screening procedure' in which the participants who has a 'drug dependency, anxiety issues and those who had studied psychology and heard of Milgram' were removed
Final Sample - Both men and women between 20-81
The script resembles Milgram’s but the test shock that the participant receives is only 15V rather than Milgram’s painful 45V. The participant/teacher watches the learner being strapped into the electric chair and then sits at the shock generator in an adjacent room.
The teacher reads out 25 multiple choice questions and the learner uses a buzzer to indicate the answer. If the answer is wrong, the experimenter directs the teacher to deliver a shock, starting at 15V and going up in 15V intervals
The learner indicates he has a “slight heart condition” but the experimenter replies that the shocks are not harmful. At 75V the learner starts making sounds of pain. At 150V the learner cries that he wants to stop and complains about chest pains.
If the teacher moves to deliver the 165V shock, the experimenter stops the experiment, this is the point of no return
70% of participants were prepared to go past 150V, compared to 82.5% in Milgram’s Variation #5. This sounds like a big difference but it is not statistically significant given the number of people involved.
Burger also compared men and women but didn’t find a difference in obedience.
Empathy did not make a significant difference to obedience. However, in the base condition, those who stopped at 150V or sooner did have a significantly higher locus of control (but this was not the case in the “model refusal” condition).
Burger concludes that Milgram’s results still stand half a century later. People are still influenced by situational factors to obey an authority figure, even if it goes against their moral values.
Empathy didn’t make a difference to obedience, which goes against what Milgram thought and what Burger expected.
The “model refusal” results were not very different from the base condition. This is odd because Social Impact Theory suggests the impact of the authority figure would be lessened if divided between two teachers rather than focused on one. Milgram found less obedience in this condition, but he used two rebellious models, not one.
Locus of control did make a bit of a difference, suggesting some people resist the agentic state. However, this disappeared in the “model refusal” condition and Burger doesn’t have a definite explanation for that.
Burger used questionnaires to measure individual differences that might be factors in obedience:
Interpersonal Reactivity Index is a 28-question test that measures empathy - how sensitive you are to other people's feelings
Desirability of Control Scale is a 20-question test that measures locus of control - how important is it for you to be in control of events in your life.
In the “model refusal” condition, a second confederate pretends to be a second teacher. This teacher delivers the shocks, with the naïve participant watching. At 90V the confederate teacher turns to the naïve participant and says “I don’t know about this.” He refuses to go on and the experimenter tells the naïve participant to take over delivering the shocks.
Evaluation