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Milgram's baseline study - Coggle Diagram
Milgram's baseline study
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Shock experiment (1963)
The learner was Milgram's confederate Mr Wallace, he was taken into a room and had electrodes attached to his arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches marked from 15 volts labeled Slight Shock to 375 volts labeled Danger: Severe Shock to 450 volts
His aim was to see how far people would go to obey an authority figures instructions if it involved harming someone.
The procedure was that the participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher.’ The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram’s confederates, decieving the participant.
His sample was selected newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University.
Milgram wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.
Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, from a range of educational and professional backgrounds, they were paid $4.50 for just turning up.
Mr Wallace is given a list of word pairs to learn, and the teacher tests him by naming a word and and asking him to recall its pair from a list of 4 choices. The teacher is told to administrate a shock for every wrong answer, upping the voltage every time. The learner gave 1 wrong answer for every 3 correct answer on purpose.
If the participant refused to administer a shock, the experiment would prod them to continue using 4 different prods. Once all 4 prods were used or the highest voltage had been administered, the experiment ended.
Study into understanding the obedience of Nazi's to Hitler, using male participants and a male authority figure.
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This experiment is not GENERALISABLE as the sample is androcentric. The findings of the experiment cannot be applied to the target population as the experiment is based on findings from males aged 20-50. The findings cannot be applied to men outside of that age range or women.
Milgram concluded that an ordinary person is more likely to obey instructions if they come from an authoritative figure, despite the dangers.
Milgram's experiment is RELIABLE as it is a lab experiment and can be easily replicated with the same procedure.
This experiment is not VALID as it lacks ecological validity. It is a lab experiment so it lacks mundane realism and is artificial.
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This study is not ETHICAL as participants were not debriefed until months after the experiment, they also had the inability to withdraw.