Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Milgram's Baseline Study - Coggle Diagram
Milgram's Baseline Study
AO3
Strengths
Reliability: Standardised procedure so is easily replicable, Burger 2009 used the same script and procedure and verbal prods and responses.
Application: Applied to pilot training, Tarnow (2000) describes how 1st officers fail to monitor and challenge errors made by the captain. Tarnow believes that training first officers
Weaknesses
Reliability: Gina Perry (2012) argues there was occasions where the experimenter deviated from the script and allegedly gave 20 prompts this means that demand characteristics could have been shown.
Generalisability: Milgram only used white men in a certain age range in America. this means his findings cannot be generalised to women and people out side of the US.
AO1
Aim
To investigate if ordinary citizens would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain on another person
-
Procedure
Each participant was allocated the role of ‘Teacher’ seemingly at random (however, the experiment was set up so that the participant was always ‘Teacher’)
The participant met ‘Mr Wallace’ who was a confederate of Milgram’s - the participant assumed ‘Mr Wallace’ was another participant - he was in the role of ‘Learner’
The Learner was strapped into a chair and attached to electrodes; the Teacher was shown this contraption before the procedure started
The Teacher, in another room, gave the Learner a trigger word which was matched with a word that the Learner had (supposedly) memorised
-
If the Learner got an answer wrong, the Teacher had to issue an electric shock to them via a shock generator which went from 15 volts to 450 volts (a lethal dose)
Throughout the procedure there was an experimenter present who provided prompts if the Teacher seemed reluctant to go any further, e.g.‘The experiment requires that you continue'
The Learner appeared to be making noises indicating pain which the Teacher could hear (these had been pre-recorded and were fake), e.g.‘Get me out of here! Oh, that hurts!’
Findings
-
-
Milgrams also noted behavioural responses such as shaking, crying, sweating and 3 participants had seizures
Conclusions
The results showed that destructive obedience is not a result of nationality or personal factors but is instead made possible by specific situational factors
The situational factors (binding factors) which contributed to the participants’ high levels of obedience
-
the prompts were given by the experimenter who was wearing a lab coat (a legitimate authority figure)
the fact that the participants had volunteered to take part and had been paid a small sum for doing so
the feeling that the situation was not in their control and they were ‘just obeying orders’ (agency theory)