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Burger (2009) - Coggle Diagram
Burger (2009)
Procedure
29 men and 41 women. Recruited through an advert. Screened and asked questions such as 'have you had any drug/alcohol problems?'.
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The procedure replicates Milgram’s variation #5 on his baseline study. The experimenter is a white man in his 30s; the confederate (learner) is in his 50s.
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.
If the teacher moves to deliver the 165V shock, the experimenter stops the experiment.
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.
Findings
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Empathy had no significant different in obedience however in the base condition those who stopped at 150v or sooner had significantly higher locus of control (not the same in model refusal)
Evaluation
Strengths
Validity- High internal validity- none of Burger's participants knew of Milgram's study, Burger asked in his interviews if they had studied psychology or ever taken a psychology class. This means that they couldn't have shown any demand characteristics
Generalisability- He had a larger sample size, with both genders and higher age range.
Weaknesses
Generalisability (CA)- Burger excluded many people from his final sample. This could affect his results. Milgram had a wider range of people.
Validity - Stopping study at 150V may be invalid. People may not have gone much higher. Milgram found 100% of participants went to only 300V, 150V is a vert big assumption
Aim
To investigate obedience by partially replicating Milgram's study to examine whether situational factors affect obedience.
Conclusions
Milgram's results still stand. People still influenced by situational factors to obey an authority figure even when it goes against their moral values. He made the assumption anyone willing to go past 150v would go to 450v.