Milgram's Obedience Study (AQA A Level Psychology)

Milgram's study of obedience

• Milgram (1963) devised his investigation into destructive obedience in response to the atrocities committed in World War II

• Milgram's initial hypothesis was that Germans must be different to all other nations due to their involvement in the Holocaust

  • This is a dispositional approach as it assumes that obedience is the result of personality factors rather than situational factors

• To test his ‘Germans are different’ hypothesis, Milgram conducted the following experiment (initially conducted as a pilot study):

Sample

• 40 males aged 20-50 years old from a variety of different backgrounds

• Participants were obtained via volunteer sampling (leaflets and newspaper advertisements)

• Participants were paid $4.50 for their time

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

• The Learner then pressed a button to indicate their answer

  • 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

• The dependent variable was measured as the number of participants who went up to 450 volts

  • 65% of participants went up to 450 volts

  • 100% of participants went up to 300 volts

• The behavioural responses of the participants were also noted, e.g.:

  • shaking

  • crying

  • sweating

  • a couple of participants even had seizures

Conclusions

• Milgram abandoned his dispositional hypothesis

• 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 were:

    • the experiment took place at a high-status Yale University i.e. it was ‘important’

    • 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)

Evaluation of Milgram's study of obedience

Strengths

• Milgram's findings have been reflected in other research on obedience such as Hofling et al. (1966) who conducted a field study using a naive sample of 22 nurses

  • Each nurse was telephoned by a doctor they did not know

  • The doctor told the nurse to administer an excessive dose of an unfamiliar drug

    • 20 mg of 'Astroten' (the drug was fake and was simply a glucose tablet)

    • the Astroten box clearly stated that the maximum daily dose was 10mg

  • 21 out of the 22 nurses obeyed the unethical order, which broke hospital guidelines

  • The findings support the idea that harmful acts can be committed by seemingly caring people

  • Thus, Milgram's study has good external validity as similar effects as were observed in his study can be seen in the real world

• The use of the 15-volt intervals on the shock generator was effective in showing how destructive obedience does not happen immediately

  • Rather it is a 'drip-drip' effect of the slow erosion of personal values and morals when faced with prevailing social conditions

Limitations

• Milgram's study has been accused of lacking internal validity

  • The above criticism is based on the idea that participants realised that the shocks were fake and were simply 'playing along' (a similar criticism has been directed towards Zimbardo's prison study)

• The study is hugely compromised in terms of ethics:

  • Participants were deceived as to the true nature of the study

  • The physical and psychological harm inflicted on the participants means that the study cannot be replicated today

  • Right to withdraw was not tacitly given - the experimenter's prods made leaving the study more difficult