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16 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is the key study? |
Milgram (1963) |
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How many participants were involved? |
40 |
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What was the aim of the study? |
To calculate the affect of different situational factors on obedience. |
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What were participants told about the study? |
It was a study of how punishment affects learning. |
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What was the procedure? |
The participant was always the "teacher" and the confederate the "learner". The teacher had to test the learner on their ability to remember word pairs. Every time they got it wrong, the teacher had to administer increasingly strong electrical shocks starting at 15 volts and continuing to 450 volts. |
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Cont... |
The learner gave mainly wrong answers and didn't react to the fake shocks until it got to 300 volts and they started to react. If the teacher asked to stop, the experimenter had a series of prods that they have no choice. |
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What were the findings? |
26/40 participants continued to the maximum shock level (450 volts). All participants went over 300 volts. |
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How can proximity affect obedience? |
They put both teacher and learner in the same room when the shocks were happening and obedience dropped to 40%. When the teacher was asked to force the learners hand onto the shock plate, obedience fell to 30%. When the experimenter gave orders over the phone, only 21% went to maximum shock level. |
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What does this show? |
This shows that if people can see the pain they are causing, they are less likely to obey. If the experimenter isn't physically there then participants feel less pressure to complete the study. |
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How can location affect obedience? |
When the study was conducted in a run down office, obidence rates dropped slightly with only 48% delivering the full 450 volts. |
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What does this show? |
If the study is carried out in a prestigious place such as Yale University, participants are more likely to obey. |
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How does the power of uniform affect obedience? |
A study carried out whereby a woman had to dress in different outfits and ask people to give change to a male researcher. They found that when she was wearing a police uniform, 72% of the people obeyed compared to 48% when a business executive and 52% as a beggar. |
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What does this show? |
People are more likely to obey when the person ordering them appears to have authority. |
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Evaluation - disadvantage Ethical issues |
Deception - lying to participants about the real aim of the study. Protection from harm - teachers might have been psychologically harmed watching learners receive a "shock." Right to withdraw - telling participants that they had no choice and couldn't stop. |
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Evaluation - disadvantage Lack of realism (internal validity) |
Many of mil grams participants had been skeptical at the time about whether the shocks were real or not. Therefore they might have gone to the maximum 450 because they knew it wasn't hurting them. |
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Evaluation - advantage Historical validity |
Researchers have found evidence from many different studies to suggest that we would get different results nowadays. Therefore Milgram's findings still apply as much today as they did in the 60's. |
