What is obedience?
Obeidence is a social influence in which a person obeys an authority figure.
Milgram's study of Obedience 1963
Aim: to investigate the level of obedience when participants are askes to give elcetric shocks to their fellow participant.
Method: 40 male American volunteers aged between 20-50 years old with a wide range of occupation were selected by advertising in the newspaper and paid $4 to participate in the study of human memory. They were introduced to mr Wallace(the confederate).They were shown the shock generator with switches marked from 15v to 450v. they then drew straws to determine the teacher and the learner. The learner was strapped to a chair and given a list of words to learn in pairs. The teacher asked him to recall the words and each time he got it wrong,he was given an electric shock(the electric shock increases each time). They learner got mostly wrong answers and the teacher refuses to continue, the experimenter used the following prods: please continue, the experiment requires you to continue, it is absolutely essential that youn continue and you have no choice but to continue.
Results: all the participants went to 300v then 14 stopped between 300v and 375v then the remaining 26 went on all the way to 450v. The level of obedience is 65%.
Conclusion: Milgram concluded that social setting is a powerful determinate of behaviour. We are socialised to react to obedience.
Evaluation
Strengths
- Most variables were controlled making it experimentally valid.
- the study acts as a landmark to other psychologists to research on obedience.
- It relates to real life situations in the sense that some peole are told to do things in which they have to obey.
- the study has clear procedures and thereby the study can be replicated and tested for reliability.
Weaknesses
- its is not ecologicallly valid since the study was a laboratory experiment.
- it is not population valid and its gender biased.
- the experiment was unethical. Ethical guidlines were not followed, participants were decieved and not allowed to withdraw even though they were given the right to but the prods used suggested otherwise.
Variation studies
Conflicting experimenters: two experimenters; at 110 volts, one of the experimenter tells the participants to stop and the other tells the participants to continue.
Results: all the participant stopped.
Increase in the number of teachers: three teachers (two of which were confederate) one confederate teacher stopped at 150 volts and the other confederate teacher stopped at 210 volts.
Results: only 10% of the participant continued to the end.
Experimenter not present: experimenter instructions were given to the participants through a tape recorder and the participant could only speak to the experimenter through the phone.
Results: 22.5% of the participants continued to the end.
Change in location: held in research associates of Bridgeport offices, in a fairy rundown office building.
Result: 47.5%of the participants obeyed.
For all the variation, the other methods of the research remained the same.