Milgram's Research - created from Mind Map

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Outline/Findings

Strengths and weaknesses

Aim

Procedure

Findings

Conclusions

To investigate whether people will obey authority figure when they are required to harm another person

40 male students volunteered. The ppts answered a newspaper advert asking for people to take part in a study of how punishment affects learning. All puts were paid $4.50 even if they quit the study

There were two confederates: one learner and one experimenter. The naive pp drew lots with the learner but always landed up as the teacher.

The teacher was told that he had to give stronger and stronger shocks to the learner every time he got the question wrong.

The learner sat in another room and gave mostly incorrect answers and received shocks in silent until 300 volts where he made noises and begged to leave. This was repeated at 315 volts but then he remained silent

If the pp asked to stop, the experimenter had a set of verbal prods to repeat e.g. 'It is absolutely necessary that you continue'

before the study, Milgram found that psychology students thought that only 4% would reach 300 volts and fewer than 3% would reach 450 volts

In the real experiment, no pps stopped before 300 volts and 65% reached the maximum 450 volts. Only 12.5% stopped at 300 volts when the ppts first objected.

Qualitative observational data revealed that ppts showed signs of extreme tension e.g sweating, trembling, stuttering and groaning. Three had uncontrollable seizures.

Ordinary people are astonishingly obedient to authority. This is the case even when they are asked to behave in an inhumane way

People obey authority because of the situation they are in and not because they are evil. Situational not dispositional factors.

An individual capacity for making individual decisions is limited when they find themselves in a subordinate position with a powerful social hierarchy

Migram's experiment too place in a laboratory setting which enabled the control of variables so that only the IV is manipulated. E.G. the experimenter had a standardised set list of responses to ensure consistency between ppts. This meant that Milligram could determine whether the IV did cause changes in obedience rates. This suggests that casual conclusions can be drawn.

However, the fact Milligram used an artificial set up in a laboratory drew criticism.

The research methods lacked ecological validity. The experiment was carried out in an artificial situation. The ppts were not in their normal surroundings and would not be asked to give electric shocks in their everyday lives. This suggests tat the results of Milligram's obedience research cannot be applied to real life obedience situations.

However, Milgram argued back. This research can be said to possess high external validity as it could be related to real life situations. Milligram argued that the relationship between the experimenter and the ppt was a social relationship, much the same as other real social relationships such as boss and worker. Milgram also said that the behaviour of the Nazi's in WWII was similar to the ppts in his research and that this type of obedience research could apply to these external settings, This suggests that obedience research does paint an accurate picture of obedience behaviour.