Milgram's Obedience Experiment
- Created by: EmilyRoseCotterell
- Created on: 21-12-17 10:51
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- Milgram's Obedience Experiment
- 'The Germans are different'
- this is a flase hypothesis people believed until Milgram tried to prove it
- was thought to be the cause of the holocaust
- Milgram's study was to see if people in the 60's would behave like the Nazi's did 20 years earlier in WW2
- was a pilot study as he thought Americans wouldn't torture others
- he would give the test to check it worked + then tested Germans to prove they were different
- Findings: Average Americans would follow orders like the Nazis did to show that Germans were not different
- Aim
- to research how far people would obey instructions when it involved harming another person
- Procedure
- 3 individuals
- the experimenter
- the subject / teacher
- the learner
- involved 40 ppts over a series of conditions
- ppts told it was a study of how punishment affects learning
- 2 experiment confederates: an experimenter and a 'leaner' who was thought to be a volunteer.
- teacher + learner drew straws but this was rigged
- in one room was the teacher with an electric shock machine. in the other room was the learner who would receive the shock
- teacher had to test the learner with their ability to remember word pairs
- every time the learner answered wrong, the teacher would have to give an electric shock from 15 volts to 450 volts
- the learner gave mostly wrong answers on purpose
- the electric shocks were fake and a CD played fake screams
- if the teacher asked to stop, the experimenter would say a series of prods, e.g "Please continue", "The experiment requires you to continue"
- electricity monitor had clear descriptions of the pain
- ppts told learner had a heart condition
- 3 individuals
- Findings
- 65% continued to 450 volts
- 100% continued to 300 volts
- before, Milgram asked how long ppts would go before refusing to continue. 1/1000 would go to 450 volts
- believed you had to be sadistic to go the whole way
- obedience levels same for American females too
- Conclusions
- they only continued due to a man in a white lab who said he was in charge but didn't even have an ID.
- people can follow orders given by authority to the extent of killing someone
- Evaluation
- Good points
- led to increased ethics
- 1st proper obedience study
- people only complained due to unpleasant results
- debriefed ppts - those who obeyed reassured they weren't evil or had unusual behaviour
- proved equality - Germans not different
- proved psychologists wrong
- good to make people sceptical
- Unethical
- knowing you're capable and willing to murder
- deceived ppts as they were told it was a study of memory so couldn't conform properly
- difficult for ppts to freely leave due to prompts
- distress of knowing you're capable of acting like the Nazi's did
- physical pain as stress caused rashes
- Invalid
- not ecologically valid - you don't give people electric shocks in everyday life
- experimenter acted calm throughout even when learner screamed - made the teacher doubt reality?
- Reliability questionable
- YES = study repeated many times (Milgram 18 different versions) showing similar results + conclusions
- NO = all male volunteers originally
- NO = converting people to evil?
- Good points
- 'The Germans are different'
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