Milgram's Study of Destructive Obedience
- Created by: becca.chapman
- Created on: 18-04-16 19:01
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- Milgram's Study of Destructive Obedience
- Aim
- To investigate the tendency for destructive obedience
- More specifically, to see how large an electric shock p's were willing to give a helpless man when ordered to do so in his own lab
- Method
- Design: lab experiment
- The DV was the obedience of the participant
- Obedience was operationalised as the maximum voltage given in response to the orders
- Participants
- Forty men aged 20-50. 37.5% were manual labourers, 40% were white collar workers and 22.5% of workers were professionals
- Self selecting sample, Ad in a local news paper. offered payment of $4.00
- Procedure
- Upon arrival at Yale Uni, each P was introduced to the actor and briefed on the 'purpose' of the experiment.
- They were told the purpose was to investigate the effect of punishment on learing
- Then drew slips of paper to allocate the learner and the teacher, was fixed so that the actor was the learner.
- each time the 'learner' got a question wrong, the experimenter ordered the P to give a shock.
- If they protested, they were given a series of verbal prods.
- each P was considered to have completed the experiment when they either refused to give any more shocks, or reached the max volatage.
- after completion p's were interviewed and fully debriefed, so that they understood the true purpose of the experiment.
- Upon arrival at Yale Uni, each P was introduced to the actor and briefed on the 'purpose' of the experiment.
- Design: lab experiment
- Results
- both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered.
- 100% of P's gave at least 300V or more
- 65% gave the full 450V
- psych students estimated only 1.2% would
- Qual. data was gathered in the form of comments, protests and body language.
- most p's showed physical signs of tension e.g sweating, groaning, biting lips & stuttering
- Most participants protested but verbal prods were sufficient in most cases to get them to continue.
- Conclusions
- The majority of people are quite willing to obey destructive commands
- People find the experience of receiving and obeying destructive commands to be highly stressful
- results supported the situational hypothesis rather than the dispotional hypothesis
- Explaining the high levels of obedience
- 1. The study was carried out in a respectable environment
- 2. Aim of the study appears to be worthwhile
- 3.& 4. The learner or teacher volunteered so they have an obligation to the experimenter
- 5. features of the design e.g payment, increase this sense of obligation
- 6. teacher was equally as likely to be the learner (in their view)
- 7. right to withdraw is not obvious
- 8. p's were ensured the shocks weren't dangerous
- learner had appeared to be comfortable with the procedure for the first 300V
- Aim
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