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Advantages
- landmark study that demonstrated how susceptible people are to obeying even when potentially hurting others
- applied in the case of Police Battalion 101 where commander ordered the mass killing of JEws but those who didn't feel up to it could opt out and do another task but only a few took this option
- reliable repeatable with standardised procedure
- seems to have validity with time - researcher analysed data of Milgram's studies as well as similar obedience studies over a period of 20 years and found no difference in levels between the earlier and later studies, furthermore a more recent study in 2009 found similar obedience levels to those originally found by Milgram
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Disadvantages
- Ethical issues - deception -> lack of informed consent, particpants felt as thought they couldn't leave due to prods from experimentor though Milgram claimed they were free to leave. Lack of protection from harm as there was likely psychological harm from believing they had hurt another person
- when learner cried out in pain, experiementer was cool and distant leading some participants to believe that the learner wasn't actually getting hurt which influenced how they behaved, one of Milgram's research assistant divided the participants into belivers and non-believers and found that doubters were less likely to give out higher voltage shocks
- Criticised for lack of female participants who were believed to have acted differently, however on research conducted with females there has been no evidence to suggest any gender difference in obedience levels
- didn't consider another factor - identification with a group - most applications of this study come from military acts where each individual is also part of a group, hence could be an element of a more Zimbardo explanation
- alternative explanation is that there is a sadistic nature in all humans, possibly explained from an evolutionary point of view since we would be in competition with others
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