Introduction to Social and Milgram

Key facts:

Social Psychology examines human behaviour in the context of our relationships with others, individuals and groups, how others affect our behaviour.

Status ----> Authority 

Stereotype = a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

• A Nazi called Eichmann organised most of the Jews in their concentration camps during WW2. 
• “Merely obeyed orders, and surely obeying orders could only be a good thing.” 
• He was declared sane by 6 psychiatrists. He simply believed in obeying orders and was surprised that Jews hated him.

• Milgram wanted to see how obedient participants would be when ordered to administer increasingly intense electric shocks to an innocent victim. 
• His research aim was to provide evidence for the “Germans are different” hypothesis
• He sought to explain why people obey orders.

• The aim was to test the idea that the Germans were different from other cultural groups.  
• The hypothesis has been used by historians to explain the systematic destruction of the Jews by the Third Reich. (A)
• Milgram wanted to see how obedient participants would be when ordered to administer increasingly intense electric shocks to an innocent victim.  

• 40 volunteers were chosen from a newspaper ad, all men. They were paid for participating.
• Participants were told individually that they and another man would take part in the study on the effect of punishment on memory.
• The selection was rigged - the naïve participants were always chosen as the ‘teacher’.
• The equipment was a fake shock generator with switches and lights going from 15V to 450V, with various descriptions of the shock levels, all going up at 15V per switch.
• The ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner’ were separated with a room between them. 
• The learner was given words pairs to learn, after this the teacher tested the recall of the word pairs.
• For each wrong answer, they were told to administer an electric shock to the learner, increasing in severity with each wrong answer.
• The ‘learner’s’ responses were scripted and no real shocks were received. At various points, he complained of pain and said his heart was ‘starting to bother him’, refusing to continue.
• They became silent at 315V, and the researcher consistently encouraged the ‘teacher’ to continue shocking, insisting they would take responsibility for the welfare of the learner.
• Obedience was measured by how far up the generator the ‘teacher’ went before refusing to obey anymore.

• Before the experiment, Milgram surveyed groups to see how far the participants would shock their ‘learners’. 
• They thought the participants would stop at 140V, which was when the ‘learner’ asked to be let out.
• IN FACT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM went to 300V.
• AND 65% went to 450V!

• All 40 participants administered electric shocks up to 300V (100%).  
• At 300V, total of 5 participants (12.5%) defied the orders and refused to continue with the experiment.  
• The 65% of participants continued to obey the orders and administered 450V to the learner.
• Signs of extreme tension were noted in many participants as they were observed to “sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan and dig their fingers into their flesh.”
• Nervous laughing fits were seen in 14 participants, whilst full-blown uncontrollable seizures were observed in 3 participants.  

• The social setting is a powerful determinant of behaviour - we are socialised to recognise authority and to react with obedience.
• Participants found it very difficult to break away.
• Having started to obey, it became harder and harder to say no.

• It had low generalisability as the participants were only local American volunteers, so it cannot be generalised to another culture. 
• It also only consisted of male volunteers, so it cannot be generalised to another gender.
• There was only a small number of participants to gather results from, so the results may not accurately represent the population.

• It had high reliability as each participant followed the same standardised procedure such as delivery of shocks in increments of 15V. 
• It is also possible to replicate, and it has been repeated many times.

• Gives insight into the type of situational factors that can incite blind obedience.
• This means that people can be educated and warned against blind obedience. 
• Explains atrocities such as how Nazi’s in concentration camps tortured Jews in WW2.

• It had low ecological validity as it was done in a laboratory setting.
• This was demonstrated when they repeated the experiment in an inner-city office and obedience dropped, but it still remained considerably higher than the initial expert estimates/predictions.
• The task can be deemed to lack mundane realism as giving electric shocks to a stranger is not an everyday task.

• It had a number of ethical issues, primarily that participants were deceived. They didn’t know the real aim of the study as they thought they were testing the effects of punishment on memory
• They were subjected to extreme stress in the short term by use of verbal prods.
• They did, however get a full debrief after taking part and most stated they were glad that they had participated.
• Milgram offered counselling to any participants who felt they needed it and he also sent a follow up questionnaire a year later to ask if any participant felt they had long term negative effects from experiment. None said they did.

In this variation, the experimenter was not in the same room as the teacher and all communication between the teacher and the experimenter was done via the telephone. 

Other than this, the procedure used was the same as in the original experiment.  

Milgram found that the obedience levels fell to 23% (9/40).

• The factors affecting this were that the Experimenter was not in the room to give a more imminent pressure.
• In the original, the Experimenter wore a grey lab coat, but over the telephone the naïve participants couldn’t see them, so didn’t see the authoritative appearance of the Experimenter. 

This time, the same experiment was carried out in a run-down office block, instead of at Yale University.  

Milgram found that the obedience levels fell to 41% (19/40).

The drop in obedience is less here from the original experiment (65%) than the Telephone Variation (which went down to 23%). 

• As the Experimenter was still in the room he could take authority and they could see that he was in charge, with his physical presence there to put pressure on the Teacher. 
• However, because they were not in such a prestigious environment, the participants might not have felt there was such importance to obey, or that the authority figure had less of a status than they may have found in Yale.

In this version of the study, the experimenter leaves the room and an ordinary man, dressed in clothes similar to the teacher, continues to order the teacher to administer electric shocks to the learner.  

This time, the obedience levels fell to 20% (8/40).

• The factor affecting this was a lack of someone with a higher status to take responsibility, nor anyone who seemingly had authority to obey. 
• As he was wearing no uniform, there didn’t seem any reason to obey.
• Also, he was less menacing than the Experimenter in a lab coat and severe expression.

• The level of obedience was highest in the original experiment and all other variations led to decrease in obedience observed amongst participants.  
• It seems that the setting of the experiment had the least effect and the orders of the experimenter had the most effect.  
• This further supports Milgram’s claims that obedience results from orders given by an authority figure.

• AUTONOMOUS STATE - When we are free to take responsibility for our actions, are free thinking, listen to our conscience and accept the consequences of our actions.
• AGENTIC SHIFT - When we move between thinking autonomously and obeying an authority figure.
• AGENTIC STATE - A state of feeling controlled by an authority figure, and therefore lacking responsibility for our actions.

This theory proposed by Milgram gives one explanation of why people obey. 

According to this theory we can be in one of two states – autonomous where we have our own free will and feel responsible for the actions we carry out; or agentic – we see ourselves as an agent for another person, seeing them as responsible for the consequences of our actions. 

The person we obey is usually a legitimate authority figure – e.g. parents, teachers and the police. 

• According to Milgram we have evolved to be in an agentic state.  
• Living in social groups is important in evolutionary terms as it ensures survival.  
• A hierarchy is necessary so that some people are leaders, while others are followers.
• During our early years, primary socialisation teaches us who to obey, this comes from our parents. 
• Although an individual may carry out the orders they have been given, they may not necessarily want to do these. 
• This experience is known as moral strain, and is where the individual may feel uncomfortable and feel it is wrong, but do so for the greater good. 

• Milgram (1963) conducted a study trying to find if the Germans were a more obedient people.
• The findings can be used as supporting evidence that people have two distinct states of consciousness which develop as a result of living in a hierarchical society - the autonomous and the agentic state.
• DEFINE AGENTIC/AUTONOMOUS
• Some of the participants explained their behaviour as “only doing what they had been told by the experimenter”, after 65% willingly flicked a switch that they were lead to believe would shock a stranger with 450V. 
• Also, 100% of the naïve participants went to 300V even though they could hear a recording of a man screaming to be let out, and didn’t know it wasn’t actually happening at that moment. 

• Hofling (1966) conducted a study in the USA on female nurses who received a telephone call whilst on shift from Dr Smith (a new doctor) asking if she could administer 20mg of a drug Astroten so that it could take effect before his round. 
• The bottle clearly stated 10mg maximum dose. 
• The results showed that 95% of nurses were about to administer the dose when stopped and questioned by the researcher. 
• This supports agency theory, as even though they could see that the drug’s maximum intake would be half of what the doctor ordered, 95% of the nurses were willingly about to administer the drug anyway.
• This suggests they were in an agentic state, as they believed the doctor would take responsibility for their actions.

• Though Milgram’s baseline experiment was held in controlled lab conditions at Yale University, it has been criticised for lacking ecological validity, as it is not a mundane experience to be ordered to shock strangers with high voltages. 
• However, there have been replications of this experiment with similar results, which further supports the Agency Theory, as each time the participants were in close space with an Experimenter they believed to be a legitimate authority figure who would take all of the responsibility, the obedience levels sky-rocketed. 

• Social Impact Theory can be applied to any social behaviour, including obedience, as it looks at the functioning of individuals in the presence of others.  
• Proposed by Latané (1981), Social Impact Theory looks at the attitudes we encounter as we interact with our social environment and how these affect our individual attitudes and opinions. 
• Social impact is “any individual feelings, thoughts or behaviours that are exerted by the real, implied or imagined presence or actions of others” (Nowak et al., 1990). 
• This would suggest that the participants of Milgram’s 1963 experiment exhibited these behaviours because the other people in their immediate environment (the Experimenter) were fine with continuing the process, therefore they were too.

• An application to real life would be the tragic and horrifying events of the Holocaust. 
• Soldiers and generals, such as the Nazi’s, were ordered to do things that would cause huge moral strain on most people. 
• The way they avoided this moral strain was by letting their legitimate authority figures give orders that they would not need to take responsibility for. 
• This helps explain why soldiers would willingly murder Jews in such a grotesque fashion. 
• This study has helped historians and people of today to understand the reasons behind the Holocaust, along with other terrible events such as the Jonestown massacre where an entire cult of 912 people drank poison when their leader ordered them to; this information can help educate against these events in future.

• The Theory of Agency has strong focus on the legitimate authority figure and how they relieve moral strain on an individual, however it doesn’t take into account the individual differences each person may have. 
• For example, upbringing can have a large effect on how much we obey and what orders we will obey. 
• Also, there have been suggestions that genetics could have an effect on how obedient we are. This is because early humans had a better chance of survival in social groups with leaders, who may order the group to fight threatening situations therefore acting in an agentic state. 
• Evolutionary psychology suggests this tendency can be passed on through our genes. Scientists argued that this tendency to obey orders from legitimate authority figures helped maintain order in society and prevent chaos. 
• Though it takes the immediate scenario into account, the Agentic Theory doesn’t account for other factors in an individual, so could be seen as reductive.