Milgram's (1963) Study Of Obedience

• Stanley Milgram was of Jewish descent and wanted to understand the actions of Nazi soldiers during WWII.

• Many people could not understand how high ranking officers could behave so inhumanely towards Jews and others as a result of "following orders"

• Some academics suggested that the reasons behind the Holocaust atrocities were a character flaw common to the German population but Milgram was not convinced so went on with his research.

• To test the "Germans are different" hypothesis and see whether people's capacity to harm others was due to their individual character or the situation they were in.

• In particular, Milgram wanted to see if people would obey orders from an authority figure and give electric shocks to harm another person.

• Sample= self-selecting sample of 40 Males aged 20-50 from a wide variety of backgrounds (androcentric and ethnocentric sample)
• The participants responded to an advert in the paper that stated they would participate in a study about punishment and learning and for this research they would be paid $4.50,
• All participants were tested individually.
• Procedure took place at Yale Univeristy and on arrival they were introduced to Mr Wallace who they believed was another participant.
• They took part in a draw to decide who was going to be the 'teacher' and 'learner'. This draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher.
• The experimenter wore a grey lab coat and kept an emotionless and stern manner throughout the experiment.
• The learner had to learn and repeat word-pairs and the teacher was instructed to administer an electric shock at 15V increments for each incorrect answer.
• The pp was given a sample shock of 45V as they observed Mr Wallace being strapped into the chair and the experimenter explained that the electric shocks would not cause any permanent damage to the learner.

• The participant was taken to another room next door and sat in front of an electric panel.
• The switches indicating 15-450 Volts had labels describing the shocks: "Slight shock", "Moderate shock" and "Danger- severe shock"
• The pp's could not see the learner but could communicate with him via intercom.
• Mr Wallace gave predetermined responses to the word-pairs test
• He moaned and complained at the shocks and after 300V he pounded on the walls and shouting stopped.
• At 315V the learner pounded on the wall once and then fell silent.
• The experimenter observed the teacher administering the shocks and if they hesitated, used standardised prods such as "please continue" and "you must go on" to encourage them
• At the end of the experiment, participants were debriefed and a reconciliation meeting was arranged between the participants and the learner to reassure them that no actual harm was done to him.
• All pp's were also interviewed to ensure that they did not suffer any long-term mental harm by taking part in the study.

Quantitative results: all 40 pp's administered electric shocks up to 300V (100%). Of those, 26 pp's (65%) continued to obey orders and administered 450V shocks to the learner.

Qualitative results: signs of extreme tension were noted in many pp's as they were observed to "sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan and dig their fingers into their flesh" which suggests that they were experiencing moral strain between wanting to obey researcher's orders and not wanting to hurt the learner

Nervous laughing fits were observed in 14 pps whilst full-blown uncontrollable seizures were observed in 3 pps.

• Milgram concluded that obedience was a product of the situation that people are in, rather than their personal characteristics.

• In the presence of an authority figure, people will make an Agentic Shift, moving from the Autonomous State to the Agentic State.

• Some pps explained their behaviour as "only doing what they had been told by the experimenter" which supports Milgram's Agency Theory of obedience.