Milgram's study of Obedience to authority

Aims:

• To investigate the tendency for destructive behaviour 
• To test the level of obedience when told by an authority figure to give electric shocks to another.

Design:

• This was a Lab experiment using independent measures design.
• The DV was the obedience level which was operationalised as the maximum voltage given 

Participants:

• 40 men aged 20-50
• Recruited from a newspaper article therefore they were a volunteer sample.
• All from the New Haven district in North America
• Paid $4.50 for their time

Procedure:

• The participant and confederate were told they would play the role of the teacher and learner
• It was fixed so that the participant would always be the teacher. 
• The participant read out word pairs to test the confederate.
• If the confederate made a mistake the teacher had to administer an electric shock.
• The shocks increased by 15v each time up until 450v
• The experiment would be complete when the participant completed the procedure or they refused to give any more shocks.
• Participants were then debriefed at the end of the study. 

Results:

• Both quantitative and qualitative data was collected.
• 100% of participants went up to 300v
• 65% of participants went up to 450v
• Qualitative data was collected in the form of comments and protests.

Conclusions:

• People are much more obedient to destructive orders than expected
• People find receiving destructive orders highly stressful.

Explaining Obedience:

• The experiment was carried out in a highly respectable environment.
• The learner appeared to have volunteered and had an obligation to the experimenter.
• Participants were assured that the shocks were not dangerous.