Aim: To establish a baseline measure of how obedient naive participants would be when asked to administer shocks of increasing intensity to an innocent victim.
Method: 40 American Male men to go to Yale university as part of a 'memory test' Must be an adult local man ie not in college or high school. They then met a confederate and drew straws to decide who would be the learner and who would be the teacher the draw rigged and the confederate always drew the role of learner. The Naive participant was then shown the equipment that they would be using and were told to take notice of the labelled which went all the way from 15V to 450V which stated the effect such a shock would have in levels of pain and also in danger. They would then shock the learner whenever they got an incorrect answer the learner would complain from time to time of the pain, to screaming to get them out, to complaining of their heart bothering them to eventually going silent.
Results: All Participants reached 300V 14 stopped inbetween 300 and 375 and all the rest continued to 450. The participant actually asked to be released at 140V and despite visible observed signs of stress threatening to drop out of the study sweating, trembling, stuttering, groaned, dug their fingernails into themselves and bit their lips.
Conclusions: Milgram decided that social setting is a powerful determinant in behaviour we are socialised to recognise authority and to react obediently. When participants entered the situation the research scientist was the legitimate figure of authority and so they felt they had to follow orders
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