Milgram

Research into Obedience 

KEY - Evaluative Points

AIMS

> Wanted to find out whether ordinary people were willing to commit acts similar to the atrocities of real life.

> Milgram was interested specifically in the Holocaust, and how the soldiers claimed to be just following orders when asked why they did what they did, and so he investigated this to see whether ordinary people could administer an elecric shock to a stranger.

SAMPLE

> An advertisement was placed into the local newspaper, as well as direct mail being used > therefore volunteer sampling.

> Milgram asked for male participants, as well as people from all occupations, but NOT students.

> $4 incentive, and approximately 296 people responded.

> Diverse range of occupations, ages and educational levels were recruiteed.

> A total of 160 participants were used, of whom were blaanced out into 4 groups of 40 among 4 variation conditions.

MAIN PROCEDURE

> Participants were contacted in order to arrange an individual appointment with each of them.

> Laboratory experiment > conducted at Yale University

> A biology teacher was recruited as a confederate (experimenter) for the study, and a middle-aged accountant was recruited to be the victim (learner).

> Participants were invited individually to the laboratory where they would first interact with the confederate ( they did not know that there was a confederate, as the participant was led to believe that the other man was also a participant).

> Both the participant and the confederate were briefed > how some people may learn more effectively through punishment which has now lead to testing the hypothesis on humans > brief justified the procedure (electric shock usage), as well as to set the scene for role allocation (which was rigged) > the confederate was always the learner.

> The teacher and learner were both taken to another room > the learned was asked to sit in an electric chair apparatus with his arms strapped down to it.

> The teacher was told that it was necessary to strap down the learner in order to avoid excessive movement during the procedure. This was also accompanied by an electrode as well as conductive gel which was also attached to the learner > the teacher was informed that this would avoid blistering (added to create the assumption in their mind that this was real).

> Teacher was told that the shocks would be painful but not dangerous > all of these were used to create a convincing, realistic environment (reduced the likelihood of demand charactertistics) as no shocks were administered at all.

APPARATUS

> Electrode, which was attached to a shock generator.

> The shock generatore had voltages that increased in 15V increments…