MILGRAM'S ORIGINAL OBEDIENCE STUDY

PROCEDURE

He recruited 40 male participant's through newspaper adverts and flyers in the post. The advertisement claimed that he was looking for participant's for a memory study. They were aged between 20-50 years and their jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. They were offered $4.50 to take part. When pp's arrived at Milgram's lab they were paid the money and their was a draw for their role. It took place at Yale university. A confederate, 'Mr Wallace' was always the 'learner' while the true participant was the 'teacher'. There was also an 'experimenter' which was another confederate dressed in a lab coat, played by an actor, pp's were told that they were allowed to leave the study at any time. The learner was strapped to a chair in another room and wired with electrodes, the teacher was required to give the learner a severe electric shock each time the learner made a mistake on a learning task. The shocks were demonstrated to the teacher and the shocks weren't real. The shock level started at 15 volts and rose through 30 levels to 450 volts. When the teacher got to 300 volts the learner pounded on the wall and didn't answer the next question. After the 315v shock the learner pounded on the wall again and no further response.  When the teacher turned to the experimenter for guidance he claimed that 'an absence of response should be treated as a wrong answer'. If the teacher felt unsure about continuining then the experimenter used a sequence of four prods which were repeated if necessary. 

FINDINGS

No participant's stopped below 300 volts, 12.5% stopped at 300v and 65% continued to the highest level of 450 volts. Qualitative data was collected, observing that the pps' showed signs of extreme tension, they were seen to sweat, tremble, stutter, groan and dig their fingernails into their hands. Three even had full- blown seizures. Before the study Milgram asked 14 psychology students to predict the…