Obedience

KEY STUDY: MILGRAM STUDY

-Why do people obey when the action required is inhumane or destructive? Stanley Milgram was interested i circumstances which people may be induced to act against their consciences by inflicting harm on other people.

-He recruited 40 males by advertising in a study of how punishment affects learning at Yale university. Everyone paid $4.50 even if they quite during the study. 

-There was the 'real' participant and two confederates: an experimenter and a 47-year-old accountant playing the part of the 'learner'.

-The 'real' participant was told that he must administer strong electric shocks to the 'learner' each time he got a question wrong... the machine was tested beforehand to see if it worked.

-In the 'remote' condition, the learner gave mainly false answers and recieved (fake) shocks of up to 300v (very dangerous) He then pounded against the wall and gave no response to the next question... more so at 315v

-When the 'teacher' would ask to stop, some prods would take place to keep the teacher in 'It is absolutely essential that you continue' yet they had been told they were allowed to quit at any known time. 

-BEfore the experiment, Milgram asked many different people to predict how far the 'real' participant would go, nearly all the predictions were that the participants…