Obedience and Milgram's Electric Shock Therapy
Obedience – direct and immediate response. An individual follows orders from an individual. The individual who gives the order will usually be a figure of authority – can be due to power, knowledge, social role, relation to the individual. Comply or defy situation – some form of punishment may encourage someone to obey.
Aim – He wanted to study how easily someone would obey to an authority figure, to the extent that they could potentially physically harm someone
Procedure
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Recruited 40 male participants through newspapers – told test memory
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Lab experiment – participant is always the learner and a second confederate was the experimenter dressed in a lab coat. Told they could leave.
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Gave a shock for wrong answer – shocks weren’t real.
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The shock levels started at 15 volts to 450 volts. At 315 – actors screamed
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The confederate experimenter used 4 generic prods – from ‘please’ to you ‘must’
Aim – He wanted to study how easily someone would obey to an authority figure, to the extent that they could potentially physically harm someone
Procedure
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Recruited 40 male participants through newspapers – told test memory
-
Lab experiment – participant is always the learner and a second confederate was the experimenter dressed in a lab coat. Told they could leave.
-
Gave a shock for wrong answer – shocks weren’t real.
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The shock levels started at 15 volts to 450 volts. At 315 – actors screamed
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The confederate experimenter used 4 generic prods – from ‘please’ to you ‘must’
Findings:
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No participants stopped below 300 volts
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12.5% stopped at 300 volts
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65% continued to the highest voltage level – 450
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Qualitative data was collected through observations – when extreme tension shown
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Psychologist predicted 3% would go all the way
Conclusion – that people would go against their morals to obey instructed
Evaluation
Supporting Research – Hofling et al (1966) Nurse Study
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Hoflling created a more realistic study of obedience than Milgram’s by carrying out field studies on nurses who were unaware that they were involved in an experiment
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The procedure involved a naturalistic field experiment involving 22 real night nurses. Dr. Smith (a stooge) phones the nurses at hospital (on 22 separate occasions) and asks them to check to see if they have the drug astroten
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When the nurse checks she can see that the maximum dosage is supposed to be 10mg. When they reported to the ‘Doctor’, they were told to administer 20mg of the drug to a patient called ‘Mr Jones’. Dr. Smith was in a desperate hurry and he would sign the authorisation form when he came to see Mr. Jones later on.
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If the nurse administers the drug, they will have broken three hospital rules:
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They are not allowed to accept instructions over the phone
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The dose was double the maximum limit stated on the box
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The medicine itself as unauthorised, i.e. not on the ward stock list
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21 out of 22 (95%) nurses were easily influenced into carrying out the orders. They weren’t supposed to take instructions by phone, let alone exceed the allowed dose (the drug was a placebo). Hofling demonstrated that people are very unwilling to question supposed ‘authority’, even when they might have good reason to.
Sample bias
Small sample – not representative of all western individuals
All male – gender bias so cannot be generalised to all people
Volunteer sample – participants were self selected, they may have a specific personality
Only Americans studied – Germans were also Western and individualist, Collectivist cultures have not been considered, and they should in theory obey more due to the values placed on social groups. They could have been compared to see whether the individualist cultures and collectivist cultures actually differ that much in terms of obedience.
Therefore = external validity issue – lacks population validity
Ethical issues – protection from harm
Participants were exposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the potential to cause psychological harm. Many of the participants were visibly distressed.
Signs of tension included trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands. Three participants had uncontrollable seizures, and many pleaded to be allowed to stop the experiment.
Therefore = the research is considered unacceptable as it does not adhere to the BPS ethical guidelines as ppts were not protected from psychological harm and they were deceived