AICE.Milgram

Mind Map: Obedience

OBEDIENCE Obedience is following an order given by a person with recognised authority over you. Most of the time, this is a sensible thing to do, for example, following orders given by a police officer or a teacher. However, obedience has sometimes been blamed for ordinary people committing horrible acts, for example, Nazi soldiers following Hitler’s orders.

Behavioural Study of Obedience by Stanley Milgram (1963)

Milgram: Background As we watch this video from the real study, keep thinking about your idea of obedience. Does it align with what you are seeing here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TqJFp4y4zo Turn and Talk: What are the participants doing? What are they feeling?

Obedience Would you give an electric shock to a stranger? Stanley Milgram wanted to measure how obedient people were.

The Milgram Experiment (background) After WWII, Nazis were put on trial for slaughtering Jews in concentration camps. Many said that they should not be punished for their crimes because they were merely following orders. Many said they had no choice but to do what they were told. Good excuse? Does being ORDERED to do something HORRIBLE EXCUSE someone from the consequences?

Sample A newspaper advertisement and mail advertisement were sent out. The advertisement asked for volunteers to take part in a study on “memory and learning” at Yale University (the setting). 40 males aged 20 to 50 years old Volunteer sample All from New Haven and surrounding areas. Different occupations, such as high school teachers and engineers. Paid $4.50 for participating, but were to be given this money simply for coming to the laboratory, even if they chose not to take part.

Method Laboratory Experiment IV= “prods” given by researcher DV = level of obedience Qualitative and quantitative data

Milgram’s Experiment (1963) The “teacher” (the real participant) sees the “learner” (the actor) strapped into a chair. The teacher is then taken to a room next door and shown the electric shock machine

Milgram’s Experiment (1963) The number of volts on the machine went from 15v to 450v. It was labeled as below The electric shocks were not real, but the participants thought that they were

Milgram’s Experiment (1963) The teacher is told to give an electric shock to the learner every time he makes a mistake on the memory test. Each time, the shock needs to be bigger than the one before.

Milgram’s Experiment (1963) During the experiment, the learner can be heard in the next room shouting in pain. As the shocks get higher, he asks to be let out. If the participant does not want to continue giving shocks, the experimenter tells them that they have to.

Results 65% of participants went to 450 volts (prediction < 1%) 14 defiant participants, i.e. stopped early 26 obedient participants followed orders and would have killed the stooge!

Conclusion Agentic state: being under the control of someone else and you will obey their orders even if they cause you distress

Strengths High level of control: Since the experiment was conducted in a laboratory, there was a lot of control over extraneous variables (variables which aren’t part of the experiment but might affect it, such as the weather). High level of experimental realism: Looking at the participants’ reactions (i.e. full-on freak-out), we can see that the men actually believed the experiment was really happening and that they were really electrocuting another person. Replicable: This experiment can be (and has been) replicated. It was conducted in a laboratory and was strictly standardized (like the prods) so another researcher can redo the procedure.

Weaknesses Not generalisable: The participants were all males and all from the same area, meaning we can’t apply the results of this study to females or people living in other countries. Lack of ecological validity: This experiment was conducted in a laboratory, an artificial setting. This means the participants knew there was an experimenter present and that they were part of a study. They may have behaved unnaturally and acted different if they had been in a natural, non-experimental setting (though I’m not sure who would normally electrocute people even in an everyday setting, unless you’re an evil-mastermind-person-thing). Demand characteristics: This is a fancy way of saying that the participants were behaving in a way they felt was being asked from them; they were responding to a social cue. Someone may do this to look socially desirable or ‘normal’. This point links to the point above.

Writing Practice: Letter to Milgram You are an esteemed member of an ethics committee. Milgram in which you tell him what you think is wrong with his study and why. (Remember issues such as Ethics, validity, reliability,…) Everyone must swap their letters with someone else in the class and reply to their letter as if they were Stanley Milgram (You should try to come up with valid explanations to each of the criticisms raised in the letter.)

Group Practice: Questions (to be turned in) Work on “Milgram methodology” questions.

Exit Ticket What is the agentic state? How does social psychology explain this phenomenon?