A summary of Stanley Milgram's 1963 baseline study of obedience. These notes are specifically for Edexcel Psychology, A Level Year 1 & AS (Unit 1: Social Psychology), although the information included can be applied to all exam boards. Contains a brief introduction, with aims, procedure, results, a...
Milgram (1963)
Milgram's famous baseline study has been widely quoted for its insight into how average people
respond to authority. However, it is thought to have created more debate than any other study in
psychology.
Aims
To measure how far participants would go to obey instructions which conflicted with their
morality
To quantify the level of shock participants were willing to administer when instructed to do by
authority
To understand the behaviour of the German soldiers who followed orders to kill over 10 million
people in the Holocaust
To investigate the conditions under which people obey or disobey authority and the
psychological mechanisms behind this
Method
Recruited sample from New Haven through newspaper advertisements and mail solicitation
This is called volunteer sampling
Advertisements labelled the study as a 'study of memory'
Sample recruited consisted of 40 men aged 20-50 years
Offered $4.50 for their participation
Conducted at Yale University
On arrival, participants were told they could drop out at any point and still keep the money
Participants introduced to 2 men: Mr Williams (experimenter) and Mr Wallace (confederate)
Milgram watched through a one-way mirror
Mr Williams wore a grey technicians coat and had a 'stern manner'
Lots drawn to determine the roles of teacher or learner
This was rigged, so the naïve participant was always selected to be the teacher, and Mr
Wallace the learner
Teacher (participant) told that their job was to administer an electric shock for every mistake
the learner made in a word recall task
Voltmeter had 30 switches which increased in 15V increments, labelled from 'slight shock' to
'XXX'
Shocks described as 'painful but not dangerous'
All of the shocks were fake, but of course, the participants didn't know this
Milgram (1963) 1
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