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Summary Outline and evaluate research into obedience (16marks)
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16 marker describing Milgram's research into obedience
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MILGRAM’S RESEARCHMilgram aimed to find out why such a high proportion of the German people supported
Hitler’s plan to slaughter over million Jews in the Holocaust. Mil gram recruited 40 male
participants through a newspaper advert which said he was looking for participants for a
memory study. The participants recruited were aged between 20 to 50 years and were offered
$4.50 which was considered a reasonable price. The learner ( a confederate) was strapped to a
chair in another room and wired with electrodes. The teacher ( the true participant ) was
required to give the learner an increasingly severe Latrice shock each time the learner made a
mistake. The shock level started at 15 ‘ ‘slightly shock’ and rose to 30 levels at 450 volts,
when reaching 300 volts to learner would pound on the wall and the experimenter another
confederate would repeat one of four prods; ‘it is essential that you continue, please
continue’. Milgram found no participants stopped below 300 volts, 12.5% stopped a 300 volts
and 65% continued to the highest level of 450 volts.
Orne and Holland argued that participants behaved the way they did because they didn’t
believe the shocks were real, thus Milgram didn’t text what he intended to test and his study
thus lacks internal validity. Perry’s recent research supports this as as she listened to tapes of
Milgram’s participants and many of them expressed doubts about the shocks. However,
Sheridan and King conducted a similar study where real shocks were given to a puppy.
Despite the real shocks, 54% of the male participants and 100% of the females believed the
shocks given were fatal. This suggests that effects of Milgam’s study was genuine as people
had behaved in the same way with the real shocks. Milgram himself had reported 70% of the
participants said they though the shocks were real.
Milgram’s study at first glance lacks external validity at it was conducted in a lab. However,
the central feature of the situation was the relationship between the authority figure the
experimenter and the participant. Milgram argued that the lab experiment accurately reflects
wider authority relationships in real life. Recent research supports this as Hofling et al studied
nurses in a hospital ward and found levels of obedience to unjustified demands by doctors
with 21 out of 22 nurses obeying. This suggests that processes of obedience to authority that
occurred in Milgram’s lab study can be generalised to other situations which tell us about
how operates obedience in real life.
A strength of Milgram’s study’ that there is evidence for its reliability. The Game of Death is
a documentary about realty Tv presented on french television. It includes a replication of
Milgram’s study were the participants believed they were contestants in a pilot episode for a
new game show. They were paid to give fake electric shocks to other participants who were
in fact actors in front of a studio audience when ordered by the presenter. In a remarkable
confirmation to Milgram’s results, 80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of
460 volts to an apparently unconscious man. Their behaviour was almost identical to that of
Milgram’s participants such as the nervous laughter, biting the nails. This replication supports
Milgram’s original conclusion about obedience to authority and demonstrates that his
findings were not just a one off chance occurrence.
A limitation of Milgram’s research is that there is an alternative explanation. According to
the social identity theory the key to obedience lies within group identification. In Milgram’s
study, participants identified with the experimenter, they identified with the science. The
study. When obedience levels fell, this was because the participants identified less with the
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