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This document includes an essay plan grid for the subtopic obedience to authority and milgram's study in the A level Psychology social influence topic
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AO1 AO3Obedience to authority - a type of social influence where someone acts in
response to satisfy a direct order from authority.
Aims: Milgram’s study has been criticised for having low ecological validity due to not using
- Milgram wanted to know why 100s of people during WW2 obeyed a realistic situation. However, Milgram’s theory has supporting evidence from other
the orders of those in authority and killed people. experiments with high mundane realism.
- He wanted to test out this potential destructive obedience in a lab.
An example of this supporting evidence is Hofling (1966) who used a real life
example of nurses in a hospital and found that 95% of nurses obeyed a doctor’s
orders. However, this experiment could cause psychological harm to the nurses.
This supports Milgram’s theory of obedience because it shows that even in a realistic
situation, the results are similar and therefore shows that his ideas of obedience still
apply.
Procedure: - 40 participants were used through volunteer sampling. One weakness of Milgram’s study is the poor ethics involved in conducting the
- Each participant met a confederate (Mr Wallace) who would be the experiment.
learner and the participant would be the teacher. Mr W was strapped
into an electric chair in a separate room and the participants were told The experiment involved participants administering fake electrical shocks to a
the shocks would be painful but cause no tissue damage. confederate named Mr Wallace. There could be psychological harm to the participants
- The participant sat in front of the shock generator and read out a word if they believe that they caused pain to Mr W. The participants did seem to be
pair (e.g. blue box), then repeated one of the words and read out a list impacted by the stress of the experiment because many were visibly distressed and 3
of 4 words, of which Mr W would have to choose the correct 2nd had seizures.
word.
- If Mr W got an answer wrong, he would be given an electric shock by This is a weakness of Milgram's experiment because it could be argued that the harm
the teacher. The first shock was 15V and each incorrect answer had a caused to the participants from the experiment wasn’t worth it considering the
higher voltage of 15V. The max was 450V. findings and applications of the results to Milgram’s theory.
- The experimenter was with the participant and if they didn’t want to
continue, the experimenter would ‘prod’ them.
- When the participant gave a 300V shock, Mr W would hit the wall
and from that point, Mr W didn’t answer anymore.
Findings: Milgram’s study has high reliability because other experiments have been conducted
- All participants gave a minimum of 300V to Mr W. which have found similar results.
- 65% of participants gave 450V.
An example of this is Beauvouis et al (2012) where the participants also had to
administer electric shocks. They found that 80% of 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 nervous laughter, nail biting
and other signs of anxiety.
This is a strength of Milgram’s study because it shows that the results are valid.
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