Describe and evaluate research into
obedience. [16 marks]
Milgram’s obedience to authority study was a
significant study interested in researching how
far people would go in obeying an instruction if it
involves harming another person; investigating
whether Germans were particularly obedient to
authority figures as this was a common
explanation for the Nazi killings in World War 2.
The procedure consisted of 40 volunteers, males
between the ages of 20 and 50, recruited for a
controlled experiment investigating “learning”.
They were paid $4.50 just to turn up. At the
beginning of the experiment, the participants
were introduced to another participant (who was
actually a confederate, Milgram). They drew
straws in order to determine their roles – learner
or teacher – although this was already pre-
determined, as the confederate would always be
the learner whilst the participant would be
assigned the role of the teacher. Additionally,
there was an “experimenter” present in the room
dressed in a grey lab coat, played by an actor.
The experiment required two different rooms in
the Yale Interaction Laboratory – one in which the
“learner” was strapped to a chair with electrodes
– after he has learned a list of word pairs given to
him, the teacher tests him by naming a word and
asking the learner to recall its pair/match from a
list of four possible choices. The teacher was
then instructed to administer an electric shock
obedience. [16 marks]
Milgram’s obedience to authority study was a
significant study interested in researching how
far people would go in obeying an instruction if it
involves harming another person; investigating
whether Germans were particularly obedient to
authority figures as this was a common
explanation for the Nazi killings in World War 2.
The procedure consisted of 40 volunteers, males
between the ages of 20 and 50, recruited for a
controlled experiment investigating “learning”.
They were paid $4.50 just to turn up. At the
beginning of the experiment, the participants
were introduced to another participant (who was
actually a confederate, Milgram). They drew
straws in order to determine their roles – learner
or teacher – although this was already pre-
determined, as the confederate would always be
the learner whilst the participant would be
assigned the role of the teacher. Additionally,
there was an “experimenter” present in the room
dressed in a grey lab coat, played by an actor.
The experiment required two different rooms in
the Yale Interaction Laboratory – one in which the
“learner” was strapped to a chair with electrodes
– after he has learned a list of word pairs given to
him, the teacher tests him by naming a word and
asking the learner to recall its pair/match from a
list of four possible choices. The teacher was
then instructed to administer an electric shock
