Milgram’s Research
What is Obedience?
A more direct form of social influence, where the individual has less
choice to give way.
The individual is faced with the choice to comply with an order from a
member of authority, or whether to defy the order.
They might choose to defy the order for a fear of punishment.
Milgram’s Original Study
Procedure
Milgram recruited 40 male participants through newspaper adverts and
flyers in the post.
The ad said he was looking for participants for a study about memory.
The participants recruited were aged between 20 and 50 years, and their
jobs range from an skilled professional.
They were offered for $1.50 to take part (this was a reasonable amount of
money in the early 1960s).
When participants arrived at Milgram’s lab, they were paid the money they
outset and there was a rigged draw for their role.
A confederate, ‘Mr. Wallace’, always ended up as the ‘learner’, while the
true participant was the ‘teacher’. There was also an
‘experimenter’ (another confederate) dressed in a lab coat, played by an
actor.
Participants were told they could leave the study at any time.
The learner was trapped in a chair in another room and wired with
, electrodes.
The teacher was required to give the learner an increasingly severe
electric shock each time the learner made a mistake on a learning task
(the task involved learning word pairs).
The shops were demonstrated to the teacher. Thereafter the shocks were
not real.
The shock level started at 15 (labelled ‘slight shock’ on the shock
machine) and rose through 30 levels to 450 volts (labelled ‘danger -
severe shock’).
When the teacher got to 300 volts (‘intense shock’) the learner pounded
on the wall and then gave no response to the next question.
After the 315 V shock the learner pounded on the wall again but after that
there was no further response from the learner.
When the teacher turned to the experimenter for guidance the
experimenter gave a standard instruction: ‘An absence of response should
be treated as a wrong answer’.
If the teacher felt unsure about continuing, the experimenter used a
sequence of four standard ‘prods’, which were repeated if necessary:
● Prod 1 - ‘Please continue’ / ‘Please go on’
● Prod 2 - ‘The experiment requires that you continue’
● Prod 3 - ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue’
● Prod 4 - ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’
Findings
No participants stopped below 300 V, 12.5% (five participants) stopped at
300 V (‘intense shock’), 65% continued to the highest level of 450 V.
Qualitative data were also collected, such as observations that the
participants showed signs of extreme tension; many of them were seen to
’sweat, tremble, stutter, bit their lips, groan and dig their fingernails into
their hands’. Three even had ‘full-blown uncontrollable seizures’.
What is Obedience?
A more direct form of social influence, where the individual has less
choice to give way.
The individual is faced with the choice to comply with an order from a
member of authority, or whether to defy the order.
They might choose to defy the order for a fear of punishment.
Milgram’s Original Study
Procedure
Milgram recruited 40 male participants through newspaper adverts and
flyers in the post.
The ad said he was looking for participants for a study about memory.
The participants recruited were aged between 20 and 50 years, and their
jobs range from an skilled professional.
They were offered for $1.50 to take part (this was a reasonable amount of
money in the early 1960s).
When participants arrived at Milgram’s lab, they were paid the money they
outset and there was a rigged draw for their role.
A confederate, ‘Mr. Wallace’, always ended up as the ‘learner’, while the
true participant was the ‘teacher’. There was also an
‘experimenter’ (another confederate) dressed in a lab coat, played by an
actor.
Participants were told they could leave the study at any time.
The learner was trapped in a chair in another room and wired with
, electrodes.
The teacher was required to give the learner an increasingly severe
electric shock each time the learner made a mistake on a learning task
(the task involved learning word pairs).
The shops were demonstrated to the teacher. Thereafter the shocks were
not real.
The shock level started at 15 (labelled ‘slight shock’ on the shock
machine) and rose through 30 levels to 450 volts (labelled ‘danger -
severe shock’).
When the teacher got to 300 volts (‘intense shock’) the learner pounded
on the wall and then gave no response to the next question.
After the 315 V shock the learner pounded on the wall again but after that
there was no further response from the learner.
When the teacher turned to the experimenter for guidance the
experimenter gave a standard instruction: ‘An absence of response should
be treated as a wrong answer’.
If the teacher felt unsure about continuing, the experimenter used a
sequence of four standard ‘prods’, which were repeated if necessary:
● Prod 1 - ‘Please continue’ / ‘Please go on’
● Prod 2 - ‘The experiment requires that you continue’
● Prod 3 - ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue’
● Prod 4 - ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’
Findings
No participants stopped below 300 V, 12.5% (five participants) stopped at
300 V (‘intense shock’), 65% continued to the highest level of 450 V.
Qualitative data were also collected, such as observations that the
participants showed signs of extreme tension; many of them were seen to
’sweat, tremble, stutter, bit their lips, groan and dig their fingernails into
their hands’. Three even had ‘full-blown uncontrollable seizures’.
