Outline and Evaluate Research into Obedience

Although this was a successful experiment it does however raise a various range of issues such as was it ethically right to deceive the participants into thinking Mr Wallace was really being shocked and made to suffer horrendous pain and also the whole of the experiment was staged and scripted so the participants were being lied to right from the beginning.  Another factor is their right to withdraw was not clearly stated and was challenged every time they refused to give Mr Wallace the shock by the experimenter saying they would ruin the experiment if they did.  In an ethically correct experiment you should be protected from physical and psychological harm, although they were protected from physical harm as there was no chance of them being the learner, they were not protected from psychological harm because although they know that it was staged they might leave the experiment knowing that they obeyed someone to the extent that they could have killed someone, this factor could have played on their minds and caused them long term mental illness. One good factor in this experiment is that they were debriefed so at least they could put events straight in their mind and not feel guilty about what happened to ‘Mr Wallace’.

We Can also criticise this experiment for lacking experimental validity because did the participants really believe they were shocking Mr Wallace, the situation can also be described as false or artificial so the participants may have played along with the experiment to earn their $4.50, Although a questionnaire sent out later confirmed that over 80% of the volunteers believed on balance they believed what they were doing was real.  Also ecological validity can be questioned because this event cannot be generalised into everyday situations it can be seen as unrealistic.

Another experiment into Obedience was by Hofling et al in 1966 who took 22 staff nurses as his participants in various psychiatric hospitals around America and used a confederate who pretended to be a doctor and rang these nurses during their night shift to tell them to give double the dosage of a type medication to curtain patients.  21 out of 22 listened and conducted exactly what the mystery doctor told them before they were stopped. In doing what this authority figure told them to they broke a number of hospital rules like never accept instructions from an unknown doctor, never accept instructions over the phone, the drug used was unauthorised for the wards in question and finally they know that doubling the dosage of medication would seriously endanger the lives of the patients.

Although this experiment is more impressive than Milgrams it still has various ethical issues such as the fact that these staff nurses didn’t at any point give any informed consent and were decepted into believing that the voice at the end of the phone was a doctor.  These nurses may have also been psychologically harmed by this experiment as they may have killed a number of their patients if no one had stopped them when they did.  However in this experiment like Hoflings they did have a formal debriefing which would have let the nurses express any concerns they may have.  A good point about this experiment is that it certainly had experimental validity because it clearly showed how an authority figure in this case a doctor could tell these nurses instructions that broke so many hospital rules.  This experiment also has a great deal of ecological validity as it is set in a hospital which is very realistic and the characters of nurses and doctors are common in real life.  This experiment is much more impressive than Milgrams and proves Obedience in a much more realistic light although they both have very strong ethical issues.