The participants were 40 males aged between 20 and 40 with a variety of jobs. The learner (stooge) was a 47 year old acting as Mr Wallace a well-mannered accountant with a heart problem.
The experimenter watched the teacher as he gave the shocks he was dressed in a grey lab coat which gave him an important authority appearance, also handing out prods to the participant if he was feeling nervous or unsure.
All 40 participants continued to a 300 volt stage, with 26 (65%) of them continuing right through to the end.
This concluded that social influences are strong and people follow orders even when this is distressing to them. This high level of obedience was not predicted. Milgram asked a number of people before the experiment what they thought the outcome would be they thought it would range from 1 to 3 out of the 40.
Some of the factors which may have contributed to this high level of obedience could have been due to the experiment being done within Yale University in a laboratory setting which was unlikely to allow anything bad to happen as the University had a well-known reputation. The experiment was carried out within a laboratory setting which does not give a real life feel which may have also given the reason for the high level of obedience.
The samples within this experiment were all volunteers from a targeted population all applying from the local newspaper advertisement, this to me says the samples were already partly willing to conform to whatever situation they were going to be put in, and does this give a true finding to the results?
The samples were being paid for their part within the experiment so this could mean that samples could be coming from similar financial backgrounds and with being paid could lead to the samples feeling obliged to continue with the experiment regardless of consequences.
The sample were all working class males this affecting the findings as it was located to a targeted group so would the findings really give a true results? If there were females within the group would they have conformed to the same level of obedience that the males did?
I believe there were some ethical factors that also need to be looked at, that may have affected the results and findings within Milgram Obedience experiment. These being as followed:-
There were no measures put in place to protect the participants from physical or psychological harm. Milgram answer to this was that the results were unexpected to him and he’d asked the opinions of professionals before starting the experiment and he genuinely thought the participants would stop once the leaner protested.
It was made clear from the beginning that the participants were able to withdraw from the experiment at anytime but with the phrases used in the experiment such as “You have no choice, you must go on”. This may have made the participant feel uncomfortable about disagreement with the experimenter. Milgram said that all participants were told from the beginning that they did have the right to leave and some did so.
Participants gave their consent to take part on a learning memory experiment; this was not for them giving consent to the true obedience experiment leading to the participants being deceived right from the beginning of the experiment. Milgram said this was merely a technical illusion and without this the experiment would be meaningless.
Also the degree of tension the participant reached was so extreme some were observed to “sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan and dig their nails into their own flesh.” But they still continued because the experimenter was an authority figure. Another sign of tension was the regular occurrence of laughter, full seizures were observed. This should have put an end to the experiment. Milgram is said to believe that the distress did not warrant an end to the experiment.
The results at the time of the experiment were not able to be generalised due to the experiment only being carried out with males in a certain age group. There were no women within the study and a restricted age group also the experiment was restricted within area as this was only carried out in a small town in America. Meaning the findings could be class as ethnocentric (restricted to a certain area).
As there were strong controls with this experiment the main measure of reliability is replicable and replicating it is a good measure of its reliability. This experiment was repeated several times showing similar results showing the results were reliable.
Milgram suggest that there was a clear link from his findings to that of the Nazi. Though the studies made a clear point of understanding the human memory and learning, leading me still to the conclusion the Nazi were not justified. Most of the participants which took part in this experiment needed a close watchful eye and prompting when they were finding it difficult to continue. Where the Nazi didn’t need this kind of support to continue. Furthermore the participants within this experiment were clearly stressed out about the whole experiment.
The findings of Milgram research have had a powerful influence on the psychological theory. Milgram approached and questions a subject most people were fearful of, it provided a live demonstration of how far an individual is willing to go when being instructed to do so. Furthermore it showed whether or not the authority figure commanded something questionable in morality with the potential to endanger or harm another human being came in question. One of the major drawbacks in the experiment was that there was no measure taken to protect the participants from physical or psychological harms it was technically designed in the way that it was unethical, leading to concerns in the actual findings of this experiment.
by
d_plu (student)
