outline and evaluate research into obedience authority

by work12 (student)

Outline and Evaluate research into obedience to authority – 12 marks

There are 3 different studies of obedience; they are Asch’s study, Milgram’s study and Holland’s study. Obedience refers to a type of social influence whereby somebody acts in response to a direct order from a figure with authority.

In Milgram’s study he set out to investigate whether ordinary people will obey a legimate authority even when required to injure an innocent person. Milgram advertised for 40 male volunteers, the problem with him advertising for volunteers is that the sample may have been too small and biased. His study consisted of 2 confederates, an experimenter and the learner, with the participant always ending up as the teacher. The participant was told that every time the learner got a question wrong, he needed to shock them.

Before Milgram conducted his experiment he asked a variety of college students to predict how far they think the participants would go before refusing to go any further. The college students predicted that nearly all of the participants would refuse to obey the experimenter. They expected a small amount of the participants to go beyond 150 volts, and they predicted only 4% to reach 300 volts. The results from the experiment were different to the college students’ predictions, because in the study 65% of the participants went to 450 volts, and all the participants went to 300 volts, and ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Milgram’s study contained some ethical issues. For example, Milgram had to use deception. Milgram told the participants it was a study of memory, and they were not told the true purpose of the study, and the participants actually believed that they were shocking the learners. By deceiving the participants this can cause many limitations, for example the participants may not trust him again in the future, because they will never know if he is telling the true aims of the study. Another ethical issue from Milgram’s study is protection from psychological harm. During the study the participants were under great emotional strain. Milgram didn’t realise that such high levels of distress could be caused. After the study, he interviewed participants to see if they found it distressing, he found that 84% were glad they participated, and 74% felt they had learned something of personal importance.

The proximity of the victim was a very important factor in the study. In the proximity study both the teacher and the learner were in the same room, and the obedience rate was 40%. This shows that because the participant could see the learner they didn’t want to shock them, however, some still did. In the voice feedback study, the teacher and learner were in two different rooms, and communicated through a voice feedback device. For this study the obedience rate was 62.5%. This shows that the participants were more likely to shock the learner if they couldn’t see them.

Realism was another important factor in the study. Orne and Holland (1968) criticised the internal validity of Milgram’s research. They found that participants had learnt to not trust the experimenter because they know that the true purpose of the experiment may be disguised. So they are less likely to take part in future studies because they may not trust the experimenter. Also, the ‘distant’ reaction of the experimenter may have led the participant to suppose the ‘victim’ can’t really be suffering, and may explain why so many participants continued with the shocks.