The study aimed to investigate the tendency by people to obey other people who are perceived to be in a position of authority over them. It was also to investigate what level of obedience would be shown when participants were told to control electric shocks to another person. He also wanted to find out whether people would go against their own moral conscience and obey the authority figure who issued direct orders to cause pain and harm the other person.
In his study, Milgram selected 40 male participants in his experiment. He told his forty male volunteer investigate subjects that they were participating in a study about the effects of punishment on learning. He gave each of the subjects the task of teacher. The participants were used in pairs, drawing slips of paper to find out who would become the “learner” and who would become the “teacher”.. The teacher was told by an authority figure to control fake electric shock to another learner. Each time he got the answer wrong, the teacher was to control an electric shock by increasing the shock level every time, with the final level set at 450 volts. Whenever “teachers” were unwilling to go on, the researcher would encourage them to carry on .The researcher was given the standard instruction of four prods. The prods were made in sequence. If prod 1 didn’t succeed he would try prod 2 and so on. The prods were firmer each time starting with “Please continue”, “the experiment requires you to continue”, “it is absolutely essential that you continue” and finally “you have no choice but to continue”. If one was unsuccessful he would try the second one. The prods used suggested that withdrawal was not an option; therefore the participant should carry on.
The level of shock that the participant was willing to deliver was used as the measure of obedience. Before the experiment, Milgram posed a question “how far would they be willing to go?” to a group of Yale University students. They predicted that no more than 3 out of 100 participants would deliver the maximum shock. In reality, 65% of the participants in Milgram’s study delivered the maximum shocks.
The findings of the experiment were that of the 40 participants in the study, 26 delivered the maximum shocks while 14 stopped before reaching the highest levels. Although many of the subjects became extremely agitated, distraught and angry at the experimenter, yet they continued to follow orders all the way to the end. (Gross, R. 2003)
Under today’s research guidelines we can argue that this experiment is ethically wrong, because the participants were told they had no choice and they were deceived as to the true nature of the study. The participants experienced distress through the experiment.
The sample of this experiment is un-representative so the result cannot be generalized to the wider population e.g., women or men of any other age group.
The experiment contains cultural and gender bias because Milgram only selected American male participants.
It can be also be argued that Milgram’s work was carried out in an artificial setting therefore this experiment has low ecological validity because it took place in laboratory so it is not equivalent to every day’s natural settings and the action is not natural. However, less artificial studies have been carried out gaining similar results. For example in Hoffling’s study (1966), nurses were asked to give potentially lethal injections to patients, and 21 out of 22 appeared prepared to do it. (www.holah.karoo.net/milgramstudy.htm).
In Hofling’s study he aimed to study a more representative study of obedience than Milgram’s by carrying out field studies on nurses who were not aware that they were involved in an experiment. So Holing’s study had high ecological validity because the nurses were not aware of the experiment and therefore their behaviour was natural. It was also carried out in the setting where the behaviour being tested naturally happened. In Milgram’s study the criticism was that the behaviour was faked. Hofling’s study was highly controlled because the experimenter was using the same boxes of capsules each time.
According to Hofling’s study finds shown that “21 out of 22 (95%) nurses were easily influenced into carrying out the orders”.
An advantage of Milgram’s study that it can be replicated and the variables can be controlled because they were controlling electric shocks; they all use the same machinery and had the same prods for the same person.
Although obedience has both negative and positive sides it depends on the circumstances to which it is concerned. there are plenty such examples throughout history where one group of people kill another group, for example the Nazis regime ordering German soldiers to torture and kill millions of innocent Jews at the time of the Second World War. (D Pennington, 2008)
Milgram’s study discovered the obedience level went down when the experimenter appeared illegitimate and was not wearing a lab coat. “To Just 20 per cent giving maximum shock” (D Pennington, 2008).
A face to face order has more influence because in Milgram’s study when the experimenter left the room during the experiment the level of obedience went down. The relevance of these findings is that obedience can be defined as submitting to the demands of others, particularly those in position of power. We believe that people in influence have some expertise or knowledge, and therefore we think they know more than us. For this reason we have a higher tendency to defer responsibility for our action to their authority.
When it comes to authority figure, people would obey the authority even though the participants were being asked for to do something that they know is wrong. However, Rank and Jacobson (1977) did find that when the drug was a well-known one (Valium) only 2 out of 18 nurses obeyed in a similar set up to Hoflings.
(http://www.smartpsych.co.uk/evaluation-of-the-hofling-et-al-1966-study).
Hofling demonstrated that “people are unwilling to question supposed ‘authority’ even when they might have good reason” (McLeod, S. 2008)
Obedience is now declining compared to previous generations, where people had to obey even if it is against their determination. According to Milgram’s study the participants were obeying the authority’s figure even though they were suffering distress. When obeying the authority there is less freedom for the individual.
Some psychologists would say that “it is the situation the people find themselves in rather than their dispositions that best explains their actions.”
(www.holah.karoo.net/milgramstudy.htm)
References
BANYARD, P. AND GRAYSON, A. (2000) Introducing Psychological Research; Seventy Studies that Shape Psychology, 2nd Edition. London: Macmillan
GROSS, R. (1999) Key Studies in Psychology, 3rd Edition. London: Hodder and Stoughton
McLeod, S. (2007) Obedience in Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/obedience.html. Accessed 20.1.12
Milgram, S. (1974) .obedience to authority: an experimental view .New York: Harper and row. An excellent presentation of milgram’s work is also found in Brown, R. (1986) .social forces in obedience and rebellion .social psychology: the second Edition. New York.
http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm (Accessed
28/10/11)
http://www.holah.karoo.net/milgramstudy.htm (29/10/11).
http://www.simplypsychology.org/hofling-obedience.html(accessed 27/10/11)
(http://www.smartpsych.co.uk/evaluation-of-the-hofling-et-al-1966-study). (Accessed 29/10/11)
