Outline two studies of obedience and consider whether they show external validity.

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Outline two studies of obedience and consider whether they show external validity.

External validity is the validity of an experiment outside the research situation itself, the extent to which the findings of a research study are applicable to other situations especially everyday situations.

Milgram's study on electric shocks and learning offers support for external validity in obedience experiments. Milgram conducted his study at Yale University with 40 male participants aged between 20 and 50. A confederate of the experimenter was always the learner and the participant the teacher. The teacher had to administer shocks to the learner every time they gave an incorrect answer and the intensity of the shocks increased on each occasion.

One of the strongest criticisms of Milgrams research was the belief that as it was carried out in laboratory conditions it had low ecological or external validity. Due to the study being conducted in a laboratory it was believed it would be hard to generalise the findings to real life situations. Gross offers a solution to this criticism by claiming that experiments are similar to real life social situations and thus participant's behaviour in the study is similar to how it would be in real life.

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However, for many critics this was hard to believe due to the findings that 65% of participants gave the maximum intensity shock of 450 volts. Milgram felt the study was engaging for participants and thus the participants believed the set-up. The study had mundane realism because the demands of an authority figure are the same whether the setting is artificial or occurring naturally. The study is claimed to have experimental realism as participants engaged fully with the situation. This is supported with the case of Pasqual Gino who continued all the way to 450 volts believing the learner to be ...

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