Milgram (1963)

Obedience and conformity are two distinct forms of social influence. While conformity involves pressure from a majority, obedience is a response to a direct order from an individual. Perhaps the most well-known and controversial research in psychology regarding obedience to authority is Milgram's (1963) study.

KEY STUDY: MILGRAM (1963)

AIM: The aim was to determine whether ordinary people would follow an unjust order from a figure of authority and cause harm or injury to an innocent individual.

METHOD: Milgram recruited 40 male American participants through a newspaper advertisement for his study. These volunteers were compensated $4.50 for their participation and were invited to Yale University's prestigious laboratory, where they met the experimenter and another participant (who were both confederates).

To determine each participant's role, they "drew lots," although this was prearranged to ensure that the real participant always played the role of the "teacher." The experimenter instructed the participant to administer an electric shock of increasing intensity to the "learner," a confederate named "Mr. Wallace," each time he made an error while recalling a list of word pairs. The "learner" was restrained in the next room, and the participant was required to test his ability to remember word pairs.

The teacher had to administer an electric shock with increasing voltage every time the learner gave an incorrect answer, starting at 15 volts and increasing in increments of 15 up to 450 volts. The participant was given a sample electric shock to make the shocks seem real. At 300 volts (an intense shock), the learner would start to bang on the wall and complain, and after the 315-volt shock, there would be no further responses heard from the learner. The experiment ended either when the participant refused to continue or when the maximum level of 450 volts, labelled "danger severe shock," was reached. If the teacher tried to stop the experiment, the experimenter would respond with a series of verbal prods, such as "the experiment requires that you continue."

RESULTS: Milgram's study revealed that all of the participants administered shocks of at least 300 volts, and 65% continued administering shocks up to the maximum level of 450 volts. In addition to this quantitative data, qualitative observations were also recorded, indicating that participants exhibited physical signs of discomfort and tension, such as sweating, stuttering, and trembling.

CONCLUSION:Milgram's conclusion was that individuals will follow unjust orders from someone deemed a legitimate authority figure under the appropriate situational conditions.

EVALUATING MILGRAM (1963)

ETHICAL GUIDELINES: Milgram's study has received criticism for violating ethical guidelines on several counts. For one, he misled participants by leading them to believe that the study concerned punishment's effect on learning, rather than obedience. The rigged role allocation was also a deception. Due to the task's nature, Milgram failed to safeguard participants from psychological harm, as evidenced by the significant distress that many experienced during the experiment, which may have persisted even after the study's conclusion, leading to feelings of guilt. Some of Milgram's critics argued that these breaches could tarnish psychology's reputation and jeopardize future research.

ECOLOGICAL VALIDITY: Milgram's study has also been criticized for lacking ecological validity. The laboratory setting he used is markedly different from real-life situations involving obedience. In everyday situations, we are more likely to obey relatively innocuous instructions rather than administer electric shocks. Thus, we cannot extrapolate Milgram's findings to obedience in everyday settings or assume that individuals would follow less severe orders to the same degree. Milgram has countered this argument, however, by claiming that the laboratory can represent broader authority relationships that occur in real-life situations. For instance, Hofling et al. (1966) discovered that nurses in a hospital context were surprisingly obedient to unfounded orders from a doctor.

POPULATION VALIDITY: Milgram's study has also been criticized for lacking population validity. This is because he used a biased sample of 40 male American volunteers from a culture that is broadly individualistic. As a result, we cannot generalize the results to other populations, particularly collectivist cultures, or to explain the behaviour of females. We cannot conclude that individuals from different cultural backgrounds, or female participants, would respond similarly to what Milgram originally observed.

INTERNAL VALIDITY: The internal validity of Milgram's study has faced criticism from Orne and Holland (1968) who suggest that many participants may have gone to higher voltages because they did not believe the shocks were real and therefore were not completely influenced by the experimental setup. This poses a challenge to Milgram's original research and lowers the internal validity of the study. Milgram later argued that up to 70% of the participants believed the shocks to be real, but recent review of the original tape recordings shows that a larger number of participants expressed doubts about the authenticity of the electric shocks.

Exam Hint: It should be noted that Milgram’s study did provide participants with the right to withdraw at any time, as they were informed prior to the study. Therefore, questioning the ethical validity of the study on these grounds may not be appropriate. However, it is worth considering that the experimenter’s verbal prods may have made participants feel obligated to continue, potentially undermining their right to withdraw.