Milgram Study
1.1 Obedience
The Social Approach is the study of how our behaviour is influenced by the presence, attitudes and actions of others, whether it be actual, implied or imagined. The approach also looks at how behaviour may be affected by group membership and by social situation, and includes our wider culture Obedience refers to following direct orders from an individual in a position of authority: compliance – following instructions without necessarily agreeing with them conformity – adopting the attitudes and behaviours of others, even if against one’s own inclinations internalising – carrying out orders with agreement The term destructive obedience refers to the idea of an individual following the orders which they consider to be immoral, which will cause them a lot of distress and regret (often occurs with conformity)
1.2 Milgram’s Study of Obedience (1963)
Aim: To investigate how far people will go in obeying an authority figure PROCEDURE Participants responded to a newspaper advert and were paid $4.50 to take part in an experiment. A participant is brought into the room where they meet another “participant” (actually an actor). Via a fixed lottery, the participant chooses the role of teacher and the actor the role of learner. The learner is strapped to a chair and had electrodes attached to them, whilst the teacher is taken into another room where a shock generator is present. The teacher asks the learner a number of questions based on word pairs, and for each incorrect answer the learner gives, he receives an electric shock, starting from 15V and going up to 450V in stages of 15 volts. The experiment was measuring how many shocks the participants would be willing to give the learner, even though the 450V switch read “lethal” FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS
KEY STUDY
PARTICIPANTS and CONFEDERATES Milgram chose 40 males between the age of 20 and 50 with a variety of jobs to be the participants The learner (actor) was a 47 year old acting as Mr Wallace a
The Social Approach is the study of how our behaviour is influenced by the presence, attitudes and actions of others, whether it be actual, implied or imagined. The approach also looks at how behaviour may be affected by group membership and by social situation, and includes our wider culture Obedience refers to following direct orders from an individual in a position of authority: compliance – following instructions without necessarily agreeing with them conformity – adopting the attitudes and behaviours of others, even if against one’s own inclinations internalising – carrying out orders with agreement The term destructive obedience refers to the idea of an individual following the orders which they consider to be immoral, which will cause them a lot of distress and regret (often occurs with conformity)
1.2 Milgram’s Study of Obedience (1963)
Aim: To investigate how far people will go in obeying an authority figure PROCEDURE Participants responded to a newspaper advert and were paid $4.50 to take part in an experiment. A participant is brought into the room where they meet another “participant” (actually an actor). Via a fixed lottery, the participant chooses the role of teacher and the actor the role of learner. The learner is strapped to a chair and had electrodes attached to them, whilst the teacher is taken into another room where a shock generator is present. The teacher asks the learner a number of questions based on word pairs, and for each incorrect answer the learner gives, he receives an electric shock, starting from 15V and going up to 450V in stages of 15 volts. The experiment was measuring how many shocks the participants would be willing to give the learner, even though the 450V switch read “lethal” FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS
KEY STUDY
PARTICIPANTS and CONFEDERATES Milgram chose 40 males between the age of 20 and 50 with a variety of jobs to be the participants The learner (actor) was a 47 year old acting as Mr Wallace a