Context/Background -
Destructive obedience = when people follow orders that harm others, e.g. the systematic mass murder of jews in 1933-1945
Obedience = ingrained behaviour that can override ethics and morality, we begin to be socialised to obey from birth.
Agentic state = passing responsibility and consequences of our behaviour onto the person giving the order, common in the army
Dispositional = to do with culture/personality
Situational = to do with situation/society
Aim-
Investigating how far individuals will go in obeying authority figures even when it goes against their moral codes, e.g. hurting innocent people
Method -
Design- No iv, it was a controlled observation, not a lab experiment. The dv was the level of obedience, and it was operationalised to max. voltage given
Sample- 40 men aged 20-50, volunteers recruited by an ad asking for participants for a memory learning study
Procedure -
P's paid $4.50 just for turning up
Took place at yale university = socially prestigious location = created effect of p's thinking the study was very important
P's were naïve and they were given the role of the teacher, while a stooge actor was given the role of a learner
The learner was strapped into a (non active) electric chair, which had 30 switches ranging from 15v to 450v
P's could not see the learner and they read word pairs out loud while the learner tried to remember them. When the learner got it wrong, the teacher was instructed to shock them by the researcher. (a higher shock each time)
at 300v, the learner did not respond verbally anymore = presumed dead, the study ended either when 450v was reached or if the p refused to obey any further
The p's were debriefed after the study before leaving
Results -
Quant. and qual. data was gathered, 100% of p's went to 300v and 65% of p's went to the max voltage of 450v.
Signs of anxiety in p's = groaning, sweating, stuttering, smoking etc.
Conclusions -
The p's were more obedient to destructive orders than expected.
People find destructive obedience highly stressful
Milgram's reasons for destructive obedience -
1. A socially prestigious area
2. Volunteers have increased obligation
3. Payment increases obligation
4. P's were assured that the shocks were safe, so felt less guilt when doing them
Evaluation -
Research method- highly controlled = eliminated extraneous variables, easy to replicate = very reliable, low ecological validty
Data type- both types of data collected because without quant., we could say that people don't mind harming innocent people and without qual., we wouldn't know that they were in fact highly stressed
Validity- Ethical issues and health risks (1 seizure), no informed consent, deception and lack of knowledge about rights to withdraw
Reliability- Consistent and standardised procedures, it was also replicable
Sample- not generalisable, because all the men were American. Androcentric because all the p's were men. Self selecting/volunteer samples are unrepresentative