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Milgram (1963): obedience

AQA A-level Psychology, Paper 1

1. Procedure: how Milgram tested obedience

• Sample: 40 male participants, aged 20-50, from New Haven, recruited by newspaper advert.
• Payment: participants were paid $4.50 for volunteering.
• Cover story: participants were told it was a study of memory and punishment.
• Roles: the participant was always the teacher; the confederate, Mr Wallace, was always the learner.
• Shock generator: 15V to 450V in 15V steps; the shocks were fake.
• Separation: the learner was in another room, out of the teacher's sight.
• Prods: the experimenter, in a grey lab coat, used 4 prods, from "please continue" to "you have no other choice, you must go on".

Fake shocks let Milgram measure obedience without real harm, because the learner was a confederate who received no real shocks.

Teste dich: Why did Milgram use a confederate as the learner rather than a real participant?

2. Findings and situational variables

• Full obedience: 65% (26 of 40) went to the full 450V.
• Minimum level: all 40 went to at least 300V.
• Refusal at 300V: 12.5% (5 of 40) stopped at 300V.
• Tension: sweating, trembling and biting lips; 3 participants had seizures.
• Prediction: before the study, psychology students predicted no more than 3% would reach 450V.

The gap between prediction and result shows people obey more than expected, because they underestimate how strongly the situation pulls them.

Variation	Change from the original study	Obedience rate
Original study	Yale lab, experimenter in grey coat	65%
Proximity	teacher and learner in the same room	40%
Location	run-down office building instead of Yale	47.5%
Uniform	experimenter replaced by ordinary member of public	20%

Obedience falls when the victim is close or the experimenter loses authority, because the suffering becomes harder to ignore and the authority seems weaker.

Teste dich: Explain why the 20% result suggests the experimenter's authority affects obedience.

3. Evaluation: strengths and limits

• Supporting research: Hofling et al (1966), 21 of 22 nurses obeyed a phone order from an unknown doctor to give an overdose.
• Low internal validity: Orne and Holland (1968) argued participants guessed the shocks were fake.
• Doubt about shocks: Perry (2013) found many participants said they doubted the shocks were real.
• Ethics: deception, psychological harm, and prods that made the right to withdraw hard to use.

Supporting research suggests obedience is not confined to the lab, because nurses faced a real-world order.

Prüfungsfalle: an evaluation point earns AO3 credit only when linked back to the claim with "this suggests...".

Teste dich: Why does Perry's finding matter for the validity of Milgram's results?

Prüfungs-Checkliste

• Quote figures with their counts, such as 65% (26 of 40) and 12.5% (5 of 40).
• Give procedure details accurately: 40 male participants, 15V to 450V in 15V steps.
• Name each situational variable and its obedience rate, not just the variation.
• Link every evaluation point back to the claim with "this suggests...".
• Keep low internal validity separate from the ethical concerns in your evaluation.
• Remember the teacher was the participant and the learner was a confederate.

Wiederholung in einer Minute

Milgram's 1963 study used 40 male participants who acted as teachers, giving apparent shocks to a confederate learner. 65% went to the full 450V, far above the 3% that students predicted. Obedience fell when the learner was close, the setting was run-down or the experimenter lost authority. Evaluation focuses on low internal validity, since participants doubted the shocks, and on the ethical problems of deception and harm.

Lösungen zu „Teste dich“

1. Milgram used a confederate so every participant faced the same learner, keeping the procedure standardised, and no real pain was caused.
2. Obedience fell from 65% to 20% when the experimenter was replaced by an ordinary member of the public, so the experimenter's authority clearly drives obedience.
3. If many participants doubted the shocks were real, they may not have behaved as they would in real life, so the study's internal validity is questioned.