At the end of WW2 people were asking the question ‘what made so many German people act in such atrocious ways?’ Why did the holocaust happen? Are the Germans in someway different to us?

Milgram An experimenter decided he would find out!

An experimenter wants to research the effects of punishment on memory by giving people 450 volt electric shocks. Would you take part?

Milgram advertised for people to take part.

Participants told it was a study to investigate if punishment helps learning

Procedure A rigged draw took place to allocate roles to participants of learner or teacher In reality all the learners were confederates. The participants only were made to be the teacher. (Confederate means ‘in on the real aim of the experiment and just playing the part to fool the participants’)

Procedure cont… Teacher saw the learner strapped to an electric shocking apparatus. Teacher was given a mild shock to show the machines were real

Teacher told no permanent tissue damage would be done to learner The learner was in a separate room adjacent to the teacher and the experimenter. The learner could not be seen by the teacher, only heard.

The teacher was told to read out word pairs to the learner. They then read out the first word of each pair and wait for the learner to respond with the correct second pairing

The teacher had to shock the learner each time he got a word pair wrong. Starting at 15 volts and continuing upwards in 15 volt increments all the way to 450 volts

The learner (confederate) acted as if shocks were real! At the 300 volt level the learner started pounding on the wall, begging the teacher to stop. This continued with screams and pleads and then silence again as though they had collapsed.

Transcript of Procedure Read part of the transcript from the original research study!

Standardised Prompts Standard prompts were used such as ‘the experiment requires that you continue’ and ‘you have no other choice you must go on’. Why were standardised prompts used?

Controls Controls in experiments are anything that help keep the situation the same for each participant or each condition. This makes the research more scientific by ensuring that as few as possible ‘extraneous variables’ affect the results.

Consequences of the procedure Some of the subjects suffered extreme nervous tension. Nervous laughter was observed. Participants were obviously physically sweating and continually asking for reassurance from the experimenter before continuing One participant had an epileptic fit

Results Once you started at what point might you stop? 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 105, 120, 135, 150, 165, 180, 195, 210, 225, 230, 245, 250, 265, 280, 295, 310, 325, 340, 355, 370, 385, 400, 415, 430, 445 volts

Results 26 out of the 40 subjects went up to the 450 volt mark. All subjects went to the 300 volt mark 14 of the subjects refused to go on at various levels after 300 volts (5 at 300, 4 at 315, 2 at 330 and one each at 345, 360 and 375 volts)

Debriefing All the subjects were debriefed after the experiment and told their behaviour was normal. They were then also told the true nature of the experiment One year later the participants were followed up to ensure their were no long term psychological problems

Conclusions Milgram had intended doing his study in the U.S.A and then repeating it in Germany. He had believed that there would be different levels of obedience in the U.S.A. His results therefore were shocking and showed that we all appear to be surprisingly obedient to authority. He said this was due to the Agentic State.

Agentic State The Agentic State (you are an agent of someone else’s ideas or orders) When subjects asked ‘who is responsible’ they were told the experimenter was responsible. They then felt able to continue knowing it was not their problem if someone got harmed. When we are obedient to authority figures and do not take responsibility for our own personal behaviours we can behave in terrible ways towards others.

Usefulness What does Milgram’s study add to our knowledge and understanding about human behaviour ?

Usefulness Milgram’s study was useful as it created a change in attitude about what factors cause wars and war crimes, leading to less blame on the German people as individuals. Milgram showed that it is not the disposition of the people that causes the war but that obedience to authority can be a powerful factor in causing anyone to behave in an out of character way

The Agentic State Can you think of any other occasions, real or imagined where we may not behave responsibly because we are doing something someone else told us to do?

Application to real life Milgram’s study has had useful applications to the real world: Many professions are no longer allowed to plead obedience as an excuse for a wrong decision (nurses, members of the armed services etc. Consider Abu Graib). People are encouraged to question the legitimacy of an authority before they are obedient.

Ethical Problems and Psychological Research Psychologists all have to obtain permission from their countries psychological society before they are allowed to carry out research. Researchers have to be sure they conform to ethical guidelines set down by these psychological societies. See Handout on Ethical Guidelines

Ethics What ethical guidelines did Milgram break? Why do you think he broke them? Was he justified in breaking them? Write a letter to Milgrim putting your point of view about whether he was right to breach the ethical guidelines or not

Ethical guidelines broken by Milgram Deception Informed consent Right to withdraw Physical and psychological harm

Ethics and Milgram Sometime result of experiments are far more shocking than anticipated – this is certainly the case here! No one expected the participants to go so far not even the psychological society. Milgram justifies his research by its usefulness and he did debrief one year on finding no long term side effects (See follow up to Milgram’s participants in ‘Opening Skinner’s Box in the library and see consequences to his career )

Other problems with the Milgram study Was the Milgram study ecologically valid? For a study to be ecologically valid it means does it truly represent real life behaviour or just behaviour that someone shows in an experimental situation in a laboratory?

What happens when we are put in a situation like a laboratory experiment for a piece of research – do you think you would behave the same or differently to normal? Demand characteristics – means we may behave in a way which we think the experiment or experiment wants and not actually how we normally might behave!

Milgram and ecological validity Milgram said his study was ecologically valid as the participants really believed they were giving electric shocks However critics say the participants showed higher demand characteristics than normal due to the prestigious nature of the site of the experiment in Yale University.

Generalisability To what extent can you generalise from Milgram’s study to obedience levels in everyone? Do you think his study shows pretty much what we all might do given a similar situation?

Generalisability Firstly all the subjects were men of a similar age – so you cannot generalise to women or younger or older men Secondly the men came from a white middle class background so you cannot generalise to all classes, occupations or sub cultures in the U.S.A. All the subjects were also American so you cannot generalise to all other cultures outside of the U.S.A.

Historical Datedness Do you think that society in the 1960’s would have been more obedient than people are today? Is Milgram’s study is still applicable in the 21st Century?

Darren Brown See Darren Brown and the Milgram Experiment on U Tube http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=y6GxIuljT3w

Definitions Hypothesis Laboratory Experiments Controls Reliability Agentic State Ecological Validity Demand Characteristics Generalisability Historical Datedness Ethical guidelines

Social Psychology and Milgram This is the type of question you may get in section B of your core studies paper: What does Milgram’s Study tell us about human behaviour? (6) Evaluate Milgram’s study (this means explain the advantages and disadvantages of the study (12)