DISADVANTAGES of miligram's study | - lacks ecological validity , experiment took place in a lab so it cant be generalised to real life scenarios.
- breaking of ethical guidelines, no informed consent, psycholgical harm and deception |
Obedience | Obedience is the change of an individual’s behaviour to comply with a demand by an authority figure. |
Aim of Miligram 1963 experiment | To investigate whether ordinary people would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and cause physical harm to an innocent person. |
Procedure of Miligram's experiment | - 40 male american ppts volunteered, they believed it was an experiment to test the relationship between learning and punishment
- ppts were paid 4.50 dollar for taking part in the study
- Two ppts (one confederate) were asked to draw lots to decide who was the learner and who was the teacher.
- the teacher was asked to administer electrical shocks at increasing power whenever the learner got an answer wrong.
- learner was not in the room with them
- volts went from 15 to 450 volts, at 315 volts the learner stopped responding, suggesting they had passed out or even died. When the teacher hesitated to administer the |
Findings of Miligram's experiment | - all ppts went up to at least 300 volts
- 65% of ppts went to the full 450 volts |
ADVANTAGES of miligram's study | - highly controlled, high internal validity
- would be able to establish cause and effect |
DISADVANTAGES of miligram's study | - lacks ecological validity , experiment took place in a lab so it cant be generalised to real life scenarios.
- breaking of ethical guidelines, no informed consent, psycholgical harm and deception |