Study of Obedience. Milgram (1963)

Aim

To investigate how far people will go in obeying an authority figure

Design

Laboratory Experiment using observation to collect data

Participants

40 males aged between 20 and 50 from a range of occupations recruited by a newspaper advertisement offering payment to take part in an experiment on learning punishment.

Procedure

Participants believed that they were playing the teacher and another participant was playing the learner. Participants were told by an authority figure to administer fake electric shocks to another the learner (who was actually an actor) in another room. Each time the learner got a question wrong the teacher (the real participant) was required to administer an electric shock to the learner.

An authority figure stood over the participant insisting that he had to administer electric shocks. The electric shocks and recorded responses of discomfort from the “learner” increased in intensity as the task progressed.

Results

65% of participants administered electric shocks to the highest level of 450 volts.

 All participants administered shocks of up to 300 volts.

Participants were observed sweating, trembling, groaning and three participants had uncontrollable seizures.

Clearly participants found the task very stressful but continued to obey because of the presence of an authority figure.