Milgram Study

Question 1

Define obedience.

Answer 1

The compliance with order or submission to authority.

Question 2

What is the agentic state?

Answer 2

When we act as an agent of someone in authority and find it easy to deny personal responsibility for our actions.

Question 3

What big historical event led to Milgram investigating obedience?

Answer 3

World War 2

Question 4

What was the aim of Milgram’s study?

Answer 4

To investigate the process of obedience by testing how far an individual will go in obeying an authority figure, even when the command breaches the moral code that an individual should not hurt another person against their will.

Question 5

Describe the sample from Milgram’s study.

Answer 5

• 40 male participants aged 20-50
• From Connecticut
• Volunteer sampling from an advert in local newspaper
• Paid 4.50$

Question 6

What was the voltage range in Milgram’s study?

Answer 6

15-450 Volts

Question 7

What sample shock did all participants receive?

Answer 7

45V

Question 8

Where did Milgram’s study take place?

Answer 8

Yale University in a lab

Question 9

What were the participants told about Milgram’s study beforehand?

Answer 9

That the experiment was to investigate the effects of punishment on learning.

Question 10

How was Milgram’s study rigged?

Answer 10

It was rigged before the study that the participant would always select ‘teacher’ out of the hat and the confederate would always be ‘learner’.

Question 11

Describe the procedure (before the actual study began) of Milgram’s study.

Answer 11

The learner was strapped into an electric chair, the participants watched the learner have electrodes strapped to them and paste applied to them to ‘avoid scars and burns’. The participants were told ‘although the shocks are extremely painful they cause no permanent long-term damage’. Before the participant left the room he had a sample shock of 45V.

Question 12

Describe the procedure of Milgram’s study.

Answer 12

The participant will go into the adjacent room to the actor and will read a set of word pairs for the actor to learn. They then had to test them to see how many pairs they could remember by reading half of the word pair and the actor selecting (via a button) which word paired with it. The actor would get it wrong on purpose which meant that the participant had to press the button to shock them (going up in 15V intervals each time). The actor banged on the wall at 300V and 315V, then never responded after that.

Question 13

What and when were the prods that the experimenter would give the participant?

Answer 13

When the participant didn’t want to shock the actor the experimenter would say things like “Please continue”

Question 14

What were the quantitative findings of Milgram’s experiment? a

Answer 14

• 100% of participants to 300V
• 5 participants refused to shock further than 300V
• 65% of participants went all the way to 450V

Question 15

What were the qualitative findings of Milgram’s study?

Answer 15

The participants show signs of tension, like nervous laughter, sweating, biting their nails and 3 had full blown seizures due to the stress.

Question 16

What conclusions were made from Milgram’s study?

Answer 16

People are very obedient to authority figures.

Question 17

What conclusions were made from Milgram’s study?

Answer 17

People are very obedient to authority figures.