Obedience

Question 1

Who studied obedience?

Answer 1

Milgram

Question 2

Who was involved in the study?

Answer 2

40 American, male participants

Question 3

How were the participants recruited?

Answer 3

Through adverts and flyers in the post. The ad said he was looking for participants for a study about memory.

Question 4

Describe the participants recruited

Answer 4

• they were aged between 20 and 50 years
• their jobs ranged from unskilled to professional
• they were offered $4.50 to take part

Question 5

Describe the procedure of Milgram’s study

Answer 5

• when the participants arrived at Milgram’s lab, they were paid money at the outset and there was a rigged draw for their role.
• A confederate always ended up as the ‘learner’ while the true participant was the ‘teacher’.
• There was also an ‘experimenter’ (another confederate) dressed up in a lab coat, played by an actor.
• Participants were told they could leave the study at any time.
• The learner was strapped in a chair in another room and wired with electrodes.
• The teacher was required to give the learner an increasingly severe electric shock each time the learner made a mistake on a learning task (the task involved learning word pairs).
• The shocks were demonstrated to the teacher. Thereafter the shocks weren’t real.

Question 6

Describe the shock level

Answer 6

The shock level started at 15 and rose through 30 levels to 450V.

Question 7

What happened at 300V?

Answer 7

The learner pounded on the wall and then gave no response to the next question.

Question 8

What happened after 315V?

Answer 8

The learner pounded on the wall again but after that there was no response from the learner.

Question 9

What did the teacher tell the learner?

Answer 9

The absence of a response should be treated as a wrong answer.

Question 10

What prods did the experimenter use?

Answer 10

Prod 1 - ‘Please continue’ or ‘Please go on.’
Prod 2 - ‘The experiment requires you to continue’
Prod 3 - It is absolutely essential that you continue’
Prod 4 - ‘You have no other choice; you must go on’

Question 11

What were the findings of the experiment?

Answer 11

• no participant stopped below 300V
• 65% continued to the full 450volts compared to a predicted 3% before the experiment
• participants showed extreme signs of distress
• during the debrief, participants were assured their behaviour was entirely normal
• sent a follow up questionnaire, where 84% reported they felt glad to have participated in the study