1.2.2 Milgram & Situational Variables Affecting Obedience

• Stanley Milgram sought an answer to the question of why such a high proportion of the German population obeyed Hitler's commands to murder over 6 million Jews as well as 5 million Romani, homosexuals, Poles and other social groups during the Second World War
• Milgram thought that one possible explanation was that Germans were different from other people in other countries, perhaps being more obedient (known as a dispositional explanation of obedience)

Milgram's procedure (1963)

• 40 American men volunteered to take part in Milgram's study at Yale University, supposedly on memory 
• When each volunteer arrived to take part, they were introduced to another participant (who was a confederate to Milgram) 
• The two participants drew lots to see who would be the 'Teacher' (T) and who would be the 'Learner' (L)
• The draw was fixed, so the genuine participant was always the teacher and the confederate the learner
• An Experimenter (E) was also involved, who was also a confederate and was dressed in a grey lab coat
• One participant, the confederate, was asked to learn a set of word pairs and the teacher would test his knowledge
• They were placed in adjacent rooms and the teacher was positioned in front of a set of controls to administer electric shocks to the learner
• The teacher was instructed to punish the learner with a shock after each incorrect he gave 
• When the teacher displayed a reluctance to injure the learner, they were encouraged to continue the procedure

Milgram's results (1963)

• 65% of participants went all the way up to 450 volts ('danger - severe shock')
• 100% of participants went up to 300 volts ('intense shock')
• Many of the participants showed signs of emotional distress e.g. shaking, sweating, groaning, seizures

Milgram's conclusion (1963)

• Under the right conditions (e.g. the presence of a legitimate authority; the agentic state) people will commit acts of destructive obedience towards someone they have just met
• Situational factors may explain destructive obedience

Evaluation

Research support (Beauvoir et al 2012)

• A French documentary focused on a game show, where participants thought they were contestants in a pilot episode for a new show called Le Jeu De La Mort  (The Game of Death)
• Participants were paid to give electric shocks ordered by the presenter to other participants in front of a studio audience
• The participants who were the receiving the shocks were actors and the shocks were fake
• 80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of 460 volts to what appeared to be an unconscious man
• Participants' behaviour was nearly identical to that of Milgram's participants, they showed signs of anxiety, nervous laughter and nail-biting
• This supports Milgram's original findings of obedience to authority

Low internal validity

• Martin Orne and Charles Holland (1968) argued that participants were play-acting as they didn't believe the setup was real
• Gina Perry (2013) listened to tapes of Milgram's participants and reported that only around half of them believed the shocks were real and that two-thirds of them were disobedient
• This suggests that participants may have been responding to demand characteristics
• However, Charles Sheridan and Richard King (1972) conducted a study using a procedure similar to Milgram's
• Their participants gave real shocks to a puppy in response to orders received from the experimenter
• Despite the real distress of the animal, 54% of male and 100% of female participants delivered what they believed to be the fatal shock
• This supports Milgram's study and showed genuine results as people behaved obediently, even when the shocks were real 

Ethical issues

• Participants were deceived in multiple ways:
  • Participants thought the allocation of roles of both Teacher and Learner was random but they were not as Milgram's confederate was always the learner
  • Participants believed the electric shocks were real
• Milgram debriefed the participants afterward to ensure they understood the real intentions of the experiment

Situational variables

Proximity

• In Milgram's original procedure, the Teacher could hear the Learner but could not see him
• In the proximity variation, both were moved to the same room
• The obedience rate dropped from 65% to 40%
• In the touch proximity variation, the teacher then had to force the Learners hand onto the electroshock plate 
• The obedience rate dropped further to 30% 
• In the remote instruction variation, the experimenter left the room and gave instructions by telephone
• The obedience rate dropped to 20.5%

Explanation: Decreased proximity allows people to psychologically distance themselves from the consequences of their actions, however, when they have to witness and be physically together, this becomes difficult

Location

• Milgram conducted a variation in a run-down office block
• The obedience rate dropped to 47.5%

Explanation: Participants were more likely to be obedient in the university environment as they perceived the experimenter had legitimate authority and obedience was expected

Uniform

• In the uniform variation, the experimenter was called away and replaced by an 'ordinary member of the public', meaning they were not wearing the 'uniform' of a grey lab coat
• The obedience rate dropped to the lowest of all the variations to 20%

Explanation: Uniforms are often associated as symbols of authority and therefore encourage obedience as those around them see them as legitimate authority figures

Evaluation of situational variables

Research support

• There have been other studies conducted that have demonstrated the influence of situational variables on obedience which is a strength of Milgram's research
• Bickman (1974) conducted an experiment in New York where he had 3 confederates dress in different outfits, one wore a jacket and tie, one in a milkman uniform and the 3rd a security guards uniform  
• The confederates stood on the street and asked passers-by to perform tasks such as picking up litter or lending money to someone for the parking meter
• They found people were twice as likely to obey the security guard compared to the other two confederates
• This supports the idea  of uniform increasing obedience and that a situational variable can have a powerful effect on obedience levels

Cross-cultural replications

• Another strength of Milgram's research is that his findings have been replicated in studies with other cultures
• Meeus and Raaijmakers (1968) studied obedience in Dutch participants, participants were instructed to say stressful things in an interview to someone who was desperate for a job (and who was a confederate)
• 90% obeyed
• However, Smith and Bond (1998) showed that replications of Milgram's research were not very multi-cultural, and were only able to identify 2 replications that were conducted in non-western countries

Low internal validity

• One limitation of Milgram's research is that participants may have known it was a fake situation, especially in the uniform variation when the experimenter was called away and replaced by a passer-by wearing casual clothes
• It could be participants displayed demand characteristics and did what they thought they needed to in order to please the experimenter, especially as they were being paid to take part
• This also reduces the validity of the study