To a certain extent studies of obedience have been shown to lack experimental validity, ecological validity and mundane realism.
Experimental validity is: the validity of the experiment I the context in which it was carried out. If a study lacks experimental validity, the participants do not believe in the set-up. Ecological Validity is whether or not the research is valid outside of the experimental situations- real life. Mundane realism is: the use of an artificial situation that resembles a natural situation e.g. a lab experiment set up as a classroom.
Milgram's study of obedience is a classic example of a study that lacked in experimental validity and also in mundane realism. Milgram's study consisted of a confederate having to answer questions, which if they got wrong they would fake being given an electric shock by the machine they were attached to. The participant's role was to give these electric shocks to the confederate every time a question was answered wrong, and also the voltage would be turned up with every answer wrong. Along with this Milgram took part as a confederate who would encourage the participant to give the shocks by saying things such as, "This has to be done."
Milgram aimed to discover how many of the participants would give electric shocks of such high voltage that they would have killed the confederate had they actually been receiving them.
Milgram's study lacked experimental realism because the participants could not have believed in the setup. Orme and Holland said that surely Milgram should have been the confederate receiving the shocks, since this would have made it far easier to believe in the setup. However Rosenhan said that 70% of the participants did believe in the whole setup, but there is 30% who did not. Orme and Holland also said that, obedience is a demand characteristic since the participants are required to obey experimental orders. Therefore it made it difficult for the participants to believe in the setup of the experiment.
Milgram's study however did not entirely lack in validity since it had good ecological validity. This is because Milgram created several variations for the experiment. For example he created situations where the victim (confederate) could not be seen or heard, or when the victim could be heard, or also when the victim could be both seen and heard. These variations were also carried out in a run-down office instead of a laboratory, therefore changing the results they got dramatically.
As Whitbourne states, "if participants want to discontinue their involvement in the study, they must be allowed to do so without any penalty or question" (Whitbourne). Milgram claims that all of the subjects were permitted to leave at any time; however, the experimenter displays an acknowledgeable amount of persistence towards the subject in continuing the experiment, insisting that “it’s absolutely essential” that they continue and that they “have no choice” but to stay in the experiment (Milgram 80-81). Baumrind insists that Milgram’s experimental design was degrading and emotionally harming to its subjects (Baumrind 92-93). Peter C. Baker, author of “Electric Schlock: Did Stanley Milgram 's Famous Obedience Experiments Prove Anything?,” claims that most humans tend to obey when they hear commands from an authority figure (Baker). Due to the fact that every subject in Milgram’s experiment volunteered to particpate, it can be assumed that the majority of the subjects held trust for their experimenter, who, in Milgram’s experiment, is the authority figure (Baumrind 93). As Baumrind mentions, Milgram’s experiment had the potential of causing participants of the experiment to have distrust toward other adult authorities in the future after realizing that they had been deceived and practically denied of their right to discontinue their participation in the study
In "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obedience to authority and one's own conscience. Through the experiments, Milgram discovered that the majority of people would go against their own decisions of right and wrong to appease the requests of an authority figure. The study was set up as a "blind experiment" to capture if and when a person will stop inflicting pain on another as they are explicitly commanded to continue. The participants of this experiment included two willing individuals: a teacher and a learner. The teacher is the real subject and the learner is merely an actor.
...’s obedience level is affected by the location and surroundings of the experiment; they also hold a mutual understanding on the question of ethics. Yet, there is a larger question. Could these points indicate that humans are not fully in control of their actions?
A former Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgram, administered an experiment to test the obedience of "ordinary" people as explained in his article, "The Perils of Obedience". An unexpected outcome came from this experiment by watching the teacher administer shocks to the learner for not remembering sets of words. By executing greater shocks for every wrong answer created tremendous stress and a low comfort levels within the "teacher", the one being observed unknowingly, uncomfortable and feel the need to stop. However, with Milgram having the experimenter insisting that they must continue for the experiments purpose, many continued to shock the learner with much higher voltages.The participants were unaware of many objects of the experiment until
The experiment was to see if people would follow the orders of an authority figure, even if the orders that were given proved to cause pain to the person taking the test. In the “Milgram Experiment” by Saul McLeod, he goes into detail about six variations that changed the percentage of obedience from the test subject, for example, one variable was that the experiment was moved to set of run down offices rather than at Yale University. Variables like these changed the results dramatically. In four of these variations, the obedience percentage was under 50 percent (588). This is great evidence that it is the situation that changes the actions of the individual, not he or she’s morals.
Milgram’s experiment started shortly after the trial of Adolf Eichmann began. Adolf Eichmann was a Nazi who tortured many Jews during the Holocaust, and had others under his hand do whatever he told them to do. Milgram decided to plan a study to merely see if the followers of E...
...e maximum shock level dropped significantly. The more official the experimenter looked, the more people would reach the maximum shock level. Stanley Milgram’s findings were groundbreaking. He found that humans will comply and obey ones orders than previously thought. His experiment has become one of the more well known and influential social psychology experiments completed.
In Lauren Slater’s book Opening Skinner’s Box, the second chapter “Obscura” discusses Stanley Milgram, one of the most influential social psychologists. Milgram created an experiment which would show just how far one would go when obeying instructions from an authoritative figure, even if it meant harming another person while doing so. The purpose of this experiment was to find justifications for what the Nazi’s did during the Holocaust. However, the experiment showed much more than the sociological reasoning behind the acts of genocide. It showed just how much we humans are capable of.
In finding that people are not naturally aggressive. Milgram now alters the experiment to find out why do people act the way they do. He compiled the experiment to answer, why do people obey authority, even when the actions are against their own morals.
At first Milgram believed that the idea of obedience under Hitler during the Third Reich was appalling. He was not satisfied believing that all humans were like this. Instead, he sought to prove that the obedience was in the German gene pool, not the human one. To test this, Milgram staged an artificial laboratory "dungeon" in which ordinary citizens, whom he hired at $4.50 for the experiment, would come down and be required to deliver an electric shock of increasing intensity to another individual for failing to answer a preset list of questions. Meyer describes the object of the experiment "is to find the shock level at which you disobey the experimenter and refuse to pull the switch" (Meyer 241). Here, the author is paving the way into your mind by introducing the idea of reluctance and doubt within the reader. By this point in the essay, one is probably thinking to themselves, "Not me. I wouldn't pull the switch even once." In actuality, the results of the experiment contradict this forerunning belief.
Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience are the focus of Theodore Dalrymple and Ian Parker. Theodore Dalrymple is a British physician that composed his views of the Milgram experiment with “Just Do What the Pilot Tells You” in the New Statesman in July 1999 (254). He distinguishes between blind obedience and blind disobedience stating that an extreme of either is not good, and that a healthy balance between the two is needed. On the other hand, Ian Parker is a British writer who wrote “Obedience” for an issue of Granta in the fall of 2000. He discusses the location of the experiment as a major factor and how the experiment progresses to prevent more outcomes. Dalrymple uses real-life events to convey his argument while Parker exemplifies logic from professors to state his point.
In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a Yale University Psychologist conducted a variety of social psychology experiments on obedience to authority figures. His experiments involved three individuals, one of them was a volunteer who played the role of the teacher, one was an actor who played the role of the student, and one was the experimenter who played the role of the authority. The teacher was instructed by the authority to administrate shocks to the student (who claimed to have a heart condition) whenever they answered a question incorrectly. The voltage of the shock would go up after every wrong answer. The experimenter would then instruct the teacher to administrate higher voltages even though pain was being imposed. The teacher would then have to make a choice between his morals and values or the choice of the authority figure. The point of the experiment was to try to comprehend just how far an individual would continue when being ordered by an individual in a trench coat to electrically shock another human being for getting questions incorrect. The experiment consisted of administrating pain to different people and proved that ordinary people will obey people with authority. Some of the various reasons are that the experimenter was wearing a trench coat, fear of the consequences for not cooperating, the experiments were conducted in Yale University a place of prestige, and the authority f...
He believes the scientific advancements from Milgram’s experiment outweigh the temporary emotional harm to the volunteers of Milgram’s experiment. Also Herrnstein points out that Milgram’s experiment was created to show how easily humans are deceived and manipulated even when they do not realize the pain they are causing. We live in a society and culture where disobedience is more popular than obedience; however, he believed the experiment was very important and more experiments should be done like it, to gain more useful information. The experiment simply would not have been successful if they subjects knew what was actually going to happen, Herrnstein claims. He believes the subject had to be manipulated for the experiment to be successful. “A small temporary loss of a few peoples privacy seems a bearable price for a large reduction in
Vol. 64 (1), pp. 12-18, 2009. Milgram, Stanley. A. Issues in the Study of Obedience: A Reply to Baumrind.
Jerry M. Burger conducted a partial replication of Milgram’s obedience studies in order to answer a follow-up question to the original studies: After many years of social reconstruction, would people still obey today? Although Milgram’s numerous obedience experiments are highly valued because of their groundbreaking scientific discoveries about ourselves, that did not stop the criticism the experimenter received; according to Burger himself, “critics argued that the short-term stress and potential long-term harm to participants could not be justified” (2009). In response to these criticism, Burger inserted the “150-Volt Solution,” in which he stopped the experiment if subject decided to keep going after the 150-volt mark, rather than having them continue onto 450-volts like in Milgram’s study. He also had participants feel a sample shock of 15-volts rather than 45-volts (2009). These measures were taken by Milgram in order to decrease the likelihood of stress in the subjects engendered by the uncomfortable thought of causing serious harm a stranger. However, I believe these changes affect the validity of the construct of obedience because the measurements are of a smaller range. Burger felt content with the 150-Volt Solution because he stated that there is an 79% chance that a subject is willing to go all the way if he/she passes the 150-volt mark; however, that is according to a study decade ago, and Burger is looking for the willingness to obey