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3 The Influence of Other People on Attitudes and Behaviour
GV917
Obedience to Authority Experiment See Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (Harper and Row, 1974) Stanley Milgram was a professor of
Psychology at Yale University in New Haven Connecticut.
He placed advertisements in local newspapers in New Haven to recruit volunteers for an experiment on ‘learning and memory’
The Background
Two people at a time are asked to take part in the experiment
An experimenter dressed like a scientist was present throughout the exercise
One is designated ‘Teacher’ and the other ‘Learner’ They are told that the experiment is designed to test
the effects of punishment on learning They were set a paired-association learning task
Paired Association Learning Task The teacher read a series of word pairs to the
learner, eg Blue box Nice day Wild duck etc Then in the testing sequence the teacher would
read: Blue: sky, ink, box, lamp The learner then had to indicate which of the four
terms had originally been paired with the word ‘Blue’
The Setup
The learner is strapped into a chair and has an electrode attached to his wrist
There were different setups but in one the teacher sits in front of a control panel next to the learner and reads out the word pairs while recording the responses
If the learner makes a mistake in pairing the words, then the teacher administers an electric shock
The shock starts at 15 volts and is increased each time an error is recorded by 15 volts
The Control Panel
The Role of the Experimenter
Since the learner was more and more distressed each time he received an electric shock, and the teacher would often turn to the experimenter for advice
The experimenter would respond with a series of ‘prods’ Prod 1 ‘Please continue’ Prod 2 ‘The experiment requires that you continue’ Prod 3 ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue’ Prod 4 ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’ The prods were used in sequence, so if prod 1 was
unsuccessful, the experimenter would use prod 2 and so on. If the teacher refused to comply after prod 4, the experiment was terminated.
Experimental Treatments
Treatment 1: The learner is in a different room from the teacher where he cannot be seen and his voice cannot be heard – the learner’s answers flash up on a screen
Treatment 2: The same as Treatment 1, except voice protests were included
Treatment 3: The same as Treatment 2 except the learner was placed in the same room as the teacher
Treatment 4: The same as Treatment 3 except the teacher was asked to force the learner’s hand on to a ‘shock plate’ to receive the electric shock
The True Purpose of the Experiment The aim was to find out how far the teacher
would go in administering shocks to the learner before abandoning the experiment
With this setup the teacher could abandon the experiment before stage one – refusing to administer any shocks at all – or he could continue up to stage 30, supposedly 450 volts or XXX on the control panel
How Far Would You Go?
How far would people go?
Different Groups of individuals were invited to a lecture at Yale on ‘Obedience to Authority’ and the set up of the experiment was described to them
They were then asked how far they thought they would go in administering shocks if they were participants in the experiment
The three groups were psychiatrists, college students and middle-class adults
The Learner’s response
The learner was in fact an actor paid to follow a script and actually received no electric shocks at all
He gave a predetermined set of responses to the word-pair tests, based on a schedule of approximately three wrong answers to one correct answer
When shocked below 75 volts the learner would not protest From 75 volts to 90 volts he would grunt At 120 volts the learner would shout at the experimenter, saying
that the shocks were getting painful At 150 volts the learner would shout out ‘Get me out of here! At 300 volts he would refuse to cooperate with the teacher At 315 volts he would scream loudly and still refuse to cooperate At 330 volts he fell silent
How Far Did People Actually Go?
How did the ‘Teachers’ feel about the experiment?
Conclusions
Individuals are inclined to obey authority, even when it means doing something they intensely dislike
The same type of influence can exist between peers – ‘significant others’. So it is not just confined to people in authority
It even exists in a weaker form between strangers – we are influenced by other people