Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience.

Milgram’s famous experiment on obedience.

Volunteers were sampled for a lab experiment to investigate “learning” (re: ethics: deception).  Participants comprised 40 males who were aged between 20 and 50 years, and whose work ranged from unskilled to professional. Participants were paid $4.50 for just appearing.At the start of the experiment, they were introduced to another participant, who happened to be a confederate of Milgram, the experimenter. They picked straws to determine their roles as either learner or teacher – despite that this was fixed and the confederate was in all instances the learner. There was also an “experimenter” who was dressed in a gray lab coat,  and who also played by an actor who was not Milgram. Two rooms in the lab were used – one for the learner who had an electric chair and another room for the teacher together with the experimenter who also had an electric shock generator.

The “learner” (known as Mr. Wallace) was secured to a chair with electrodes. Having learned a list of word pairs provided to him to learn, the “teacher” tested him by naming not only a word but also him to recall its partner/pair from a list containing four possible choices. Meanwhile, the teacher was told to administer an electric shock each time the learner makes a mistake. The level of shock was increased each time. On the shock generator were 30 switches marked from 15 volts (suggesting slight shock) to 450 (dangerous – severe shock).

Purposely, the learner provided answers which were mainly incorrect, and for every incorrect answer, the teacher had to shock him. When the teacher failed to shock him, the experimenter had to provide a sequence of orders/prods to make sure they continued. Four prods were provided and if was failure to obey even one, Mr. Williams,  the experimenter, had to read out the subsequent prod. Such as Prod 1: Please continue. Prod 2: The experiment demand that you to continue. Prod 3: It is absolutely important that you continue. Prod 4: You have no other alternative but to continue

Results. 65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e., teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts. Milgram did more than one experiment – he carried out 18 variations of his study.  All he did was alter the situation (IV) to see how this affected obedience (DV).