Eduqas A Level Psychology Social Psychology (Milgram, 1963) Exam Questions

About Eduqas A Level Psychology Social Psychology (Milgram, 1963)

Component 2, Psychology: Investigating Behaviour, includes two classic studies used to teach the principles of research. The social psychology study is Milgram (1963), 'Behavioral study of obedience'. You need its aim, sample, procedure, results and conclusions, but in this component the focus is on research methods: how it was designed, how variables were measured, and the ethical issues it raises. Examiners often ask you to identify the method, the sampling technique or the type of data, or to evaluate Milgram's ethics against today's guidelines. It also connects to the ethical costs controversy in Component 3.

What you need to know

• Aim To investigate how far ordinary people would obey an authority figure who instructed them to give increasingly painful electric shocks to another person.
• Sample 40 men aged 20 to 50 from the New Haven area, recruited through a newspaper advert and direct mail (a self-selected sample) and paid $4.50 to take part.
• Procedure Each participant was the 'teacher' and a confederate, Mr Wallace, the 'learner'. For every wrong answer on a word-pair task the teacher gave a shock from a generator running from 15 to 450 volts in 15 volt steps. At 300 volts the learner pounded on the wall and then stopped answering. The experimenter used four standard prods.
• Findings All 40 participants went to at least 300 volts and 26 of 40 (65%) went to the full 450 volts. Many showed tension, such as sweating, trembling and nervous laughter, and three had full-blown seizures. Psychology students had predicted that very few would go to the end.
• Conclusions Ordinary people will obey destructive orders from a legitimate authority in certain situations. Milgram pointed to features such as the prestige of Yale, the gradual increase in shocks and the experimenter accepting responsibility.
• Research method issues A controlled lab study with quantitative (maximum voltage) and qualitative (observations of tension) data. Ethical issues include deception, distress and the right to withdraw being undermined by prods; participants were debriefed and met the unharmed learner.

Common mistakes in Social Psychology (Milgram, 1963)

• Saying participants actually shocked the learner. No real shocks were given; only the teacher received a sample 45 volt shock to make the set-up believable.
• Stating that 65% of participants went to 300 volts. 100% went to at least 300 volts; 65% went to 450 volts.
• Calling the sample random. It was self-selected (volunteer) through adverts, which limits generalisation, along with it being all-male and American.
• Arguing that Milgram broke the right to withdraw because no one left. Fourteen participants did withdraw; the issue is that the prods made leaving difficult.
• Describing it as a field experiment. It took place in a laboratory at Yale University.

Try three Social Psychology (Milgram, 1963) exam-style questions