Milgram (1963)

Aim: To investigate whether ordinary people would obey an authority figure, even when this meant causing harm to another person.

Method: Milgram recruited 40 male American participants through a newspaper advertisement. The participants were paid $4.50 to take part in what they were told was a study of memory and learning.

The study took place in a laboratory at Yale University. Each participant met the experimenter and another man, Mr Wallace, who was a confederate. The participant and Mr Wallace drew lots to decide their roles, but this was fixed so that the real participant was always the 'teacher' and Mr Wallace was always the 'learner'.

The learner was taken to another room and strapped into a chair. The teacher was then instructed to give the learner an electric shock every time he gave a wrong answer on a word-pair task. The shocks increased in 15-volt steps from 15 volts to 450 volts. The 300-volt level was labelled 'intense shock', and the 450-volt level was labelled 'danger severe shock'. To make the situation seem genuine, the participant was given a sample shock of 45 volts.

At 300 volts, the learner banged on the wall and complained. After 315 volts, no further responses were heard. If the participant hesitated or tried to stop, the experimenter used verbal prods such as 'the experiment requires that you continue'. The study ended when the participant refused to continue or reached the maximum shock level of 450 volts.

Results: Milgram found that:

100% of participants gave shocks up to 300 volts
65% of participants continued to the maximum 450 volts
many participants showed signs of severe tension, including sweating, trembling, stuttering and nervous laughter

Conclusion: Milgram concluded that ordinary people are capable of obeying an authority figure, even when asked to carry out actions that appear to harm another person. He argued that obedience is strongly influenced by situational factors, particularly the perceived legitimacy of the authority figure and the setting.