Milgam's studies of obedience to authority (1974)
Aim of the study: By conducting this experiment Milgram wanted to find out how far people would go in obeying an instruction that involved harming another person.
Participants: The participants were forty men who were randomly chosen. They got paid for taking part in the experiment (approximately $4). Milgram and his team used newspaper ads to find the participants.T
Procedure: Milgram developed intimidating shock generator which had shock levels starting at 30 volts increasing all the way up to 450 volts. The switches were labeled as "slight", "moderate" and "danger" shock. The last two switches were labeled with "XXX" which represented death. The participants were divided into two groups: 1. Teachers and 2. Learners. Teachers were asking learners distinguish questions. For every wrong answer, the teacher delivered the learner an electric shock. The truth was that the learners just pretended to be shocked, but the teachers did not know about it. As the experiment progressed, some of teachers wanted to quitt. They felt guilty about harming people. However, when the instructor told them that it was not their responsibilty, they continued in the experiment and delivered next shocks. In the end of the experiment, Milgram told the participants that they were deceived and that nobody was harmed.
Results: What the Milgram and his team found out was that more than 65% of the participants delivered the maximum shocks. After Milgram told them the truth, unexpectedly more than 85% of the participants said they were glad to have participated.
Conclusion: This experiment demonstrated the danger of obedience. It also confirmed that the situational variables really did have (and still do) a strong impact on a person's behavior. Following order might be very dangerous.
The Asch Conformity Experiments (1956)
Aim of the study: By conducting this experiment, Solomon Asch wanted to demonstrate the power of conformity in the groups. He basically wanted to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
Participants: 123 males from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in this experiment.
Procedure: Asch put one real participate in a room with four to six confederates who had agreed before the experiment what their responses would be. The real participant did not know this and thought they are normal participants like he is. Then each person in the room stated aloud which comparison (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answers were always obvious. The real participant always gave the answer last. Sometimes confederates gave the wrong answers on purpose. There were 18 trials in total and the confederates gave the wrong answers on 12 trails - critical trials.
Results: About one third (32%) of the real participants went along and conformed with the incorrect majority (confederates) on the critical trials. Over the 12 critical trials about 75% of the participants conformed at least once.
Conclusion: After the experiment Asch asked the real participants why they conformed so readily. Most of them said they didn't really believe the answers of the confederates, but they went along with the group for fear of being thought peculiar.
Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment (1971)
Aim of the study: Zimbardo wanted to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-play exercise that stimulated person's life.
Participants: 21 male college students were screened for psychological normality and paid $15 for taking part. These students were chosen from 75 volunteers.
Procedure: Zimbardo used a basement of the Stanford University for building a mock prison. Then participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner of guard. In order to make the experiment as real as possible, Zimbardo told guards to arrest prisoners at their own homes and to take them to the local police station. From the police station they were taken to the prison at the Stanford University. These fake prisoners were treated like every other criminal. (prison clothes, were locked away,Guards were wearing khaki uniforms having whistles and handcuffs. They were also wearing dark glasses to make eye contact with prisoners impossible.
Results: Zimbardo noticed that the guards adopted to their roles quickly and easily. Yet some of them began to harass the prisoners and apparently enjoyed it. The guards treat them terribly and the prisoners started being tormented both mentally and physically. However, the prisoners soon adopted prisoner-like behavior too. (started taking the prison rules very seriously) Some of the prisoners started to be released after 36 hours because of uncontrollable bursts of screaming, crying and anger. Zimbardo had to close down the experiment on the sixth day.
Conclusion: People can readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play. The roles the people play can shape their personality as well as their behavior (actions). Interesting was that after the experiment most of the guards couldn't believe that they had behaved in the cruel ways that they had.
Sherif: Ambiguous situation (1935)
Aim of the study: Sherif's aim was to demonstrate that people tend to conform to group norms when they are in an ambiguous situation.
Procedure: In his experiment Sherif used the autokinetic effect. He projected a small spot of light onto a screen in a dark room which made the light looked like it was moving-visual illusion. First, the participants were tested individually. They were asked to say how far the light moved. Then they were tested in groups of three. However, the composition of the groups wasn't random. The group was composed of two participants whose estimate of the light was very similar and one person whose estimate was very different. Each participant was asked say aloud how he/she thought the light had moved.
Results: The results showed that most of the time the person whose estimate of movement of the light was different to the other two in the group, later conformed to the view of his partners.
Conclusion: When a person is found in an ambiguous situation, he or she tends to look to others for guidance or adopt the group norm. The person would tend to conform rather than to make an individual judgement.
Limitations: Since it was a laboratory experiment, there was no ecological validity. Another limitation would it be that the experiment is lacking cross cultural validity.
Strengths: A high level of control on the procedure.
Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment (1971)
Aim of the study: Zimbardo wanted to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-play exercise that stimulated person's life.
Participants: 21 male college students were screened for psychological normality and paid $15 for taking part. These students were chosen from 75 volunteers.
Procedure: Zimbardo used a basement of the Stanford University for building a mock prison. Then participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner of guard. In order to make the experiment as real as possible, Zimbardo told guards to arrest prisoners at their own homes and to take them to the local police station. From the police station they were taken to the prison at the Stanford University. These fake prisoners were treated like every other criminal. (prison clothes, were locked away,Guards were wearing khaki uniforms having whistles and handcuffs. They were also wearing dark glasses to make eye contact with prisoners impossible.
Results: Zimbardo noticed that the guards adopted to their roles quickly and easily. Yet some of them began to harass the prisoners and apparently enjoyed it. The guards treat them terribly and the prisoners started being tormented both mentally and physically. However, the prisoners soon adopted prisoner-like behavior too. (started taking the prison rules very seriously) Some of the prisoners started to be released after 36 hours because of uncontrollable bursts of screaming, crying and anger. Zimbardo had to close down the experiment on the sixth day.
Conclusion: People can readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play. The roles the people play can shape their personality as well as their behavior (actions). Interesting was that after the experiment most of the guards couldn't believe that they had behaved in the cruel ways that they had.
Sherif: Ambiguous situation (1935)
Aim of the study: Sherif's aim was to demonstrate that people tend to conform to group norms when they are in an ambiguous situation.
Procedure: In his experiment Sherif used the autokinetic effect. He projected a small spot of light onto a screen in a dark room which made the light looked like it was moving-visual illusion. First, the participants were tested individually. They were asked to say how far the light moved. Then they were tested in groups of three. However, the composition of the groups wasn't random. The group was composed of two participants whose estimate of the light was very similar and one person whose estimate was very different. Each participant was asked say aloud how he/she thought the light had moved.
Results: The results showed that most of the time the person whose estimate of movement of the light was different to the other two in the group, later conformed to the view of his partners.
Conclusion: When a person is found in an ambiguous situation, he or she tends to look to others for guidance or adopt the group norm. The person would tend to conform rather than to make an individual judgement.
Limitations: Since it was a laboratory experiment, there was no ecological validity. Another limitation would it be that the experiment is lacking cross cultural validity.
Strengths: A high level of control on the procedure.
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