Describe and Evaluate Psychological Research Into Obedience

Obedience results from pressure to comply with authority. Children are taught to obey from an early age by their care givers, in order for them to conform in society. The authoritarian rule continues through their education and working life, and is then passed on to the next generation. This essay will focus on the work of the American psychologist Stanley Milgram. It will also look at other studies into obedience that evolved from Milgram’s experiments from the early 1960s. Stanley Milgram is one of the leading researchers into the psychology of obedience. Rice et al (2008) and was interested why thousands of German soldiers blindly obeyed orders that resulted in the death of millions of Jewish people during World War II. However if a†¦show more content†¦Therefore, in a series of follow up experiments, Milgram (1974) investigated factors which may vary the level of obedience. Rice et al (2008). Depending on the variations to the original experiments, the results changed considerably - with 92% complete obedience with the two teacher condition. This would be were the participant would be paired with a second confederate also playing the role of teacher. It would be the confederate delivering the shocks while the participant would only read the questions (Class Handout 1). The allocation of responsibility had now shifted to the confederate who was administering the shocks. The other notable change would be the social support condition which showed a significant drop, with only 10% complete obedience. Two more confederates would join the participant as teachers, but soon refused to obey. Most subjects stopped very soon after the others (Class Handout 1). This would imply that disobedience, or obedience, is more likely to happen when there is social pressure present. To test the ecological validity of Milgram’s work Bickman (1974) used 3 male experimenters, dressed in one of three ways: a sports coat and tie, a milkman’s uniform or a security guards uniform. The experimenters randomly gave 153 pedestrians one of three orders. (Class Handout 2). Bickman found that most peopleShow MoreRelatedDescribe And Evaluate Psychological Research Into Obedience1246 Words   |  5 PagesDescribe evaluate psychological research into obedience Obedience is a compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another’s authority (Oxforddictionaries, n.d). Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist, known for his experiment on obedience. This was taken place in the 1960’s while he was completing his professorship at Yale University (wikipedia.org, 2015). 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