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How To Evaluate Milgram's Experiment Into The Nature Of Conformity

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Conformity and Obedience Assignment

In this assignment I intend to evaluate Stanley Milgrams studies of obedience and in particular the ethical issues broken. I hope to determine whether the knowledge gained justifies his experiments. After the destruction and atrocities committed in World War II many historians argued that there must be some sort of character defect that made the German people more obedient. Mailgram’s study was an attempt to test ‘the Germans are different’ hypothesis. The hypothesis states that Germans are more likely a person or people in authority regardless of what the act is. (Social psychology handbook pg.8)
Milgram conducted an experiment into the nature of obedience in 1963 at the prestigious Yale …show more content…

In the second ‘voice feedback’ condition 62.5 per cent went to the lethal 450 volts. He also found even though the participants hesitated and objected they still continued with the experiment. Although many were observed to tremble, stutter, dig their nails into their palms and even laugh, one participant had a seizure. (Gross, 2010, pg.416/417).
Milgram evaluated his own experiment and devised nine factors that could explain the reason why such high levels of conformity were visible. To test the factors he devised further versions of his experiment. I believe that this strengthens the experiment the amount of control that Milgram was able to give and the different variations helped to strengthen Milgrams conclusion as to why we obey people in authority. (Gross, 2010, pg. 417).
A weakness of the experiment is the sample used is not representable to the rest of the American population and can’t be generalised. Only males who read the advert and were prepared to take part in a laboratory experiment were used Milgrams have been accused of deliberately using an ethnocentric sample. (Class notes)
I also believe that the experiment was not ecologically valid as laboratory is not considered a normal situation and this could contributed to the experiment having demand characteristics as the participant might have thought that they were in an controlled safe environment and were also encouraged to do so by the experimenter.
Another big weakness

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