welcome back guys and girls now that
you're all experts at conformity we're
going to consider the second really
important aspect of social influence
obedience so sit up straight put your
phone away and listen up we'll start the
video with a quick and simple definition
of obedience and then consider the
strength of the effect by looking
closely at a classic experiment by the
one and only mr. Milgram after making
sure we know how to properly describe
and evaluate Milgram's work to get those
exam marks we'll move on to see some
conditions that make it more likely that
people will obey this is covering
content from dot point 3 1 1 3 in the
syllabus entitled explanations for
obedience
so what is obedience we can define
obedience as the phenomenon when people
act in response to a direct order so
when your friend texts you and demands
that you take down that super
embarrassing picture of her from
Facebook and then you proceed to remove
it you're expressing obedience the
effect is actually more common when it's
coming from a perceived authority figure
like your mum teacher or traffic warden
but that's not to say you can't obey
other people in society too so that
definition is good for now but as always
we need to dig up some experimental
support a classic study for obedience is
one conducted by Milgram in 1963 it
really is a classic and pretty much all
psychologists you meet will know about
this one so what's it all about
Milgram wants to look at how willing
people were to obey Authority he did
this using a laboratory experiments with
40 participants who falsely believed
they were taking part in a study on
learning and memory when they arrived at
the lab they were met by an experimenter
wearing an official-looking lab coat and
a fake participant called mr. Wallace
this was a paid actor who Milgram hired
to play the part of another participant
the participant and mr. Wallace then
drew lots to be assigned the role of the
teacher and a learner but unbeknown to
the participant it was fixed so that
they were always the teacher before
being taken into another room the
participant first watched mr. Wallace
gets trapped into a big chair and wired
up to a shock generator in the adjacent
room where the participant couldn't see
mr. Wallace
they were then instructed to teach him
word pairs over an intercom system and
respond to incorrect responses by giving
him a nasty shock each time mr. Wallace
got another answer wrong this was to
increase in voltage to a maximum of 450
volts
although the participants were under the
impression that these shocks were real
the voltage box was actually a prop and
mr. Wallace just pretended to react to
shocks as the voltage increased mr.
Wallace complained more about the shocks
and at 300 volts screamed out before
then remaining silent if the participant
hesitated in providing further shocks
the experimenter delivered a series of
verbal prods to encourage the
participant to continue at the end of
the experiment the participants were
fully debrie
and reunited with the unsharped mr.
Wallace whew but did people actually go
through with it
shockingly pardon the pun 65 percent of
participants administered the highest
voltage to mr. Wallace and none stopped
at 300 volts despite continuing with the
shocks most participants were distressed
showing signs such as sweating groaning
and shaking Milgram went on to conclude
that ordinary people will obey even
really extreme orders that might go
against their own conscience now
remember the in an exam you could be
asked to evaluate as well as describe
this experiment we'll try to find some
positives first as a laboratory
experiment there were really good
controls this means that the study can
establish a strong relationship between
cause and effect as it has good internal
validity so we can quite confidently say
that we think obedience was caused by
variables such as the presence of the
authority figure and it wasn't affected
by alternative things that Milgram
wasn't trying to study like the
participants age however this also means
that the study lacked ecological
validity this basically means that the
participants did a task that they're
unlikely to ever actually encounter in
everyday life how many times have you
been asked to shock someone on a similar
note the study lacked generalizability
and was reductionist that is it only
looked at a very specific example of
obedience in one situation whereas
obedience in real life covers a whole
range of events now there's one other
really obvious point you can be making
the participants were deceived and so
couldn't give their full consent and
weren't given the right to withdraw more
than this when they actually expressed a
wish to stop the experiment has actually
prompted them to continue luckily they
were fully debriefed at the end but that
doesn't stop us from feeling sorry for
the poor guys we'll look more
symmetrical issues in more depth in some
later videos so keep your eyes out
overall although Milgram's experiment is
a really interesting one it's definitely
not the whole picture for obedience it
had good controls but lacks ecological
validity and generalizability and as for
ethics well let's not go there again to
look at which situations made obedience
more likely
gyum carried out repeats of this
experiment several variations to observe
the effect of certain conditions on the
results first he looked at the presence
of allies when there were two other
teachers the real participant was less
likely to obey if the other two refused
next up he looked at how closeness to
the victim or to Authority affected the
results if the participants had to
physically put mr. wallace's hands on
the shock machine or were close to him
obedience decreased so proximity to
victim decreases obedience on the
flipside when the authority figure was
further away and gave instructions over
the phone
obedience levels more than half so
proximity to authority figure increases
obedience finally Milgram considered the
location of experiment when the
experiment was moved to a set of
run-down offices the proportion of
people who obeyed the experimenter also
decreased with only 48 percent reaching
450 volts it makes sense you wouldn't
trust an experimenter with a dodgy
office as much as one with a snazzy
office three important influences on
obedience are therefore the presence of
allies the proximity of victims and
authority figures and the location of
the experiment if you were to put this
all together a participant would be
least likely to obey the experimenter
when the experiment was taking place in
a run-down office if there were fellow
dissenters their victim was nearby but
the experiment was far away so three
important factors allies proximity and
location whew that's it for now we've
learned that obedience is the phenomenon
when people act in response to a direct
order and that it's more likely when
there is an authority figure we then
looked at describing Milgram's
experiment as an example of obedience
and whizzed through some evaluation
points coming to the conclusion that
although it's a pretty shocking
experiment
it's generalizability ecological
validity in ethics weren't great and
then finally last but not least we
looked at how allies proximity and
location can all influence the
likelihood of people obeying in the next
couple of videos we'll start to think
about some explanations of why this
obedience effect occurs so see you then
