Milgram's obedience research

Obedience is following a direct order from a person with perceived authority. Milgram (1963) tested how far ordinary people would go.

• Sample: 40 American men, aged 20–50, recruited by newspaper advert (volunteer sample) at Yale.
• Procedure: the participant was always the 'teacher' and gave what he believed were real shocks, rising in 15V steps to 450V, whenever the 'learner' (a confederate) made a mistake. Four verbal prods were used ("The experiment requires that you continue").
• Findings: every participant went to at least 300V, and 65% (26 of 40) continued to the maximum 450V. Many showed extreme tension — sweating, trembling, nervous laughter.

Evaluate it: highly controlled and replicable, but a lab task with low ecological validity, an unrepresentative all-male volunteer sample, and serious ethical problems (deception, difficulty withdrawing, psychological harm). Baumrind (1964) attacked the ethics; Milgram argued the debrief and follow-up showed no lasting harm.

The three variations you must know

Edexcel names three Milgram variations because they show the situational factors that encourage dissent. Compare each with the 65% baseline.

• Experiment 10 — Rundown office block (Bridgeport): moved out of prestigious Yale to a shabby office. Obedience fell to 47.5% — location/prestige matters.
• Experiment 7 — Telephonic instructions: the experimenter gave orders by phone. Obedience fell to 22.5%, and some participants lied about the shock level they were giving — proximity of the authority matters.
• Experiment 13 — An ordinary man gives orders: the orders came from another 'participant' (a confederate), not the scientist. Obedience fell to 20% — legitimacy of the authority matters.

Exam tip: use these variations as evidence for the situational side of the individual–situational debate: the same person obeys or dissents depending on where they are, who is asking, and how close that person is.

Which variation?

Agency theory and social impact theory

Two theories explain why people obey.

• Agency theory (Milgram, 1974): we shift from an autonomous state (acting on our own conscience) to an agentic state, where we see ourselves as the instrument of a legitimate authority and hand responsibility upwards. The agentic shift creates moral strain, which is why Milgram's participants trembled and laughed nervously; binding factors (politeness, having already started) keep them in the agentic state.
• Social impact theory (Latané, 1981): the impact of a source on a target depends on strength (status/authority), immediacy (closeness in time and space) and number of sources. Impact multiplies as sources increase but is divided when there are more targets to share it out among (diffusion of responsibility).

Compare them: agency theory is a qualitative account of a psychological state; social impact theory is mathematical and can be tested and quantified — but it treats people as passive, ignoring personality and motivation.

Why did they obey?

Tap a factor, then tap the type of explanation it belongs to.

Social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner)

Prejudice is an attitude (usually negative) towards a group; discrimination is the behaviour that follows. Social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) says prejudice comes from group membership itself, in three steps:

• Social categorisation — we sort people into in-groups ("us") and out-groups ("them").
• Social identification — we adopt the identity of the in-group and its norms.
• Social comparison — we compare in-group with out-group in a way that flatters us, raising our self-esteem. This produces in-group favouritism and out-group derogation.

Tajfel's minimal group studies showed that even when boys were assigned to groups on a trivial, meaningless basis, they allocated more points to anonymous in-group members than to out-group members — with no competition and no history of conflict.

Strength: explains prejudice with no material conflict at all. Weakness: it is reductionist — real prejudice also involves resources, history and culture, which is exactly what realistic conflict theory adds.

Which theory?

Classic study: Sherif et al. (1954/1961) Robbers Cave

Sherif's realistic conflict theory (1966) says prejudice arises when groups compete for a scarce resource; co-operation towards a shared goal reduces it. Robbers Cave is the field experiment that tests this.

• Sample: 22 boys, aged about 11–12, similar backgrounds, at a summer camp in Oklahoma. They did not know it was a study.
• Stage 1 — in-group formation: the boys, kept apart, formed two groups (the Rattlers and the Eagles) with norms, names and leaders.
• Stage 2 — friction: a tournament with prizes for the winners only. Name-calling, flag-burning and raids on cabins followed — hostility appeared quickly once there was competition for a prize only one group could win.
• Stage 3 — integration: simply putting the groups together did not work. Hostility fell only when they had superordinate goals that neither group could achieve alone — fixing the camp water supply, and pulling a stuck truck with a rope.

Evaluate it: real behaviour in a natural setting (high ecological validity) and a clear practical application (co-operative learning). But the sample was 22 white, protestant, middle-class American boys — ethnocentric and androcentric — and there was no informed consent, plus the researchers were participant observers who may have influenced events.

What actually reduced the hostility?

Personality, gender and culture

Edexcel wants individual and developmental factors alongside the situation.

• Authoritarian personality (Adorno et al., 1950): rigid, conventional, hostile to those seen as inferior and submissive to authority — measured by the F-scale. It links both higher obedience and higher prejudice to personality, and is thought to develop from a harsh, punitive upbringing (so it is developmental as well as dispositional).
• Locus of control: people with a strong internal locus of control are more likely to resist and dissent.
• Gender: Milgram found no significant difference in obedience rates between men and women, though women reported more tension.
• Culture: obedience and prejudice are shaped by cultural norms — an argument for the nurture side of the debate. Cross-cultural replications of Milgram have produced a range of obedience rates, though the effect is found widely.

Match the term to its meaning

Tap a term on the left, then its correct definition on the right.

Questionnaires and interviews

The Topic 1 method is self-report, and you must be able to design one.

• Questions: closed questions (including ranked scale items) give quantitative data that is easy to analyse; open questions give rich qualitative data but are harder to compare.
• Interviews: structured (fixed questions, replicable), semi-structured (fixed core plus follow-ups) and unstructured (free-flowing, rich but hard to replicate).
• Sampling: random, stratified, volunteer and opportunity — know one strength and one weakness of each.
• Researcher effects and social desirability are the big validity threats: people say what makes them look good, especially about obedience and prejudice.

Hypotheses: write an alternate hypothesis (there will be a difference), plus a null. Say whether it is directional (one-tailed) or non-directional (two-tailed) and justify it from previous research.

Designing the practical

Analysing the data

You must analyse both types of data from your questionnaire.

• Quantitative: measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode), frequency tables, a bar chart, and measures of dispersion — the range and the standard deviation. A large standard deviation means scores were spread out, so the mean represents the group less well.
• Qualitative: thematic analysis — read and re-read the responses, code them, then group codes into themes that summarise the data, supported by quotations.
• Ethics: the BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct (2009) — respect, competence, responsibility and integrity — plus risk management. Milgram's study is the standard example of deception and protection from harm.

Which analysis?

The contemporary study

How Topic 1 is assessed

Social psychology is examined in Paper 1: Foundations in psychology, alongside cognitive, biological and learning theories. All four topics are compulsory.

• Expect short-answer questions on Milgram's variations and the two theories, data-response questions on questionnaire results (calculate a mean, a range, a standard deviation, read a bar chart), and an extended response that asks you to evaluate a theory or study.
• You will be asked to describe and evaluate the classic study (Sherif) and your chosen contemporary study — know the aim, method, sample, findings, conclusions and at least two strengths and two weaknesses of each.
• Your key question and your practical investigation are both examinable — be able to describe your questionnaire design, sampling decisions, ethics, results and improvements.

Marks are lost by writing everything you know about Milgram. Answer the question actually asked: if it says evaluate agency theory, use Milgram as evidence, not as the subject.

The big ideas to know

That is the whole of Topic 1 — a compulsory topic on Paper 1. Press Finish to see your score.