Milgram's Obedience Experiment

It has often been considered what impact social power and status have on an individuals’ level of obedience. Obedience can be defined as a compliance to commands given by a person in order to avoid punishment. Such a response occurs in situations where individuals adjust their behaviour in recognition of social influence from others.
Throughout the 1950’s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram became interested in Solomon Asch’s studies of conformity and the capacity of an individual to be influenced by group pressure. As such, in the 1960’s, following a trial into the Holocaust, Milgram began his own studies, investigating the factors that contribute to an individual obeying orders issued by an authoritarian figure. He was interested in examining

The procedure used in this experiment to select participants was Convenience Sampling. Due to the fact that the study was conducted at Yale University, Milgram placed a notice into the newspaper, asking for male volunteers to take part in the study. Furthermore, participants were offered $4.50 wage for their assistance and as such the sample was chosen. They were told that this payment was purely for coming to the laboratory and that the money could be kept regardless of any events following their arrival. By using this sampling method, researchers were only able to use the male participants available to them. However, despite this, a wide range of occupations were present within the sample ranging from teachers to labourers and those of both high and low educational status. Additionally, participants were led to believe that they were taking part in a study of memory and learning and the effects of punishment on learning

Here, the learner is a confederate/actor of the study and the teacher is always a participant
3) The learner is strapped into a chair and electrodes are attached to his arms. The teacher is informed that the shock result in no lasting damage or pain. Initially, to prove that the equipment was working correctly, the teacher received a 45 volt shock themselves
4) The teacher and experimenter move to a next door room where a shock generator is set up. The generator ranges from 15-40 volts, accompanied by verbal descriptions (‘slight shock’ and ‘Danger: severe shock’). Here, the teacher is told to initiate a shock of increasing severity, for every incorrect answer the learner provides based on a word memory game
5) The actor (learner) gave wrong answers frequently, resulting in increasing 15 volts. After each shock, the learner moans with a painful scream being played through to the