Milgram Behavioural Study of Obedience Essay

The mode used by Milgram was the interrogation laboratory experiment. The main avail that Milgram had with this method was the join of control he had over the view. He controlled what the participants saw, heard and experienced and was able to command their deportment through what they were exposed to. This method besides allowed accurate measurement of variables and the exposed standardised procedures meant that replication was possible.The disadvantages of this method admit low bionomic validity and the sour of demand characteristics on the participants and it could be argued that they were behaving in the trend that they thought was forebodeed of them quite than producing natural behaviour. Milgram has as well been heavily criticised regarding the ethics of this learn (see below) . Was the sample representative? Milgrams sample was a self-selected sample of 40 males obtained through advertising. This could be regarded as world a biased sample as they were all mal e Ameri sess citizens.They were also proposes and the majority of the population is unlikely to volunteer to take part in inquiry and those who do may be temporary of the target population in virtually way. Hence at that place may be problems generalising from these results. What type of entropy was collected? The data collected was quantitative in that it relate measuring participants obedience level, numerically, in basis of how far up the voltage eggshell they were prepared to go. This type of data has the advantage of universe easy to compare and statistically analyse.However, Milgram included no qualitative descriptions of wherefore the participants obeyed or how they felt during the experiment although in that respect are a few legal brief descriptions of participants behaviour during the experiment. Does this take learn laid-back or low Ecological rigorousness? As with all laboratory experiments there are problems with Milgrams study regarding its ecological validity. It involved an extremely unusual designate carried out under actually counterfeit conditions and as such, is likely to have produced very unnatural behaviour from the participants.This has implications for the extent to which we deal generalise from these results to real life situations and it erect be argued that the study tells us naught about obedience in day-by-day life but simply shows us how obedient these people were, in this environment, playacting this task. Was the study ethical? Milgrams study was probably atomic number 53 of the most unethical pieces of psychological research ever conducted. It arse be criticised in terms of close to all the British Psychological monastic order Ethical Guidelines including informed consent, deception, right to pull away and protection from harm.However, in Milgrams defence, we can argue that he did not expect the participants to obey to the extent that they did or to expose the task so stressful. He also conducted a thorough debriefing and review article monitoring of his participants. A survey conducted one year later revealed that 84% of the participants were cheerful to have taken part in the study and psychiatric examinations of them showed that none had suffered want term harm. What does this study tell us about Individual and Situational Explanations of behaviour?The idiosyncratic explanation for the behaviour of the participants would be that it was something about them as people that caused them to obey, but a more realistic explanation is that the situation they were in influenced them and caused them to behave in the way that they did. Some of the aspects of the situation that may have influenced their behaviour include the formality of the location, the behaviour of the experimenter and the fact that it was an experiment for which they had volunteered and been paid. How useful is this research and to what extent can it be employ to everyday life?As verbalize previously, the stimulus for this study was the Holocaust and this study has contributed significantly to the discussions regarding the behaviour of the Germans at this time. In particular, it provides strong evidence against the Germans are diverse hypothesis. It also gives a valuable appreciation into the power of situations and of strength. The results suggest that we have a natural tendency to obey authority figures even when we feel that what we are being asked to do is morally wrong. However, the applications are cut back by the methodological limitations such as low ecological validity and an atypical sample.