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Summary Milgram study 16 mark essay psychology AQA
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An A grade 16 mark essay for AQA Psychology
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AQA Sociology - Media - New Media
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Some examples from this set of practice questions
1.
Digitalisation
Answer: - Everything now digital -Boyle (2005) Allows technical convergence -> different media on one device eg. photos, texting, GPS
2.
Interactivity
Answer: - We can now interact with media -> liking Facebook posts, replying to tweets - Participatory culture
3.
Global networks
Answer: - Can now interact globally - Increased resources to increase intelligence
4.
Hypertextual
Answer: Hyperlinks - More freedom of choice to navigate media
5.
Virtual worlds
Answer: - Not same as face to face - People only show good parts of themselves - Creates false images
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Clari WhittingtonQ. Outline and evaluate Milgram’s study into obedience
Obedience is a form of social influence which involves following orders/requests of an
authority figure. It is a more direct form of social influence as the individual does not have
much choice; they are given the choice to comply with what they have been asked to do or
defy. Milgram (1963) decided to investigate the effects of obedience to someone in
authority by conducting a shock study. He was curious as to how easily normal people could
be influenced into committing atrocious acts. He gathered 40 American participants, all
male, and experimented on how many of them would comply with giving severe electric
shocks to a person, ranging from 15v to 450v, because an authority figure has ordered them
to. His participants were given the role as ‘teacher’ and a confederate, who they would
shock, given the role as ‘learner’. After electric shocks were given, an audio recording of the
learner in ‘pain’ would be played to convince the participants further. After 300v, no
recordings were played, just silence, to which the experimenter (another confederate)
would tell them to treat no answer as a wrong answer and continue to shock them. Through
this study, Milgram found that none of his participants stopped below 300v, with 65%
continuing to shock all the way up to 450v, a lethal shock. This was surprising as before the
study, he predicted only 1% would comply.
An issue with Milgram’s study, is that it was androcentric. He experimented with 40 male
participants, generalising the study to men only. The study could therefore not be
generalised to the rest of the world due to potential gender differences. However, in a
replicated study with both men and women, although women did report feeling more
stressed, there were no reported gender differences, and the results stayed the same with
also 65% of people obeying orders. Furthermore, Hofling (1966) conducted a study with 22
nurses being ordered by telephone to give their patients a lethal dose of an unknown drug
‘astroten’. 21 out of 22 nurses obeyed these orders, demonstrating that both men and
women obey authority with no displayed gender differences.
An ethical issue with Milgram’s study is that there was no protection from harm for his
participants. By exposing his participants to extremely stressful situations, he created the
risk of causing psychological harm. Throughout the study, qualitative data was collected of
participants showing extreme signs of distress such as sweating, crying, trembling and
digging their fingernails into their hands. Some participants also pleaded to stop the
experiment. It could also be argued that the participants right to withdraw was obstructed
due to the verbal prompts from the ‘experimenter’ such as ‘the experiment requires you to
continue’. However, Milgram did debrief the participants fully after the study. He argued
that the signs of distress they showed were only short-term, and after being debriefed their
stress levels decreased. He also followed up with them after the event to ensure they were
not harmed, most of them saying they were happy they took part. This therefore shows that
despite the stress they experienced, Milgram made an effort to ensure they were not
harmed after the study.
Another ethical issue is that he did not collect fully informed consent from the participants,
therefore deceiving them. The participants were made to believe that they were randomly
allocated the roles of ‘teacher’ and ‘learner’, to then later find out it was fixed. They were
also led to believe they were genuinely admitting real shocks to another individual, despite
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