Briefly outline Milgram's study on obedience (6 marks)

The aim of Milgram's study was to investigate the effect of an authority figure on behaviour. Milgram had the naive participant meet with the confederate and gave them a rigged draw so that the naive participant would always become the teacher and the confederate would become the learner. The teacher was told that they must administer a shock to the learner if they answered a question wrong - they believed all shocks were real when they were in fact fake. Every time the learner got a question wrong the shock level would increase, ranging from 15v to 450v. The teachers could not see the learner, but could hear their cries and pleas to stop. At different time throughout the experiment the learner would say different things, and at 300v they would be completely silent (assumed to have passed out or even died), and the teacher was encouraged to continue to give shocks. The authority figure was the 'investigator' that was there to add pressure and would say 'you must carry on' and so on if the teacher asked to leave. It was found that 100% of participants continued to give shocks up to 300v, and 65% gave shocks to 450v. This was a complete shock to Milgram and his team as they expected a much lower percentage of people to 'fully obey'.