Critically Assess Psychological Research Into Obedience Essay
Outline and critically assess psychological research into obedience
Psychological research into obedience over the years has enabled us to understand more about the human mind than ever before. When experiments are conducted, the aim is to demonstrate cause and effect relationships between the independent and dependant variables, usually in order to make generalising statements about people.
A well known study into obedience is the Milgram experiment, Milgram had a found interest in why during the Second World War hundreds of people obeyed the orders of others in authority. Millions of innocent people were killed on command. He wanted to test out this potential destructive obedience in a laboratory. Each participant out …show more content…
The main aim was to examine obedience in a real-life setting, A total of 22 nurses took part in the experiment. Each of the nurses was telephoned by a doctor (given a name that was not known to the nurse, e.g. Dr Hanford in one case) and told to give a patient 20 milligrams (mg) of the drug “Astroten”. The nurses were not aware that the pink pills inside the Astroten box were simply glucose tablets! On the box of Astroten it clearly stated that the usual does was 5 mg and the maximum daily dose was 10 mg. So the nurses were being asked to give twice the maximum dosage. The telephone conversation with the doctor was recorded. Also, the behaviour of the nurse was observed after the telephone call had been completed. Within 48 hours of the study, each of the nurses was interviewed and reassured that no harm had been done. They were also told that they would remain anonymous and absolutely no action would be taken against them. Of the 22 nurses in the study, 21 simply completed the telephone call and gave the patient 20 mg of Astroten. The average length of telephone call was around 2 minutes. This indicates that the nurses offered no resistance and simply followed the orders of an authority figure. Hofling had shown that people are obedient in real-life and in life-threatening
Psychological research into obedience over the years has enabled us to understand more about the human mind than ever before. When experiments are conducted, the aim is to demonstrate cause and effect relationships between the independent and dependant variables, usually in order to make generalising statements about people.
A well known study into obedience is the Milgram experiment, Milgram had a found interest in why during the Second World War hundreds of people obeyed the orders of others in authority. Millions of innocent people were killed on command. He wanted to test out this potential destructive obedience in a laboratory. Each participant out …show more content…
The main aim was to examine obedience in a real-life setting, A total of 22 nurses took part in the experiment. Each of the nurses was telephoned by a doctor (given a name that was not known to the nurse, e.g. Dr Hanford in one case) and told to give a patient 20 milligrams (mg) of the drug “Astroten”. The nurses were not aware that the pink pills inside the Astroten box were simply glucose tablets! On the box of Astroten it clearly stated that the usual does was 5 mg and the maximum daily dose was 10 mg. So the nurses were being asked to give twice the maximum dosage. The telephone conversation with the doctor was recorded. Also, the behaviour of the nurse was observed after the telephone call had been completed. Within 48 hours of the study, each of the nurses was interviewed and reassured that no harm had been done. They were also told that they would remain anonymous and absolutely no action would be taken against them. Of the 22 nurses in the study, 21 simply completed the telephone call and gave the patient 20 mg of Astroten. The average length of telephone call was around 2 minutes. This indicates that the nurses offered no resistance and simply followed the orders of an authority figure. Hofling had shown that people are obedient in real-life and in life-threatening