1.1. Originally, Germans in WWII but, used 40 males aged between 20 and 50 whose job ranged from unskilled to professional
1.2. The sample was biased because there were only male participants.
1.3. The study cannot be used as a representation of the American population because his sample was self - selected.
2. Procedure
2.1. Recruit 40 males, aged 20 to 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional volunteers for a lab experiment. Pay them $4.50. Introduce participants to another participant, who is a confederate of the experiment. Make participants draw sticks to determine role of learner or teacher. Fix the draw so that the confederate is always the learner. Have an experimenter dressed in a lab coat. Have two rooms, one for the learner in a electric chair, and one with the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator. Get the learner to to learn a list of words and their pairs. Whenever the learner got the word and it's pair wrong the teacher should give them an electric shock and increase the shock each time. If the teacher refuses to shock them the experimenter is to give them a series of orders
3. Findings
3.1. 65% of the participants went all the way to the highest voltage of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.
3.2. Obedience is ingrained in us. If someone is recognized as an authority figure, people are more likely to do what they say and not question it.
4. Aim
4.1. To determine how far people will go in harming others if they were told to do so
5. Ethical Issues
5.1. Deceptive because the participants actually believed they were shocking real people.
5.2. Withdrawal from a study because the participants wasn't given the right to leave at any time
5.3. There was no protection of participants, they were exposed to "extremely stressful" situations. It was said to have the potential to cause psychological harm.
6. Validity and Reliability
6.1. This experiment was conducted in a laboratory setting and this calls into question whether this would happen in a real-life situation.
6.2. The experiment has been replicated in a variety of cultures and most lead to the same conclusions and in some cases higher obedience rates.
