Four Famous Social Psychology Experiments

John Bradford, Ph.D.

Stanley Milgram and Obedience

• One of the most famous experiments of the 20th century.

• What explains the Holocaust? Are Germans just inherently more obedient than other people?

• The Milgram experiment measured the willingness to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.

Stanley Milgram and ObedienceExperiment: • Three roles:

– an experimenter (man in white lab coat); – a volunteer (the ‘teacher’); – and the shockee (the ‘learner’). All are

actors except the volunteer. • Responding to a newspaper ad, a volunteer

was told he would be participating in an experiment testing the effects of negative reinforcement (punishment) on learning. The volunteer was told that a ‘teacher’ (giving electric shocks) and ‘learner’ (receiving electric shocks) were to be picked at random.

Stanley Milgram and ObedienceExperiment: • In reality, the experiment was to see how much

electroshock the teacher would give as punishment, when told it was part of an experiment. Everyone but the ‘teacher’ was acting and knew the true purpose of the experiment. No electric shocks were actually administered, but the volunteer believed he was administering them.

• The ‘learner’ would go into another room and a tape recording was played of scripted answers. For each wrong answer, the teacher was supposed to give a shock to the learner, with the voltage increasing in 15-volt increments for each wrong answer.

Stanley Milgram and ObedienceFindings:• BASELINE STUDY (most famous):

65% of volunteers ‘go all the way’ and are willing to shock the subject to death!

• Milgram also studied 20-40 variants of this experiment with different results:

Stanley Milgram and ObedienceFindings:• Experiment #3: The Shockee is placed in the

same room so that the volunteer can see him; obedience drops to 40%.

• Experiment #4: The volunteer must physically restrain the shockee; obedience drops to 30%.

• Experiment #14 : If experimenter is not a scientist in a white lab coat, then obedience drops to 20%.

• Experiment #17: Volunteer and two other participants (both actors); if other actors refuse to continue the experiment, obedience drops to 10%

Stanley Milgram and ObedienceFindings:• Experiment #15: *If there are two

other experimenters in white lab coats (both actors) who disagree about what to do, then obedience drops to ZERO!

• As soon as participants are told that they “have no choice”, obedience drops to ZERO!

• These results were confirmed in 2006.

Stanley Milgram and Obedience

QUESTION: What does all this mean? Why did so many people go along with the experiment, if they only did so long as they were NOT ordered to do so?

Stanley Milgram and Obedience• This study does NOT show that

people ‘obey orders’! • They are participating because they

believe they are promoting the common good, a noble cause: science.

• They are shocking innocent strangers not because they believe they have to, but because they believe they ought to.

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiments

Experiment: • 70 volunteers selected; • by flip of coin, half are chosen as

guards, other half as prisoners• Participants make up their own

rules; not pre-determined• Each participant was paid $15 a

day

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiments

• Findings: • Experiment ended after 6 days!• Could no longer distinguish reality (the

experiment) from the roles they adopted as prisoners and guards

• “There were dramatic changes in virtually every aspect of their behavior, thinking and feeling…. We were horrified because we saw some boys (guards) treat others as if they were despicable animals, taking pleasure in cruelty, while other boys (prisoners) became servile, dehumanized robots….” (141)

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiments

• Findings: • About 1/3 of guards became

‘corrupted by the power of their roles’ (142)

• “[T]he mere act of assigning labels to people and putting them into a situation where those labels acquire validity and meaning is sufficient to elicit pathological behavior” (Zimbardo, pg. 143)

‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’

• Can we always distinguish ‘normal’ from ‘abnormal’ people? The ‘sane’ from the ‘insane’?

• How objective are these labels? 1. Are ‘insane’ behaviors caused by

innate characteristics of these individuals or are they elicited from external environments?

2. Do observers see the ‘same’ behavior differently in different circumstances? Scene from One Flew

Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’• Rosenhan undertakes groundbreaking study: will

sane people (‘pseudo-patients’) be recognized as sane by hospital staff in a psychiatric ward?

• Experiment– 8 sane people admitted into 12 hospitals; 3 women, 5

men– Initially complained of ‘hearing voices’ of an ‘existential

nature’: – Symptoms chosen because there were zero reports of

‘existential psychoses in the literature’– After being admitted, pseudo-patients behaved

normally– Length of stay ranges from 7 to 52 days, average of 19

days

D. L. Rosenhan

‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’

• Findings: The normal are not detectably sane! – Pseudo-patients were never detected

• Other patients (but not doctors and staff) sometimes detected that they were not insane.

– Each was discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia “in remission”

– Normal behaviors were often interpreted as abnormal because of the diagnosis!

D. L. Rosenhan

Labels and Perception

Label (diagnosis)

Perception of

behavior

• “Once a person is designated abnormal, all of his other behaviors and characteristics are colored by that label” (280).1. Observers perceive normal

behavior as crazy; our expectations thus reinforce our initial impressions

2. Patients can even begin to see themselves as ‘crazy’, and thus act crazy (self-fulfilling prophecy)

Asch’s Conformity Experiments• Question: Which of the lines on

the second card (A, B, or C) is the same length as the line on the first card?

• “That we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call White Black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about out ways of education and about the values that guide out conduct” (95)

Solomon Asch(1907 – 1996)