Consider Milgram’s obedience study, (You may see in the course…
Consider Milgram’s obedience study, (You may see in the course folder) As you recall, subjects playing the role of ”teachers” thought they were in a study of the effect of punishment on learning. A ”learner,” who was in on the deception and in the adjacent room, pretended to make numerous errors and the teacher’s job was to shock the learner for each error and increase the voltage by 15 volts for each successive error. Milgram was interested in discovering the point, from 15 to 450 volts, at which the teacher/subject would stop the experiment, thereby showing disobedience.

Describe how you might vary the procedure in subsequent studies to test these hypotheses:

1. Because of their greater compassion, women teachers would be more likely to

disobey the male experimenter, especially if the learner was also a woman.

2. There will be more disobedience if the learner clearly has a health problem

(e.g., cardiac symptoms).