Obedience5

Variations of Milgram's Original Paradigm

    Milgram continued his research by adjusting certain variables. The first was his proximity

experiments. He found that the nearer that the excperimenter was to the teacher, the more likely the

participant was to obey all orders up to the maximum voltage. Obedience rates dropped when the

experimenter was out of the room and phoning in his commands.

       Milgram then moved his research out of this very official, clean Yale laboratory and ran his

experiment in a seedy office building that was not associated with the university. At this point, they

also introduced another voice stimulus by having the learner add comments about his heart condition

as he is strapped into the chair. As they did not wish to make it a crucial problem, they did not make

it seem a serious condition and assured both participant and learner that the shocks should not ahve

an effect on a previous heart condition. He also complained of his "heart bothering him" at volts 150,

195, and 330 before falling into silence.

     Another variable manipulated was how close the learner was to the teacher. In some

experiments, the learner was in the same room, some he was in the next room and in some he was

so far away that his cries could not be heard at all.   As a reverse of the other proximity

manipulations, the closer the learner was to the teacher, the more likely the teacher was to stop the

experiment. When the learner was so far away that no cries were heard from him, the numbers

increased greatly as far as how many teachers would continue on with the punishments.

      Milgram also manipulated the perceived personality of the experimenter, sometimes making him

very authoritative, sometimes very shy and innocuous. The more commanding the presence of the

experimenter seemed to be, the more likely the teacher was to continue on with his experiment.

     Women as participants: Milgram ran a study of forty women as teachers. He hypothesized that

as women are thought to be mroe empathetic, they would be less likely to want to continue on with

the shocks. However, he also felt that as being generally more yeilding than men, they would be

more likely to follow all commands. He felt that the two theories would work in opposite directions

and cancel each other out. In fact, he found that the women's results were almost identical to the

men's results. He noted that he would have liked to pursue the gender differences further, putting

women in the role of victim and/or experimenter. He felt that having a woman or child as a victim

would decrease obedience greatly, but was unsure about having a woman in the role of

experimenter. On the one hand, he felt that it would be likely to make men less obedient to them as

an authority figure, but he also felt that men would want more to look as though they could handle

carrying out a woman's callous commands.

      Milgram also manipulated the social contract by changing the levels of responsiblity felt by the

teacher. In some conditions the teacher heard the learner agree to the experiment only so long as he

could leave at any time. In other conditions, he was asked to sign a contract releasing Yale from any

responsiblity for his actions. As can be expected, the more responsiblity the teacher felt, the mroe

likely he was to pull out of the experiment.

      When the subjects were told that they could choose the shock level or levels that they used, the

majority of the participants did not go above mid-level shocks with a few exceptions.