Psychology 101
Professor Nelson
February 1st 2013 “Milgram Study” The hypothesis of Milgram's study was a depositional view of the German character. known as the Germans are different hypothesis. This hypothesis states that German’s have a character that is know to readiness obey people of high authority regardless of the act they are being asked to do or even where. This lead to a situation that many people had found themselves in. This supposedly led to their cruel behavior. It would follow from this, that most people, regardless of nationality, would perform cruel acts upon another, under certain situations. The defense for many of the war criminals had been they had been following orders. Obedience can be defined as complying to the demands of others, particularly those in positions of authority. The method used in the study is experimental but did not have control conditions and all of the participants took place in the same experimental procedure. The study was more of a type of controlled observation that was based on the emotional responses of people asked to shock another person. The independent variable was the orders given from the experimenter to the participant to carry out and the dependent variable was how well the participant obeyed the experimenter. The study was more of a controlled test then is was a group. 40 males of the ages of 20 to 50 came to the study and there was always three people in the test at a time the experimenter that gives the orders, the participant that carried out