Disadvantages Of Milgram's Obedience Study

Option B - Discuss the claim that ‘the advantages of the experimental method outweigh the weaknesses’, drawing on examples from Chapters 2, 5 and 8 of Investigating Psychology. (1500 Words)
Experimental methods have played a significant role in broadening and providing an understanding into the function of human behaviour. Many studies using an experimental method, have been pivotal in aiding this understanding from Milgram’s Obedience Study to Harlow’s study of attachment. An Experimental method intends to prove a theory (hypothesis) of an experimenter by manipulating different variables to see what outcome these have on the results. The hypotheses are an educated guess as to what manipulating the variables will do to the end results. These
Experimental methods can create a lack of ecological validity by generating environments that don’t exist in everyday life. These can potentially influence people’s thoughts and actions or get them to perform tasks that are out of the ordinary or produce unnatural behaviours. This can be seen in Milgram’s obedience study cited in Banyard, (2012, P.67) where, the experiment took place in a lab setting where scientists were given the orders, in real life situation its unlikely that a person would be taking orders from a scientist (more likely a policeman or doctor) and the lab / educational environment also presents a place, where most people wouldn’t be in real life situation. Many people might feel more inclined to be obedient in this environment from their own school days. Moreover, Milgram only used a small number of people from one location, again, this questions the results, by having such a small sample, its hard to suggest that everyone around the world would perform the same. This however, can be overcome by undertaking ensuring the sample population is mixed, varied and great enough to infer any statistics from the
The ease in which an experimental method can be replicated throughout different periods and locations means a researcher can compare and generalise results, however, the fabricated, unrealistic setting can also skew the results as it doesn’t account for human nature IE if a person would change their answer in this kind of setting. Most of the time it is agreeable that the ‘advantages of the experimental method outweigh the weaknesses’, the current understanding of many human behaviours would not exist, and research would by far more difficult to conduct and possibly hampering the development of many of the theories we currently have. There are several limitations associated with an experimental method, that can have detrimental effects on the procedure and results if not corrected and need to be carefully monitored throughout any experiment to ensure the most accurate results. A researcher must ascertain the best method for their individual research, based on the research question and take into consideration any of the disadvantages mentioned, when generating any conclusions of their results. (1595