Karen Bullen
R2208481
DE 100 Investigating Psychology 1
TMA02
Outline the similarities and differences between Milgrams (1963) obedience study and Burgers (2009) replication.

This essay will look at an important key psychological experiment carried out by the renowned social psychologist Stanley Milgram which was carried out in the early 1960’s (Banyard 2012) to determine how far ordinary people would go to inflict pain to a fellow human based on instruction from an authority figure, and that of the replication of the experiment which was carried out by Burger in 2009 (Byford 2014) to determine if the same level of obedience was still applicable in the 21st Century, as was observed in the original study some 40 years earlier. The essay will look at some of the key similarities and differences between the two studies. For the purpose of this essay only the base studies will be discussed.
Milgram’s motivation to study this trait in human behaviour came from the atrocities that took place during WW2, and the trial of Adolph Eichmann who in his defence said he was ‘simply following orders’ (Banyard 2012) to carry out the mass murders. Milgram asked himself ‘how can ordinary people who are courteous and descent in everyday life act callously, inhumanely without limitations of conscience?’ Milgram on Milgram (part 1): Obedience experiments (The Open University, 2014) Milgram devised his obedience study. He developed a laboratory based experiment to determine how far a participant in the experiment would go inflicting electric shocks to another person when instructed to do so by a person in authority in this case a scientist.
Both in the original study and the replication Milgram and Burger recruited participants through a newspaper advertisement, to take part in a scientific study of memory and learning. Milgram recruited 40 white males aged between 20 -50