Experimenter (2015)

Surely a lot of people have heard about Stanley Milgram's "shock" experiment back in the 1960's. We as psychology students have been exposed to this ever since year one, and by now I am pretty sure it won't trigger much response from us except "uhh again".

BUT. But. It is undeniable that Milgram was a brave man who brought upon an evolutionary breakthrough in the field of psychology because of his non-conforming attitude. This is also precisely why we still learn about his obedience experiment even though it was conducted over half a decade ago-- because he was daring enough and curious enough to do something no one else thought of doing.

Inevitably, I have to talk about "conformity and obedience" again when it comes to Milgram. Even though his experiment mainly focused on obedience, his environment demanded him to conform and comply to the moral standards of the academic field. Below are some detailed explanations regarding the three terms mentioned above:

1. Conformity

Conformity refers to a change in attitude or behavior of a person to cope with either real or imagined group pressure (Myers, 2014).This phenomenon can be justified through two generally categorized factors, namely normative social influence and informational social influence, with the former used in order to be accepted by the majority and be seen as normal, and the latter used to obtain information from the norm about situations that one is unfamiliar with (Ciccarelli & White, 2015). The film gave an example which is also another famous psychological experiment- Asch's conformity study (The "line" study, quoting Milagram's wife). It shows a participant choosing an obviously wrong answer to a question simply because other confederates picked the same wrong answer before him. As for Milgram himself, he was confronted by the IRB due to ethical issues with his obedience study, and they did not grant him a tenure in Harvard because he failed to conform to the ethical standards.

2. Obedience

Obedience, as shown in the movie, utilizes status and power to make others adhere to one's demands. Migram's participants showed a higher rate of obedience when the "experimenter" looked more professional or when the setting was more formal. Besides, the instructions given which requires them to continue the study acted as a motivator for them to go all the way with the electric shocks. It showed how much power the authority has over most people and whether they like it or not, most of them would commit "heinous" acts simply because they were asked to do so.

The biggest controversy surrounding Milgram's obedience study has always been the ethical aspect of it. In the beginning, I was also opposed to this study as it created psychological distress for some of his participants. However, after reading some of the follow-up reports as well as after watching "Experimenter", I feel that we should appreciate the obedience experiment more as Milgram opened our eyes to another side of human behavior that we have never been exposed to before this. And, as Dr Goh mentioned, we need more psychologists with the passion for experiment just like Milgram instead of people who run experiments and research just for the sake of completing a deadline. 

Having said that, below is my social experiment design:

The experiment will be set in a public restaurant near HELP University Damansara campus (since more students will eat at those restaurants), the restaurant will organize an event (a fake event, and we will need cooperation from the restaurant) which gives each customer a small piece of paper, asking them a series of questions about the restaurant so they will stand a chance to win a prize. Among the questions will be this: "are you feeling helpful today?". 

After customer A (target A) finished filling the paper, a confederate will walk into the restaurant and sit at the table beside the customer, there will be two conditions:

A) Confederate orders food but acts extremely rude to the waiter

B) Confederate orders food politely to the waiter

Afterwards, the confederate will leave his or her place but trips beside customer A, spilling his or her file full of papers. Then, we will see if customer A helps our confederate to pick them up.

- hypotheses:

1. Participants are more likely to help confederates who display higher level of agreeableness.

2. Participants' perceived helpfulness will contradict their actual helpfulness in condition A.

This experiment was inspired by the story of the Good Samaritan experiment, in which people will be less likely to help a person in need because of several circumstance such as short of time. However, this design has several limitations as we are unable to control the amount of customers coming into the restaurant, plus other customers might also help the confederate with his or her papers. Not to mention, by merely asking "are you feeling helpful today?", it may act as a reminder for potential participants to act more altruistically.

References:

Ciccarelli, S. K., & White, J. N. (2015). Psychology (4th ed.). England: Pearson Education Limited.

Myers, D. G. (2014). Social Psychology (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.