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Diagnose why using a confederate in this role was essential to the design of the experiment, and justify why the research findings would be invalid if the naïve participant discovered the confederate's true role.
Case context: Consider the ethical implications and design of the Milgram Experiment. In this study, the participant was instructed to administer shocks to another participant (the learner) in an adjacent room. In reality, the learner was a confederate of the researcher—a helper who pretended to be a real participant—and the protests, complaints, and screams that the participant heard were actually pre-recorded audio clips activated by flipping switches.
Question: Diagnose why using a confederate in this role was essential to the design of the experiment, and justify why the research findings would be invalid if the naïve participant discovered the confederate's true role.
Sample answer: Using a confederate allowed the researcher to simulate a social situation of causing harm to another person without actually doing so, which was necessary to measure obedience. If the naïve participant discovered the learner was a confederate, they would know the shocks and screams were fake, eliminating the social pressure and rendering their behavior artificial, which would invalidate the experiment's measure of obedience.
Key points:
- The confederate allows the researcher to manipulate the social situation (simulating pain) without real harm.
- The naïve participant must believe the confederate is a real, uninformed participant for their behavior to be natural.
- Knowledge of the confederate's true role would expose the deception, invalidating the study's findings on obedience.
Rubric: The response must explain that the confederate enables a standardized, safe social manipulation and clarify that if the participant discovered the deception, they would not act naturally, thereby destroying the internal validity of the obedience measurements.
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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU
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Ethical Implications of the Milgram Experiment
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In a psychological experiment, a confederate is a genuine participant who is completely uninformed about the study's true purpose.
Asch Conformity Experiment
In psychological research, what is the role of a confederate?
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