Psychology – AS Level approaches | e-Consult
AS Level approaches (1 questions)
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Strengths
- Demonstrated the powerful influence of authority on behaviour, providing a clear experimental illustration of obedience.
- High ecological validity in terms of the social pressures that can occur in real‑world settings such as the military or workplaces.
- Methodologically rigorous: use of a controlled laboratory environment and systematic variation of the proximity of the experimenter.
Limitations
- Ethical concerns: deception and psychological stress raised questions about participant welfare.
- Sample bias: participants were predominantly male, white, and from a specific cultural background (1960s United States), limiting generalisability.
- Artificial setting: the laboratory context may not fully capture the complexity of obedience in natural environments.
- Demand characteristics: participants might have guessed the purpose of the study and altered their behaviour accordingly.