How would you answer? "Discuss the findings..." 16 Mark Essy

Hello,

The question presented is quite simple if you break it down.

AO1- The fact that the question is ONLY asking for the findings, in order to gain these gain these 6 marks, you will need to give an in depth and detailed description of the findings of Milligram's shock experiment. This means you will not address the actual procedure but only focus on the findings. So, stating points like 'Out of 40 participants, 62% of them went on to the give the maximum shock of 450 volts' 'Perhaps more surprisingly, 100% of participants went up to at least 300 volts'. 6-7 points like these addressing the findings/results will ensure you all 6 marks. I will also mention at the end of the AO1 you say what exactly his findings showed i.e the conclusion drawn. So you could say something like 'Milligram's research quite clearly depicted that people are willing to obey quite extraordinary orders if they feel that the person giving them the order is in a position of authority'.

A03- I would do the AO1 and AO3 separately, so when you have finished everything in AO1, then go onto AO3.You should be aware that AO3 is 10 marks, therefore about 3-4 paragraphs each discussing evaluative points with further development of the points (Demand characteristics, laboratory experiment thus lacks eco-logical validity ) will give you the best chances of gaining these 10 marks. I will show you how you can go about doing one AO3 paragraph. You can argue that Milligram's finding entails great historical validity; Burger(2009) founds levels of obedience in a similar study to Milligram's experiment some 46 years later, showing that findings can still be applied to today. Then in your development, you can counter this with Blass (2009) who found no relationship when conducting a statistical analysis of all Milligram-type obedience experiments between the years 1961 and 1965. You will then link this back to the question and say something like, This makes us dismiss the validity and relevance of such findings highlighting a limitation of the research. Other evaluative points can look at ethical issues ect.

I'm currently an A2 student studying Psychology for the AQA spec,

Hope this helps.