Bocchiaro (2012) Contemporary

Question 1

What was the aim?

Answer 1

To see how many people will comply with an unethical request and how many will respond by ‘whistle blowing’ to a higher authority

Question 2

How many participants were they?

Answer 2

149 students

Question 3

What task were the students asked to do?

Answer 3

They had to write a statement to convince other students to participate in a traumatic sensory deprivation experiment
Participants left alone to see what they would do

Question 4

In a separate procedure what happened?

Answer 4

138 students were told about the scenario and asked what they would do and what they thought the averages tide them would do

Question 5

Results

Answer 5

When asked most participants said they would report the unethical experiment and that the average student would disobey

76. 5% of people actually obeyed
77. 4% blew the ‘whistle’

Question 6

Conclusion

Answer 6

People are vey obedient and whistle blowing is uncommon

People overestimate the tendency to blow the whistle and underestimate the likelihood of obedience

Question 7

What was the research method?

Answer 7

It was a lab experiment

Question 8

Data

Answer 8

Data gathered was quantitative
Percentage of who displayed obedience, disobedience and whistle blowing
Easy to compare

Question 9

Ethical considerations

Answer 9

Situation relatively low in stress
Participants left alone to make the decision and not ‘prodded’
Participants had the opportunity to withdraw their data from the study if they were not satisfied with ethical conduct
Involves deceit but is acceptable as they were informed of the true nature of the study

Question 10

Validity

Answer 10

Ecological validity very good

The real life situation it set out to represent was taking part in a laboratory study

Question 11

Reliability

Answer 11

Conditions standardised

Good reliability

Question 12

Sampling bias

Answer 12

Main study made up of 149 undergraduate students from a Dutch uni
Unrepresentative of the general population

Question 13

Ethnocentrism

Answer 13

Although they looked at samples from one population they did asses religious affiliation
Some account taken of culture
Limited so the study can still be said to be ethnocentric to some extent

Question 14

Practical application

Answer 14

It’s under researched and of great interest to people in many fields