Bocchiaro (2012) disobedience and whistleblowing Flashcards
area
social
assumptions
Behaviour is affected by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others.
Behaviour is affected by situational factors and the social context.
background summary
Unanswered questions after Milgram’s research – no information about disobedience; what about other countries; temporal validity; what about dispositional factors; would it make a difference if you know the victim; would it make a difference if authority figure wasn’t present in the room…?
Whistleblowing - Whistle-blowing means reporting wrong doing to higher authority, e.g. nurses reporting doctors to the board.
Pilot study - a small-scale trial run of a method to identify and resolve any problems with the procedure, for example checking validity and ethics.
aim
To investigate rates of obedience, disobedience and whistleblowing when instructions were clearly ethically wrong.
To investigate accuracy of people’s estimates of obedience, disobedience and whistleblowing in this scenario and to investigate the role of dispositional factors in obedience, disobedience and whistleblowing.
fake aim
To nominate friends to take part in a study into the effects of sensory deprivation.
method
Main study: Controlled observation in lab setting (scenario study); No IV; No IV; DV – obedience, disobedience and whistle-blowing rates
Pilot: 8 pilot studies conducted prior to the main study
Baseline: to gain information about estimated responses
sample
Main study -149 University/Undergraduate students from Amsterdam/VU Uni (‘students’ alone is not creditworthy); originally there were 160 but 11 dropped out.
96 women and 53 men; mean age 20.8.
Self-selected recruited through flyers in canteen – paid 7 euros or course credits.
Baseline - 138 – surveyed as to how they think they would respond if they took part in the experiment.
Pilot- 92 – took part in 8 pilot studies.
procedure
Step 1: Reading the cover story about sensory deprivation (11 participants did not believe it and so were removed from the experiment). They were then left alone for 3 minutes.
Step 2: Participants were taken to second room where they were given 7 minutes to write the letter + they have had Research Committee form available. Participants were told to be enthusiastic when writing their statements and had to use two adjectives among “exciting”, “incredible”, “great” and “superb”. Negative effects of sensory deprivation were not to be mentioned.
Step 3 – Taken back to first room and asked to complete personality inventories: 60-item HEXACO-PI-R - measures 6 personality dimensions (Honesty/humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience. Social Value Orientation - classifies participants as ‘prosocial’, ‘individualistic’ or ‘competitive’.
Step 4 – Probed for suspicion and debriefed
results
Baseline: * Only 3.6% indicated they would obey the experimenter. * Most believed they would be disobedient (31.9%) or WB (64.5%).
Experimental situation: * 76.5% obeyed the experimenter * 14.1% disobeyed * 9.4% WB (6.0% anonymous whistle-blowers and 3.4% open whistle-blowers) personality inventories: There was no significant difference in any of the six personality factors with the exception of depth of faith in relation to whistleblowing.
conclusions
People overestimate the tendency to blow the whistle, since 64.5% believed they would blow the whistle, when in fact only 9.4% did.
There is little evidence to suggest that dispositional factors affect whistleblowing, only depth of faith was found to be significant.
Obedience seems to be a natural tendency for most people and whistleblowing appears difficult to do.
ethical guidelines broken
- informed consent (as they were deceived, they had never given permission to the real study).
- deception (not given the real aim).
- right to withdraw (payment means ps don’t want to leave as easily).
- harm (asked to complete an immoral act so might feel guilty).
ethical guidelines adhered to
- degree of consent (volunteered to do the study so gave come degree on consent)
- debrief (deception of study fully explained afterwards).
- right to withdraw (could leave at any time with no penalty).
- confidentiality
1 similarity and 1 difference between the two studies investigating the same key theme.
A similarity between Milgram and Bocchiaro is the fact that participants were paid to take part in this study [P], which could increase the sense of obligation in participants and lead to invalid results regarding obedience [E]. For example, Milgram paid his participants $4.50 [E1] whereas Bocchiaro paid them 7 euros.
A difference between Milgram and Bocchiaro is the gender used in the sample [P], which suggests that not all results will be generalisable to the rest of the population. [E] Milgram used 40 males, which suggests that his results about obedience are not generalisable to females [E1] whereas Bocchiaro used 149 males and females, which make the sample more representative of the rest of the population.
applications
Whistle-blowing policies at work – protecting whistle-blowers since it seems that they may be reluctant to openly whistle-blow.
how does the core study link to the area/ perspective?
[A] The social context, such as the actual, imagined or implied presence of others, impacts on how people behave. [L] Bocchiaro’s study links to the social area since implied presence of authority figure was enough for participants to obey. [E] Specifically, when authority figure left participants alone in the room for 7 minutes, 76.5% of participants still obeyed and wrote a letter to their friend.
[A] Individual’s behaviour is affected by situational factors, for example the environment that we find ourselves in. [L] For example, in Bocchiaro’s study participants were in prestigious university and were faced with a stern authority figure giving them orders (situational factors). [E] This meant that only 23.5% of participants decided to either disobey orders (14.1%) or whistle-blow (9.4%).
how does the core study link to the key theme?
Bocchiaro tested the obedience, disobedience and whistle-blowing of 149 male and female pps from the VU University in Amsterdam by asking them write a letter encouraging fellow students to take part in sensory deprivation study. They were only asked to use positive words and forbidden to use any negative effects of the study in their letter.
He found that 76.5% of participants obeyed the stern experimenter and written the letter, despite him leaving the room for 7 minutes. Only 9.4% participants whistle-blew (reported the experimenter to the Research Ethical Committee) with most of them being anonymous whistle-blowers (written the supportive statement as well as reported the experimenter). This study supports the influence of situational factors on obedience, disobedience and whistleblowing since no personality traits were linked to obedience, apart from depth of faith which was slightly linked to whistle-blowing.
to what extent does the contemporary study change the understanding of the key theme?
Bocchiaro’s study does not change our understanding but confirms what we know to a large extent.
For example, Milgram found that people are really obedient to authority figures since 65% of people obeyed despite their emotional responses. What is more, we are very bad at predicting our behaviour.
Indeed, Bocchiaro confirms this because he found that 76.5% of people obeyed even when the experimenter left the room. What is more, he found that people estimated that 64.5% of pps will whistle-blow where in fact only 9.4% did. He has also added to our understanding by investigating dispositional factors. It was found that none of the personality dimensions influence whether a person obeys/disobeys or WB apart from depth of faith and WB.
ethnocentrism
- University of Amsterdam only, therefore obedience rates might be lower in non-Western countries, e.g. collectivist.
+ Since it was conducted in 2012 we could hope that there were some international students involved and therefore it is representative of other cultures too.
+ Assessed religious affiliation as one of the variables that might affect obedience. Religion is strongly associated with culture and although no religious diff were found there was some account taken of culture.
population validity
+ Large sample size of 149 people including males and females
+ Advertised in Uni cafeteria, so potentially studying variety of courses.
- However, the large sample size cannot be representative of all behaviour (students with mean age of 20.8 years and volunteers).
reliability
+ Standardised: same cover story about sensory deprivation study.
+ Fairly large sample (149), so results should be consistent.
+ Use of psychometric tests – HEXACO-PI-R and SVO – consistent for each participant.
internal validity
+ Pilot Study – checked whether cover story was believable.
+ Ruled out pps variables – used psychometric tests + + No researcher effects – left for 7 mins.
+ Controls – same scenario, left for 7 minutes, same psychometric tests.
- It is possible that some of the pps genuinely supported the idea of investigating the effects of sensory deprivation on brain function.
- During debrief they were asked not to discuss the study with colleagues and friends. If there were participants who ignored this request, subsequent participants would not show genuine obedience-related behaviour.
ecological validity
+ Asking students to write an email as well as the fact that they were asked to promote research in University is not unusual - - Real life whistle-blowers would presumably be employed by the organisation that they speak out about, and the financial hardship and potential career difficulties that could follow must cause anguish that is unlike anything that could be created in artificial lab-style conditions.
