Bocchiaro

Question 1

Aim of the study?

Answer 1

to investigate the rates of obedience, disobedience and whistle blowing in a situation where no physical violence was involved but where it was clear the instructions were ethically wrong and to investigate the role of dispositional factors (individual differences) in obedience, disobedience and whistle blowing

Question 2

pilot study?

Answer 2

8 pilot studies were carried out involving 92 participants in order to be sure that the procedure was both credible and ethically acceptable. It was found that from the participants perspective the procedure was both believable and ethical

Question 3

sample?

Answer 3

All participants were undergraduate students from the VU university of Amsterdam. 92 people in the pilot studies and 149 in the main experiment with 96 women and 53 men recruited by flyers in the university cafeteria

Question 4

experimental design?

Answer 4

lab experiment

Question 5

the procedure?

Answer 5

Each participant arrived alone was were met by a stern experimenter who informed them that they were carrying out research into sensory deprivation. They said in their last study all PPs had panicked and had for the procedure to stop, but it wasn’t. They aimed to carry out a similar study but were waiting for ethical approval from the university. Each participant was instructed to write a statement to convince other students to take part in the sensory deprivation procedure and that they had to use at least 2 words from a choice of ‘exciting’, ‘incredible’, ‘great’ and ‘superb’ and not to mention the negative effects of sensory deprivation. The participant was then left alone in a room with a computer on which to compose their statement, a mailbox and some ethics committee forms. If a participant believed the study was unethical they had the option of completing a form and putting in in a mailbox. After 7 minutes the experimenter returned and led the participants back to the first room where they were given a set of dispositional measures

Question 6

How was obedience/disobedience assessed?

Answer 6

whether or not the participant composed the statement

Question 7

How was whistle blowing assessed?

Answer 7

whether or not they completed an ethics form and mailed it

Question 8

what were the dispositional measures given to the participants?

Answer 8

1. The HEXACO-PR-R personality test which measures personality trait: honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness (niceness), conscientiousness and openness to experience
2. The decomposed games measure of social values i.e the extent to which personal values are oriented towards benefit for all or just for the self
3. Religiosity was assessed by asking participants what their religion was, frequency of worship and extent of faith

Question 9

What happened after the procedure?

Answer 9

participants were debriefed, with a particular emphasis on why they had been deceived in the study. They then gave written consent for their data to be used

Question 10

How many people were surveyed about how they believed they would respond in the situation?

Answer 10

138 different participants were provided with a detailed description of the procedure and asked ‘what would you do?’ and ‘what would the average uni student do?’

Question 11

results?

Answer 11

The estimates gathered were dramatically different to the actual rates in the experimental procedure.
Only 3.6% of participants believed that they personally would obey and 64.5% believed that they would blow the whistle. The remaining 31.9% believed they would disobey.
In actual fact, 76.5% obeyed, 14.1% disobeyed and only 9.4% blew the whistle

Question 12

Did dispositional factors associate with levels of obedience?

Answer 12

None of the 6 personality trails,social value orientation or religiosity assessed was associated with levels of obedience, disobedience or whistle blowing.
There was a moderate relationship with depth of faith, with those expressing strong religious faith being slightly more likely to whistle blow

Question 13

5 conclusions?

Answer 13

1. People are very obedient and whistle blowing is uncommon
2. People overestimate the tendency to blow the whistle and underestimate the likelihood of obedience
3. There is little or no evidence to suggest that dispositional factors affect obedience or whistle blowing
4. Results support the findings of previous research showing that we tend to see ourselves as special and rate ourselves as less likely to follow destructive orders
5. Results have implications for social psychology research

Question 14

Realism of the study?

Answer 14

this procedure has realism because the situation being investigated was that of a psychologist carrying out a study which is exactly what happened so it’s not artificial

Question 15

what data was gathered and why was it a strength?

Answer 15

quantitative data was gathered in the form of percentages of participants displaying obedience, disobedience and whistle blowing. It was a strength because researchers wanted to make comparisons between rates of disobedience and whistle blowing

Question 16

ethical problems?

Answer 16

• The situation was relatively low in stress because PPs were not ordered to inflict direct harm and they were left alone to decide and were not ‘prodded’
• Pilot studies were carried out to make sure participants considered the experiment acceptable
• Participants had the opportunity to withdraw their data if they were not satisfied with the ethical conduct
• The design of the study involved deceit however they were informed of the true nature of the study ASAP

Question 17

Validity?

Answer 17

Ecological validity was very high despite the artificial and unusual task

Question 18

Reliability?

Answer 18

The conditions were standardised because everyone got the same task therefore the study has good internal reliability

Question 19

Sampling bias?

Answer 19

• The sample size was very large which is good in lab studies as it reduces the chance of the results being affected by extraneous participant variables
• Volunteer sampling leads to an unrepresentative sample as most people don’t volunteer
• All were undergraduates at a Dutch university so unrepresentative of the general population and to other cultures

Question 20

Ethnocentrism?

Answer 20

Sample was only from Dutch university however they assessed religious affiliation and religion is strongly associated with culture