Ethical Issues

Question 1

How did Asch’s study break ethical guidelines?

Answer 1

1. Lack of informed consent: PPs weren’t informed of the study’s true aim - were told it was on visual perception and not conformity
2. Deception: PPs were mislead into thinking the confederates were also genuine PPs

Question 2

How did Zimbardo’s study break ethical guidelines?

Answer 2

1. Psychological harm due to degrading treatment - after 36 hours 1 prisoner had to be released due to showing severe psychological disturbances
2. Right to withdraw - in many cases when prisoners asked to leave they were forced to stau by guards and Zimbardo didn’t prevent this

Question 3

How did Milgram’s study break ethical guidelines?

Answer 3

1. Deception: PPs were led to believe they administered real shocks when in reality they were fake. PPs were also told the study was investigating the effect of punishment on learning when it was actually studying obedience
2. Right to withdraw: PPs lacked full right to withdraw as when they showed apprehensiveness the experimenter used verbal prods e.g. “please continue” to persuade them to stay in the study

Question 4

How do we evaluate the benefits and costs of this research?

Answer 4

• SI research that breaks ethical guidelines having both benefits and costs that need to be considered
• A benefit of Milgram’s studies is that they revealed that apparently normal members of the public can commit acts that cause severe harm to others due to obedience
• This educated the wider population on the dangers of blind obedience to authority and the need to question the morality of orders from authority
• However, Milgram’s PPs suffered both short-term and maybe even long-term harm due to the stressful procedure
• We must weigh up the cost and benefits of research into SI to ensure knowledge gained is worth violating ethics

Question 5

How do we evaluate the need for validity?

Answer 5

• Ethical violations is often necessary to gain valid results from SI research
• Asch had to withhold information like the true aim of the study and the fact that the other PPs were confederates
• If PPs were aware of the true nature of the study’s aims and PPs the would’ve showed very unnatural behaviour - demand characteristics
• This would reduce the validity of findings
• Since ethical violations are necessary for validity in SI research, researchers deal with them by giving PPs a full debrief after the study

Question 6

How do we evaluate the role in the development of ethical guidelines?

Answer 6

• The ethical implications of Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s studies played a big role in the development of ethical principles of psychology
• Before their research, researchers had few formal guidelines about how research should be conducted
• Due to the controversy raised by these studies, the BPS and APA created formal ethical guidelines still used by researchers today
• Nowadays, psychological studies can only be done if an ethics committee (appointed by the research institution) are satisfied that all efforts have been made to avoid breaking ethical guidelines
• Thus, ethical issues raised by SI research have led to major improvements in the ethical practices of psychological research