Ethical Issues in Psychology and Your Responsibility Flashcards
Resources: Banyard, Philip. Ethical Issues in Psychology (Foundations of Psychology) (p. 22). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.; https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html,
What is ethics?
Ethics can be defined as the rules and guidelines that we use to distinguish ‘right’ from ‘wrong’, ‘good’ from ‘bad’ and ‘help’ from ‘hindrance’ and how we judge our own behaviour and the behaviour of others (Banyard & Flanagan, 2006 ).
What is psychological literacy?
Psychological literacy encapsulates the idea that an understanding of basic principles of human behaviour and development gained through the study of Psychology will help us to better understand ourselves and others, and will help individuals and organisations to function better.
What is psychologically literate citizenship?
Psychologically literate citizenship extends the ideas of psychological literacy to incorporate the benefits that an understanding of Psychology can bring to the individuals who study it and their local and global communities.
What is employability?
Employability encompasses not only immediate employment, but also lifelong employability and as such
involves qualities such as adaptability, resilience, and lifelong learning.
What is lifewide learning?
It’s learning in multiple contexts, not only through lifelong learning (defined as a single dimension), but also through every situation throughout our lives, and transferring that learning across all the different contexts in which we find ourselves, such as work, community, social groups, parenting and so on.
What is cognitive psychology?
Cognitive psychology is defined as the study of mental processes including attention, language and
communication, learning and memory, thinking, reasoning and problem solving, and perception (APA
2013).
What does it mean to be a biological psychologist?
Biological psychologists take the perspective that behaviour and experiences are caused by activity in the
body’s nervous system via electrochemical processes and genetic influences. Investigation is typically at
the level of neurons, neurotransmitters, brain circuitry and the basic biological processes that underlie
normal and abnormal behaviour. In doing so, biological psychology contributes to the understanding of
many disorders including Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, depression, schizophrenia, autism,
anxiety and drug and alcohol abuse.
What is the relation between psychological literacy and mental health literacy?
As a corollary of improving psychological literacy, mental health literacy will also improve.
What is social psychology?
Social psychology describes, explains and predicts thoughts, emotions and behaviour in groups and
relationships.
What are the graduate attributes for psychology students?
The graduate attributes: (i) scientific literacy (‘the ‘foundational knowledge’ that is applied adaptively’); (ii) employability (‘adaptive application of principles to employment issues; eg critical thinking, values, communication’); and (iii) global citizenship (‘applying psychological principles to advancing the long-term wellbeing of local and global communities, essential for dealing with the world today and into the future’). Crowe (2012, p.61)
What was the aim of Milgram’s obedience experiment?
Stanley Milgram was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.
He was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII.
What were the results of Milgram’s obedience experiment?
65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e., teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.
What were the conclusions of Milgram’s obedience experiment?
Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.
People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and/or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school, and workplace.
Describe the procedure of Milgram’s obedience experiment.
- The study is ostensibly about the ability to learn word pairs.
- Two people are recruited for a study and “randomly” assigned the role of learner or teacher.
- The true participant always ends up as the teacher and the learner is actually a confederate.
- A third participant (again a confederate) plays the role of experimenter.
- The teacher must give the learner an electric shock each time he makes a mistake. The shocks increase by 15 volts each time.
- At 300 volts the learner cries out in pain.
- If the teacher asks to stop, the experimenter gently insists that it is important that he continues;
What was the aim of Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment?
To expound on Milgram’s earlier research and study the human response to captivity, in particular, to the real-world circumstances of prison life.
The researchers were interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards (i.e., dispositional) or had more to do with the prison environment (i.e., situational).
What were the results of Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment?
Several of the guards became progressively more sadistic - particularly at night when they thought the cameras were off, despite being picked by chance out of the same pool as the prisoners.
The experiment very quickly got out of hand. A riot broke out on day two. One prisoner developed a psychosomatic rash all over his body upon finding out that his “parole” had been turned down. After only 6 days (of a planned two weeks), the experiment was shut down, for fear that one of the prisoners would be seriously hurt.
What were the conclusions of Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment?
Although the intent of the experiment was to examine captivity, its result has been used to demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social and institutional support. It is also used to illustrate cognitive dissonance theory and the power of seniority/authority.
Describe the procedure of Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment.
Subjects were randomly assigned to play the role of “prisoner” or “guard”. Those assigned to play the role of guard were given sticks and sunglasses; those assigned to play the prisoner role were arrested by the Palo Alto police department, deloused, forced to wear chains and prison garments, and transported to the basement of the Stanford psychology department, which had been converted into a makeshift jail.
What is the Strange Situation technique?
It’s a method to assess strength of attachment, conducted in a novel environment and involving eight episodes. An infant’s behavior is observed as mother leaves and returns, and when with a stranger.
Describe shortly the case of Genie.
Genie Wiley was abused and neglected for over a decade until she was discovered in 1970 when she was 13 years old.
Known as the feral child, Genie became an important subject of research. Of special interest was whether she could acquire language, as she was no longer within the “critical period” for language development.
Genie’s case presented an ethical dilemma between prioritizing her care or prioritizing research on her development.
What is privacy?
A person’s right to control the flow of information about themselves.
