social area (bocchiaro) unit 2

Question 1

aim

Answer 1

wanted to create a situation that confronted participants with the choice of obeying, disobeying, or blowing the whistle against an authority who was encouraging immoral behaviours.

Question 2

sample

Answer 2

participants recruited by flyers
posted in university of Amsterdam
Offering either €7 or course credit, these attracted 149 undergraduate students to take part (96 females and 53 males, with a mean age of 20.8 years).

Question 3

procedure

Answer 3

The experimenter explained that he needed the participant to write a statement to convince the students named earlier to take part in this sensory deprivation study.
He added that by doing this the participant could expect extra work and, therefore, extra money. The experimenter also explained that the proposed sensory deprivation study was currently being considered for ethical approval by the University, and he added that the Ethics Committee was interested in feedback from students who knew about the research.
Bocchiaro et al were interested in how the participants would behave:
Would they obey and write the statement?
Would they disobey and refuse to write the statement?
Would they whistle-blow by ticking the Ethics Committee form and posting it in the mailbox?

Question 4

conclusions

Answer 4

obedient comparison group - 3.6&
main group - 76.5%
disobedient comparison group 31.9%
main group 14.1 %
whistle blower comparison - 64.5%
main 9.4%