Social Study - Bocchiaro et al Flashcards
What did they want to understand?
The nature of disobedience (as opposed obedience) to unjust authority, the paradigm that gives participants the chance to obey, disobey, or blow the whistle against authorities, and the personal characteristics that differentiate them from those who obey
What is a whistleblower?
A person who makes public disclosure or corruption or wrong doing
What is a research paradigm?
A method, model or pattern for conducting research
What is a personality inventory?
A questionnaire designed to reveal personality trait of the respondent
What were the hypothesis?
Participants will obey the experimenter, relatively lower level whistle-blowing than disobedience, substantial overestimation of the tendency to disobey and blow the whistle, and weak effects for various personality variables
What is a pilot study?
A small-scale preliminary study designed to evaluate the feasibility of a full-scale study
How many pilot studies did they carry out?
Series of eight pilot tests
Why did they complete the pilot study?
To ensure that the procedure was credible and morally acceptable to the participants
What is the sample of the main study?
149 undergraduate students from VU university in Amsterdam, mean age of 20.8 years, 96 females and 53 males
How was the sample obtained?
recruited by flyers in the campus cafeteria at the VU university in Amsterdam and paid €7 for participants
What was the sampling method?
Self-selecting
Who met the participants and in what way did they do this?
The participants were met by a male Dutch researcher who was formally dressed with a stern demeanour
What were the participants asked to provide?
They were told a fake cover story about what the study was actually about and asked to give the ones of a few other students who could take part in the study
What was the planned study studying?
Sensory deprivation
What did they want to do the cover study?
They wanted to replicate the study at the VU University because they had no data on young people.
What were the participants asked to do after hearing this cover story?
Participants were asked to write a statement to convince the students they names earlier to take part in the sensory deprivation study. They were told if they did this they could be contacted for future promotion - perhaps more money
How long did the experimenter leave the room for? What did this allow the participants to do?
They then left the room for 3 minutes to give participants time to reflect on their decision and what actions they were going to do next (obey, disobey, or whistleblow)
What was in the second room?
The computer and a mailbox and a research committee form (which outlines ethics and how if the study violated this they could tick the box and put it in the mailbox)
What words did they have to use?
They were told to include the words ‘exciting’, ‘incredible’, ‘ great’ and ‘superb’
What were they not supposed to mention?
Told not to include the negative effects of sensory deprivation
How long did the experimenter leave them to write their statement?
They were left in this room for 7 minutes
Where did they go after room 2?
They went back to room 1
What were the two personality inventories did the participants have to fill in?
HEXACO-PI-R and SVO (Social value orientation)
What were they probed with?
Suspiciousness about the nature of the study
What did the full debrief the experimenter gave ensure for the participants?
Ensure they didn’t feel uncomfortable about their performance (if they had been disobedience) and the fact they’d been deceived
What were the participants asked not to discuss?
The study with colleagues and friends
What did they want to consent through the use of the form?
Their data to be used
Why were the participants given an email address to contact?
Just in case they wanted to complain or ask further questions about the study
What is being disobedient in terms of this study?
Refusing to write a statement persuading fellow students to take part in the sensory deprivation study
What is a closed whistleblower in terms of this study?
Wrote a statement persuading fellow students to take part in the sensory deprivation study but also reported the experimenter asking them to do this to the Human Ethics Committee
What is an open whistleblower in terms of this study?
Refused to write a statement persuading fellow students to take part in the sensory deprivation study and also reported the experimenter asking hem to do this to the Human Ethics Committee
What is being obedient in terms of this study?
Wrote a statement persuading fellow students to take part in the sensory deprivation study
How many people were obedient in the main study?
114 - 76.5%
How many people were disobedient in the main study?
21 - 14.1%
How many people were open whistleblowers in the main study?
5 - 3.4%
How many people were anonymous whistleblowers in the main study?
9 - 6%
What were the difference between the main study and the comparison study?
Lots of people say they’s behave in one way when actually they wouldn’t. People say they are moral but perhaps would actually be obedient in the scenario
What was the only personality difference found?
The participants’ faith - whistleblowers had more faith - perhaps this is because they believe they will be rewarded in the afterlife so must do good by reporting the unethical study
What were some examples of qualitative findings from this study>
“It was expected of me, that’s why I continued”, “I cooperated because the experimenter asked me to”. “I disobeyed because I felt responsible towards friends”
What were the conclusions?
Whistleblowing is difficult even when it appears to be the easiest path to follow, situational pressure have a powerful effect on individual, people often priest they would behave in a better way than they actually would
Ethical guidelines that were upheld
Confidentiality, right to withdraw, consent, debrief
Ethical guidelines that were broken
Protection from harm, deception
Internal reliability points
Lots of control used such as time in room, story given personality inventories etc.
External reliability points
Although the sample was large enough to show consistent effect, might have a issue with gender
Internal validity points
People may have been obedient due to genuinely wanting the study to take place, or have been malicious in selecting students they didn’t like to recommend the study to
External (population) validity points
All sample were students from same University and all of young age (mean age 20.8) - wasn’t generalisable
External (ecological) validity points
Realistic by present of authority figure as most whistleblowers in real life would be in a work settings. However there perhaps would be more consequences in a real life scenario
Ethnocentrism points
All of the sample were students of the UV University in Amsterdam - does show similar results to Milgram so perhaps obedience in universal
