Ethics

Most ethical core studies

• Deregowski – harmless showing pictures
• Gardner and Gardner? – Safe environment could have got eaten in the jungle! Abuse of animal rights though.
• Sperry – Had operation anyway and gave their consent.
• Hodges and Tizard? – Consent Could stir up trouble in the family.
• Tajfel – Harmless, fun activity, got paid
• Dement and Kleitman – consent, hopefully they didn’t allow sleep deprived participants to be exposed to danger
• Samuel and Bryant – ok but consent or upsetting children could be a problem

Least ethical core studies

· Zimbardo – Protection of participants, Withdrawal difficult, lack of informed consent, confidentiality – arrest at home, torture, observation, wearing dress

· Milgram – Protection of participants, withdrawal, Deception, upsetting

· Bandura – Teaching aggression, frightening child (Protection of participant). Consent, withdrawal

· Gardner and Gardner – animal rights

· Rosenhan – protection of participants – taking drugs

· Piliavin – deception, upsetting people, protection of participants

Problems with trying to be ethical

· You need to deceive in order for the experiment to work (Demand Characteristics would ruin the experiment) e.g Milgram – if they knew it was to do with obedience the participants would not have obeyed.

· Impracticable to debrief and get consent (e.g. Piliavin)

· Difficult to get fully informed consent without giving away what the experiment is all about, so demand characteristics ruin the experiment.

· It is not always possible to predict how people will react (e.g. Zimbardo – who was to know the prisoners would break down?

Milgram – he didn’t expect people to obey.

· Could miss out on interesting research, for example, into anti-social behaviour. Bandura’s aggression experiment could have been much worse.

· Research that adheres fully to ethical guidelines would suffer from low ecological validity.

Bear in mind that the results of ethical studies could be used un-ethically – links with social control. E.g. Raine, Gould, Hodges and Tizard.

Think about how to make unethical studies ethical.

Ethical suggestions for research that has been unethical

Zimbardo – experimenter should not get involved – should have an independent person watching what goes on with prisoners.

Zimbardo – observe real guards and interview families.

Make it a natural experiment and you should not go wrong!