InThinking Revision Sites

INTHINKING REVISION SITES

Own your learning

Why not also try our independent learning self-study & revision websites for students?

We currenly offer the following DP Sites: Biology, Chemistry, English A Lang & Lit, Maths A&A, Maths A&I, Physics, Spanish B

"The site is great for revising the basic understandings of each topic quickly. Especially since you are able to test yourself at the end of each page and easily see where yo need to improve."

"It is life saving... I am passing IB because of this site!"

Basic (limited access) subscriptions are FREE. Check them out at:

www.StudyIB.net

Checking understanding: Ethics in sociocultural

  • /
  • Student resources/
  • Sociocultural approach/
  • Critical thinking activities/
  • Checking understanding: Ethics in sociocultural

One of the common questions for the levels of analysis is: Discuss ethical considerations related to research studies. This is a rather problematic learning objective because often on exams, students focus on ethical problems with specific research studies, rather than focusing on the demands of the question. The question is asking students to discuss ethical considerations. The question is not asking them to evaluate the research!

In order to answer this question well, the ethical considerations need to be outlined in some detail and discussed within the context of the level of analysis. Below are three examples of how this could be done.

You can read a sample SAQ for this question here: Ethics in the SCA 

Deception

There are many reasons why deception is used. Most commonly, it is used as a way to control for demand characteristics. If the participants are not sure what the study is about, they are less likely to do what they are "supposed to do" - expectancy effects are avoided. In one variation of deception, a covert observation can be carried out in which the participants are not aware that they are being watched.

Social psychology has a special problem when it comes to deception. The SCLOA, more than the other two levels of analysis, attempts to carry out research in natural environments. A lot of field research is done to see how people react in social situations. But a researcher cannot wait forever for a situation to just "happen." Therefore, in this natural, everyday environment, the researcher "makes things happen."

Another way that deception is used is that the researcher may use a confederate to create and/or manipulate a social situation in order to observe the behavior of the "naive participant." Once again, this is done to establish a cause and effect relationship between variables but also attempts to look at a group. What the participant does to realize is that the group is actually "in" on the experiment.

There are three key reasons that a social psychologist may use deception:

  • To avoid demand characteristics by guaranteeing that the participant does not know the goal of the study.
  • To create and/or manipulate a social situation.
  • To get access to participants who would otherwise not be willing to be studied or if they knew they were being studied, they would radically change their behaviour.

Some of the studies that could be used to illustrate deception include, but are not limited to:

When discussing deception, you may want to discuss the following points:

  • How the nature of social psychology may affect the choice to use deception.
  • How deception influences other ethical considerations - for example, informed consent.
  • The importance of debriefing and how deception could lead to the withdrawal of data by the participant.
  • The difficulties of carrying out research that is covert - for example, the need to take notes privately, which may lead to data being lost or distorted due to the limitations of memory

Undue stress or harm

One of the outcomes of the deception used by researchers can be undue stress or harm. However, it is not only deception that can lead to undue stress or harm, but also the nature of the procedure itself.

"Undue stress" refers to any stress that would be more than a participant would encounter in everyday life. Simple discomfort or embarrassment is not "undue stress or harm." But several of the early studies in social psychology did cause great stress for the individual. In addition, the person must be able to leave the experiment in the same condition in which s/he arrived. So, when Bandura teaches children to be aggressive in the Bashing Bobo experiment, there is a question of harm in that perhaps the children have now learned to be violent.

Some of the studies that could be used to illustrate undue stress or harm include, but are not limited to:

  • Bandura's Bashing Bobo study
  • Milgram's study of obedience
  • Piliavin's helping study in the metro
  • Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Study

When discussing undue stress or harm, you may want to discuss the following points:

  • The importance of ethics panels. However, both Milgram and Zimbardo ran their ideas past colleagues at their universities and it was believed that the studies would not be successful - that is, they didn't expect anyone to actually be obedient in Milgram's experiment - maybe one in 1000.  And they predicted that in Zimbardo's study, there would be no problems. We have learned a lot from the early experiments in psychology and today our outlook is (hopefully) different.
  • The difficulty of predicting undue stress or harm.
  • Cost vs. benefit; The question of short-term stress or harm vs. long-term benefit
  • The importance of debriefing and the responsibilities of the psychologist if undue stress or harm has been experienced.

Right to withdraw

One of the fundamental rights of participants in psychological experiments is that they have the right to leave the experiment, even if the study is not completed. Even when they give consent and are paid for participating, they are not required to finish the experiment if they do not want to.

Once again, the nature of SCLOA research makes this ethical consideration rather problematic. First, when a field experiment is done, it is often not clear to participants that they are in a study - so that makes it difficult for them to withdraw. Deception may often lead to a situation where an individual feels that a situation is authentic and does not see an option to "get out of it." One good example of this is Piliavin's study of helping behavior on a public metro.

In addition, in research on obedience and conformity, it has often been said that the procedure actually tells individuals not to give up. In Milgram's classic study of obedience, participants were told to please continue. Even though the experiment would be stopped if the participant took x number of steps away from his chair, this was not known to the participant. In Zimbardo's prison study, the nature of being prisoner meant that they could not easily withdraw from the study, even though Zimbardo continues to insist that they could.

Some of the studies that could be used to illustrate the right to withdraw include, but are not limited to:

  • Milgram's study of obedience
  • Piliavin's helping study in the metro
  • Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Study

When discussing the right to withdraw, you may want to discuss the following points:

  • The role of deception in the "right to withdraw."
  • The stress caused by not being able to withdraw from an experiment.
  • What happens to the data when participants withdraw

Checking for understanding

1.  Why do psychologists use deception in their research?

Deception is used to avoid demand characteristics.  If the participants knew what the goal of the experiment was, they may do what they believe that they are expected to do - that is, the expectancy effect.  They may also try harder than usual in order to do their best.  When this happens, we do not see how the participant may normally behave. Sometimes deception is used simply to set up a situation so that it can be used to study behaviour.  If Milgram had informed them that the shocks were not real, then the study would have been pointless. Finally, they may use it to get access to participants that would otherwise not be willing to be studied - as seen in Festinger's study of the Doomsday cult. Even if they would have agreed to being studied, they may have radically changed their behaviour.  This last use of deception is the most controversial because it violates the rule of consent and it breaks down trust between psychologists and those being studied when (and if) the deception is revealed.

2. What are the requirements for a psychologist if she plans to use deception in her research?

If a psychologist uses deception, the first step is that she has to get her study approved by an ethics board. Psychologists are required to have their plans peer-reviewed to avoid unethical practice. Deception must be justified.  Deception should not be used for its own sake, but it must be shown that there is no other way to do the research and that the research has value.  Finally, all deception must be revealed to the participants at the end of the research and they have the right to withdraw their data if they feel that the deception was not acceptable.

3. What is meant by "undue" stress or harm? How is this decided?

"Undue" means unnecessary.  In this case, it means that any stress or harm done to the individual was beyond what they may normally experience in their day-to-day life. Undue also implies that there should not be any change to the participants; they should leave the experiment in the same condition in which they arrived. In Milgram's experiment, it is clear that the participants experienced high levels of stress. Milgram used his debriefing to reveal the deception and to talk to the participants about their feelings.  Zimbardo followed up his experiment with many encounter sessions to help the participants process what happened.  An ethics board should review research before it is done to avoid undue stress or harm.  In early research, it was often the case that psychology peers did not think that the participants would actually engage in the activity, so they incorrectly predicted the stress that the participants would actually experience.

4. Why is the right to withdraw rather complicated in field experiments?

When research is done in public spaces, it is mostly done without consent.  Since informed consent is not obtained, the participants are unaware that they are in an experiment - and thus, they cannot withdraw.  In addition, since it is not a controlled environment, participants may leave, never being debriefed.  For example, in Piliavin's study on public transportation, people get off the metro/subway without knowing that they had just witnessed a staged situation.  All of this makes it difficult for people to withdraw their data.