ETHICAL ISSUES

One psychological study that was unethical was Milgram’s study into obedience to
authority. He deceived his participants into believing that they were administering
real electric shocks to a real person. However, that person was a confederate and the
electric shocks were a sham; the confederate acted as if he was distressed.

MILGRAM stated that deception was a vital element of the study or else the
participants would have altered their natural behaviour and probably would have
obeyed anyways. He dealt with this ethical issue by conducting a pilot study where
he asked a group of students how many people would obey an unjust order given to
them by an authoritative figure to inflict pain on another person.

They estimated that only 3% would administer electric shocks up to 450 volts, when
in fact 65% did. Therefore, it has been questioned whether the participants knew they
were being deceived? Milgram claimed that he couldn’t predict how the participants
were going to behave in the actual study, so the deception was acceptable under his
terms. Another way in which he deemed the deception acceptable was by stating that
obedience is an integral part of society and people are always made to do some things
that they really don’t want to do.

Therefore, his research study had received great amount of praise by providing an
insight into obedience that can be applied to society and everyday life. Milgram also
dealt with the ethical issue of deception by debriefing his participants after the
study. They met up with the confederate, and then one year later, they were
interviewed in a follow-up, and were sent the results of the experiment.

On the other hand, Milgram’s study had been greatly criticised as there was ethical
disapproval regarding his findings, which showed that people would obey authority to
administer electric shocks. This turned into a negative response whereby people
attacked Milgram’s procedures for causing psychological and physiological harm,
because Milgram believed that most participants wouldn’t give the 450-volt shock or
suffer from any harm – making the ethical issues acceptable by Milgram’s standards.

BAUMRIND accused Milgram of not respecting his participants because they showed
signs of extreme anxiety (some o them even had full-blown seizures). DARLEY
stated that this could cause long-term effects by bringing out sadistic qualities of
people’s personalities. Milgram decided not to stop the study when the participants
showed signs of distress, because he later stated that in a follow-up questionnaire 74%
of them said that they learnt something of great importance by participating in the
study.

Therefore, he knew that they were stressed by going up to 450 volts, but he didn’t
think that any serious harm was caused because he knew that it was impossible for
him to predict how much harm his participants would suffer by being deceived.
CRITICS are divided in the subject of how useful the findings were in terms of the
question of was the harm caused really worth it? For instance, MANDEL proposed
that Milgram’s study doesn’t really show obedience at all and lacks mundane realism;
the harm caused was unnecessary as the study didn’t find what it aimed to.
Another psychological study that was unethical was Zimabardo’s prison simulation
study. He looked at conformity to social roles due to situational factors. The guards
wore uniform, reflective glasses and held a baton for threatening the prisoners but no
active violence was permitted; the prisoners were stripped of their clothes and
personal effects, they were made to wear potato sacks and a shower cap, and had a
chain bed around their ankle.

Unlike Milgram’s study, ZIMBARDO stopped his study after 6 days because the
participants became very seriously involved in their roles: prisoners showed signs of
pathological syndrome, and guards showed the pathology of power. It was
unethical because they came to psychological and physiological harm, especially the
prisoners who were humiliated and wanted to withdraw themselves from the study,
which was why it was stopped.

This was not worth it in terms of the results gained, which showed that people do
conform to social roles. This study has been criticised due to its unethical nature
because it lacked fully informed consent about all aspects of the study; the participant
didn’t know that they would be arrested at their own homes, blindfolded, and were
made disoriented. However, Zimbardo thought the nature of the study justified
withholding this type of procedural detail.
He stated that it was necessary to surprise the participants when they were arrested
from their homes, but fully informed consent was gained from them concerning all
other aspects of the study. Nevertheless, the deception involved in this study was
minimal and Zimbardo ensured that all the participants were thoroughly debriefed
afterwards, which dealt with this particular ethical issue of deception.

His study can be criticised in the sense it lacks mundane realism because criminals are
not arrested from their homes without warning on a daily basis, which means that the
results don’t reflect everyday life; perhaps participants only conformed to their social
roles because they were obeying orders given by an authoritative figure, which shows
obedience and not conformity.

The participants also suffered from psychological and physiological harm, especially
the prisoners who experienced high levels of anxiety and shame. However,
Zimbardo found no long-lasting effects of this in follow-up interviews, which means
that this ethical issue was acceptable by his terms. Nevertheless, he shouldn’t have
taken on the role of prison-superintendent because he was the chief researcher which
means that he played conflicting roles and could have lose sight of the ethical
considerations involved in this study – making it even more unethical.

A third psychology study that was unethical was by Curtis who investigated the life
of a girl called Genie. She was locked in an attic by her father for the first 13 years of
her life, because she suffered from deprivation dwarfism and he thought she was
retarded. Whilst recovering, she was exploited by the media, and had been exposed to
too much testing and observation to further psychologists’ understanding of isolation
development. Therefore, she never had a stable base in her life, which was very
unethical as she lived under the public eye, and constantly suffered from the following
ethical issues: invasion of privacy, lack of consent, psychological harm and
possible physiological harm too.