Name: ________________________________________

American Psychological Association

Ethical Guidelines

Directions: You are to look at the following studies that have been conducted in order to acquire
research. These studies are amongst some of the most unethical. You will read through each study (some
will be review) and answer the following questions regarding each study.

Study Ethical Guideline Evidence to support the violation & other questions
Violated
Monster Study 1 Identify the Control Group & Experimental Group
Control group: positive speech therapy to half of the
children praising the fluency of their speech

Experimental group: negative speech therapy to the

other half, belittling the children for every speech
imperfection and telling them they were stutterers

Identify the Independent Variable & Dependent Variable

Independent variable: Amount of appraisal received

Dependent Variable: Psychological damage

Dubbed “The Monster Study” by some of Johnson’s peers who were

horrified that he would experiment on orphan children to prove a
theory, the experiment was kept hidden for fear Johnson’s
reputation would be tarnished in the wake of human experiments
conducted by the Nazis during World War II. The University of Iowa
publicly apologized for the Monster Study in 2001.
Little Albert All because it’s a was exposed to a white rabbit, a white rat, a monkey, masks with
Kid? and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspaper, and a
miscellanea of other things for two months without any sort of
conditioning

After this was done several times, Albert became very distressed
when the rat was displayed
The most unfortunate part of this experiment is that Little Albert
was not desensitized to his fear. He left the hospital before Watson
could do so

Brown Eye, Blue Deception and

Eye Consent Independent variable: who gets treated better and is “superior”
Dependent variable: Behavior in the kids

Milgram Study Cause harm These shocks would increase in voltage each time. Eventually, the
actor would start to complain followed by more and more desperate
screaming. Milgram learned that the majority of participants (Links
 to an external site.) followed orders to continue delivering shocks
despite the clear discomfort of the “learner.”
They just followed orders to shock people?

Weird experiment

Landis Facial Harm to animals animals were forced to experience great suffering
Expression independent variable: Nasty thing being show to the people
Dependent variable: their faces

Monkey Drug

Bystander Effect

Robber’s Cave

Learned
Helplessness