Ethics: John B. Watson classical conditioning
1. Little Albert: John B. Watson studied classical conditioning by taking an infant with no previous fear of animals and essentially inducing a phobia of a white rat. He did so using the principles of classical conditioning (pairing a loud noise with the introduction of the rat to the baby). The child then became fearful of the rat even without the loud noise being present.
Ethics: John B. Watson’s Classical conditioning
2. Asch Conformity: Subjects were placed in a group alongside actors. All were asked to access the series of lines and say which line was the longest. The actors gave correct responses but then began to give incorrect responses. Most of the subjects conformed and began to give an incorrect response as well.
3. Darley & Latané Bystander Effect: Following the brutal murder of Kitty Genovese in NYC, in which there were many witnesses, but no one called the police, these experimenters decided to test the bystander effect. They simulated several situations, particularly when the subject overheard a person in the next room (actually a recording) having a seizure and measured whether subjects alone were quicker to act and assist than those who believed others could overhear the medical emergency.
4. Milgram Obedience: In an attempt to understand how Nazi soldiers could possibly have complied with commands to kill Jews (and other victims of the Holocaust), Milgram studied obedience. In a rigged situation, participants drew straws and the subject was assigned the role of teacher. The “student” (actually a recording) was placed in another room. Whenever the “student” got an answer wrong, the teacher pressed a button to “shock” the student, and the shocks got progressively stronger. Milgram was interested to see what percentage of subjects would “shock” the student to the top of the board. The majority of subjects did so, although they were visibly uncomfortable.
5. Harlow’s Monkeys: Although these were animal subjects instead of humans, there are ethical concerns. Harlow used baby rhesus monkeys and removed the babies from their mothers, replacing the mother with either a wire “mother” or a cloth “mother.” The wire mother fed the babies through a bottle, while the cloth “mother” provided nothing but comfort. Harlow was interested to see whether the association with food would cause the babies to seek comfort from the wire mother, but they did not.
6. Seligman’s Learned Helplessness: Seligman used dogs and placed them in a box with a barrier in the middle. He randomly shocked the dogs through the floor. Dogs first tried to escape the shocks by jumping over the barrier but eventually quit trying to jump and just “took” the shocks because they could not permanently escape the shocks.
7. Sherif’s Robbers’ Cave: Sherif conducted this experiment to test how groups problem-solve and deal with conflict. Boys at a summer camp were split into two groups, which were kept apart. The experimenters manipulated competitions between the groups to keep the conflict/tension between the groups high. Then, Sherif manipulated the environment, so the camp faced a problem, such as a water shortage. After the groups were forced to work together to solve the problem, they integrated and functioned harmoniously.
8. Johnson’s Monster Study: This was an early study conducted to test the causes of stuttering in children. Johnson used a group of orphans and told half of the group that they had stutters. Although none of the children developed a stutter, they did develop problems with self-esteem often associated with children who stutter.
9. Elliott’s Blue-Eyes/Brown-Eyes: To demonstrate the effects of prejudice/discrimination, a teacher (Jane Elliott) divided her class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed students. She cited phoney research that indicated that one group was superior to the other and then treated that group with favor throughout the day. It took only one day for the children to begin acting in accordance with what they had been told. The groups were then switched, and the same observations were made.
10. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Study: Zimbardo recruited college-aged males to participate in a two-week experiment on how people behave in prison. He randomly assigned participants to “guards” or “prisoners.” He found that, within a shockingly quick amount of time, guards became sadistic, and prisoners became despondent and helpless. He ultimately ended up discontinuing the experiment after only six days because of the potential psychological damage the experiment had on the subjects.
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Now choose three (3) studies for which you will answer the questions below. You are free to do outside research on any of them, please. Then, select the link below titled “Ethics of Social Psychology Experiments,” save it onto your hard drive, and enter your responses directly within the saved document.
