Ethics Scenario A psychology lecturer is interested in the limits of conformity,

Question

Ethics Scenario

A psychology lecturer is interested in the limits of conformity, obedience and the bystander effect. The lecturer hypotheses that people will be willing to contribute to discrimination if the environment is enjoyable and that they they will tolerate it if they are criticised for being to serious if they try to oppose it.

In his PSY 101 course he runs an experiment across a whole semester and records the results over time. He hires 10 confederates in his group of 50 to laugh whenever he makes a joke about people’s appearance in the class. He focuses on criticising people who have a “non traditional” appearance including girls wearing “masculine” clothing, people with dark eye makeup, boys with long hair, girls with short hair, students wearing indigenous clothing, moko or Maori tattoos etc.

A lecture assistant kept a tally of the incidents and records the responses of students. This includes the number of students who also laugh, whether anyone questions the teacher’s style of humour, if other students also make the same type of jokes, if students change their appearance to be more “traditional”, or whether students drop out of the course etc.

In the case that students criticise the lecturer’s behaviour the ten confederates have been told to laugh it off and encourage people to “relax” and “don’t make it a big deal”, it’s “just a bit of fun”

During the first week there were three incidents of students questioning the teachers jokes but these were short lived.

By the end of the term three students had dropped out of the course because of the jokes. These three students were debriefed about the experiment but refused to come back to the class. Five students had made significant changes to their appearance when in class. There were 20 incidents of non confederates making jokes about others appearance and the number of non confederates laughing at the jokes increased from two the first day to an average of 15 per joke by the end of the semester. The number of jokes increased from two per lecture at the beginning to 5 per lecture during the last week.

The lecturer surveyed the students about their experiences and reasons afterward and found that most of those who had laughed did so “because it was funny”, most who conformed to the style of appearance were “afraid of being the center of attention”, those who made jokes about others appearance said they enjoyed the freedom available to them in the class and so made the most of it. Those who questioned the lecturer at the start said they stopped initially because they did not want to be seen as too serious and enjoyed the content so wanted to stay.

The lecturer did not publish his findings and never intended to. He did not share the findings with the class and did not ask for any consent before conducting the study. At the end of the research his lecture assistant (that kept the records) asked him how he felt about the class; he replied that it was his favourite lecture to go to each day.

The lecturer repeated the process with his cohort in the next semester but with no hired confederates. Within the first week he had to stop the experiment as large numbers of students protested his behaviour, walked out of the theatre and made complaints to the university.

After this second attempt to conduct the study the lecturer decided that he should publish the results of the study. He thought there were important lessons for people to learn about conformity from his research. He kept personal information out of his published text and even donated money earned from the text to the Human Rights Commission to avoid being accused of publishing out of self interest.

3. Identify at least two ways in which the lecturer complied with the New Zealand code of ethics for Psychology. Identify the principle and a values statement. Describe the need for ethical principles in the scenario and how these were met by the lecturer using specific information or examples a. Compliance One Principle Values Statement

Explanation / Answer

Answer.

a. In the given study, the lecturer shows a sensitivity towards the ethical principle of respect for the participants. Namely, the principle of ‘Respect for the dignity of persons and peoples’ as per the New Zealand Code of a Ethics. This code is based on the value statement that ‘ Psychologists respect the dignity of persons and peoples with whom they relate in their work and are sensitive to their welfare, and rights.’

This ethical code is a necessary part of any research in the human science society specially Psychology as it ensures the protection of the participants from any harmful or discriminatory practices such as being favourably or unfavourably treated, socially ridiculed either intentionally or unintentionally merely on the grounds of their physical appearance, race, linguistic and socio-cultural background, age, class, religion, sex, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, etc. Such differences are an integral part of the person and as a psychologist, the lecturer can be said to practice this ethic of showing respect and dignity as part of the student’s common humanity by following up with the students who dropped out in the initial phase of the classes and debriefing them about the specific nature of the class experiments so that he could prevent the student participants form developing any emotionally traumatic or adverse experiences due to the nature of the social ridicule involved in the experiments. By using debriefing procedures, he was able to help restore at least a group of participants’ moral.

b. In addition, the lecturer showed compliance with the principle of confidentiality under which Psychologists recognise and promote peoples’ rights to privacy and recognise that there is a duty to disclose to appropriate people real threats to the safety of individuals and the public. While it can be argued that the lecturer was not completely ethical in his approach as he did not take informed consent of any of the students for his study, he nonetheless took the right measures to keep their private information confidential while getting the study published.

To this end, the principle of confidentiality is necessary in the present case as the psychologist did not disclose personal information obtained from the individual students, wh?nau or community group or colleague or confederates without the informed consent of those who provided the information. Moreover, he ensured that he took all reasonable steps to ensure that the findings of the study over which they he had control remained retrievable to serve the interests of those to whom they referred and/or the purpose for which they were collected.

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