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.

Explain the wider implications (significance) of the ethical principles for New Zealand Psychologists. You may use examples from the scenario. You could consider; how the scenario would have been different if the principles had been applied, how the principles are unique to New Zealand, the practice. use for researchers, teachers, research participants and psychological

Explanation / Answer

According to the Code of Ethics for psychologists in New zealand, there are 4 ethical principles:

1. Respect for the dignity of persons and peoples

2. Responsible caring

3. Integrity of relationships

4. Social justice and responsibility to society.

From the above scenario it is evident that the psychologist did not follow any of the ethical principles in his study.

- The lecturer did not ask for the consent of the students before conducting the study

-The lecturer did not have any respect to the dignity of the students, where he commented about their appearance in front of the whole class and laughed at them.

- The lecturer had very less responsibility over his profession, where he failed to promote the well being of the students, because of which 3 of his students dropped out of the course.

- Due to this, the integrity in the student - professor relationship is also disrupted, where the student might have lost the respect and value towards their lecturer.

- Finally, this activity of the professor has also made the other students attain freedom to comment on others appearance and to make fun of them. Such behaviours may not benefit the society and also affects the welfare of others.

Alternate Scenario:

The Lecturer could have conducted this study in a different way, which would be ethically acceptable. He was interested in topics such as the Conformity, Obedience and Bystanders effect in the class room, which could be studied in other way like:

The lecturer could arrange for 10 confederates in a group of 50 students. The professor might say a very silly joke on other things like commenting on a movie, rather than commenting on the appearance of the students and the confederates laughs at the joke. Now the lecturer's assistant records the number of students who laughs because other students were laughing. This could be used to study the conformity.

Now, to measure the obedience amongst the students, the lecturer might talk vaguely about things like the political issues in the country and observe how many of the students agreed to him or remained silent without expressing their opinion only because they believe that the lecturer said so and they must obey it.

The bystanders effect could be observed when any of the students or the confederate talks back against the opinion of the lecturer and the assistant notes down as how many of the student remained silent or how many of them joined that student in expressing their opinion, i.e whether they belonged to the group that agreed or joined the group that disagreed to the lecturer.  

This could be a more ethical scenario when compared to the previous one. From these data the lecturer could analyse his findings and come up with the result conclusions which would be more ethical and acceptable.

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