Ethical Problems in Psychology - Essay Example

Social Influence: The Context of Obedience, Conformity, and Ethical Issues in Psychological Research Introduction Social influence is described as achange in a person’s feelings, thoughts, behaviours, and attitudes that develop from interaction with a group or with another individual (Wren 1999). Social influence is different from power, authority, and conformity. Power is the capability of coercing or forcing particular means by controlling the outcomes of an individual (Lana 1991). Authority is power that is thought to be justifiable, rather than forceful, by people who are subjected to it (Blass 2000). Conformity takes place when a person articulates a certain behaviour or judgment in order to fit in to particular situation or to fulfil the expectations of a significant other, though s/he does not essentially embrace that judgment or think that the behaviour is appropriate (Blass 2000). However, social influence is the mechanism by which people make actual changes to their behaviours and feelings as an outcome of interaction with other individuals or a group who are viewed to be similar, knowledgeable, or popular (Forgas & Williams 2002). Individuals modify their beliefs in relation to other individuals to whom they feel alike according to psychological tenets such as harmony or solidarity (Myers 2004). People are also influenced by the mainstream or the majority; when a huge segment of an individual’s social group embraces a specific attitude, it is probable that the person will espouse it as well (Myers 2004). Furthermore, individuals may modify a judgment under the persuasion of another who is viewed to be knowledgeable in the issue at hand (Lana 1991). Hence, the objective of this essay is to discuss the effect of social influence, power, obedience, and conformity to an individual’s behaviour. And ultimately, this essay will discuss the ethical problems inherent to the examination of human behaviour under the influence of a group. Social Influence: Roles, Groups, Co-Action Effects, and Audience Effects Group activities often take place in our lives, whether it is working with colleagues or peers, accomplishing a task with the family, or playing in groups. The general component in this is interaction between group members and it is usually believed that group membership has an effect or influence on the person (Tedeschi 2007). Research on social facilitation and inhibition take into account the level to which a particular portion of an individual’s behaviour and thoughts is influenced by the imagined, actual, or unspoken presence of others (Tedeschi 2007). Contemporary researchers discovered that performance becomes better as an outcome of the presence of others while others discovered that it was weakened (Terry & Hog 2000). The studies of Triplett illustrate the co-action effect, an occurrence whereby improved task performance takes place by the sheer presence of others performing a similar job (Forgas & Williams 2002). F.H. Allport discovered that even if components of competition were lessened, subjects showed enhanced performance when they could distinguish others carrying out similar tasks (Forgas & Williams 2002). Social facilitation takes place not merely in the company of a co-actor but also in the company of an inactive audience. This is referred to as the audience effect, interestingly (Tedeschi 2007). Dashiell (1935 as cited in Tedeschi 2007)) discovered that the audience’s presence enabled subjects’ performance in multiplication by raising the number of basic multiplications accomplished. Travis (1925 as cited in Terry & Hog 2000) discovered that well-behaved participants were better at psychomotor activities in the presence of an audience/s. Nevertheless, Pessin (1993 as cited in Terry & Hog 2000) discovered a reverse audience effect, specifically that participants required a smaller number of practices at learning a roll of rubbish terms when on their own than when in the presence of an audience/s. Due to the inconclusiveness of the research findings on the effect of the presence of co-actors and audiences on an individual’s performance researchers turned to another variable of social influence, which is obedience or conformity. Social Power: Obedience or Conformity. Several of the classic studies in social psychology made use of social ‘experiments’ by placing subjects in roles that generate behaviour that seems at first glance to be rather extreme. In the Stanford prison experiment, for instance, normal students were given the roles of ‘guard’ or ‘inmate’ by a toss coin (Kimmel 2007). After a few days, the experiment was hastily terminated because the students given the ‘guard’ role became violent whilst those given the ‘prisoner’ role endured mortification (Blass 2000). Milgram (1974 as cited in Korn 1997) examines obedience to authority assigned subjects in the role where in they became representatives of authority. Majority of the subjects obeyed by allegedly inflicting severe shock to another individual; unexpectedly, the degree of obedience differed as a function of slight changes in the role of the authority (Blass 2000). By ingeniously persuading subjects to lie about a dull test, Festinger and Carlsmith (1995 as cited in Flanagan & Banyard 2006) assigned them in a role that clashed with their typical self-perception as decent and moral individuals; the cognitive dissonance theory is an assumption of how individuals rationalise the outcomes of assuming a role that is discordant with how they commonly perceive themselves (Weiten 2008). However, although these various experiments contributed much to our knowledge of human behaviour in particular roles and social environment, these studies obviously violated some of the ethical imperatives in social psychology research. Ethical Issues in Social Psychology Ethical issues are alternative means of evaluating and analysing psychological studies, but they are not fairly similar. Whilst validity issues involve the research quality in terms of whether the findings or outcome is trustworthy, ethical concerns relate to whether a study or experiment was morally admissible (Flanagan & Banyard 2006). Ethical issues surface when there is disagreement between various sets of principles that link to psychological research. For instance, people may think that they should be truthful to people because to deceive them humiliates them (Korn 1997). In contrast, people know that an individual’s assumptions about the situation they are in influence their actions in that situation. As a result people may think it indispensable to lie to subjects about the real nature of the conditions where in they will be studied (Korn 1997). Obviously, there is a disagreement between the necessity to be truthful and the necessity to lie and that explains why there is a problem to be resolved. Milgram’s research on obedience raised numerous ethical issues. The participants in this experiment were misinformed and persuaded to believe they were really inflicting electrical shocks to an individual who would scream in pain (Kimmel 2007). The participants administered the shocks, with a progressively higher voltage merely because an authority figure ordered them to do so (Blass 2000). The dilemma with these kinds of experiment was that it was severely traumatic on the participants, and may have disturbed them. These studies were quite powerful and even though it was unethical, as some argues (Flanagan & Banyard 2006), the findings were crucial to the study of social influence, obedience and conformity. Conclusion Ethical issues are essential for a number of reasons. Primarily, the objective of psychology is to enhance our knowledge of human behaviour in view of the fact that this understanding is valuable in helping people. And ultimately, the ethical issues created by numerous studies have tarnished the reputation of psychology in the view of the public. As a result, the general public misconstrued the objectives of psychology are hesitant to trust psychologists. This may result in a situation where psychology runs out of subjects for its experiments. References Blass, T. (Ed.) (2000) Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Flanagan, C. & Banyard, P. (2006) Ethical Issues and Guidelines in Psychology, New York: Routledge. Forgas, J. & Williams, K.D. (2002) Social Influence: Direct and Indirect Processes, Philadelphia: Psychology Press. Kimmel, A. (2007) Ethical Issues in Behavioural Research: Basic and Applied Perspective, Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Korn, J. (1997) Illusions of Reality: A History of Deception in Social Psychology, New York: State University of New York Press. Lana, R. (1991) Assumptions of Social Psychology, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Myers, D. (2004) Exploring Psychology, New York: Worth Publishers. Tedeschi, J. (Ed.). (2007) The Social Influence Processes, Chicago: Adline Transaction. Terry, D.J. & Hogg, M.A. (eds) (2000) Attitudes, Behaviour, and Social Context: The Role of Norms and Group Membership, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Weiten, W. (2008) Psychology: Themes and Variations, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Wren, K. (1999) Social Influences, London: Routledge. Read More