Social Psychology - Essay Example

Social Psychology Week 2 Assignment There are several ways that the Stanford Prison Experiment violates a significant amount of ethical guidelines that are critical to the formulation of a research. The two main ethics that the research violated were, as mentioned in the APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, 8.07 Deception in research; this states that it is imperative that researchers avoid any kind of physical or mental harm to the patients as a result of deception. The second clause is 8.08 Debriefing, which states that after psychologists become aware of the harmful effects of the experiment on the participants they should take the right steps to minimize that harm. And as you can see in the experiment the participants – the guards and the prisoners – were both exposed to a considerable amount of stress. This being evident in the way many prisoners cried, protested, wanted to be released from the prison and suffered severe amount of depression. Furthermore clarifications of what was to take place in the experiment as the participants signed the consent form were not thoroughly made and there was a huge invasion of privacy as well as humiliation in the way these subjects were arrested from their homes, stripped naked and made to worn humiliating prisoner clothes. Also a degradation procedure was also applied in order to humiliate prisoners as each prisoner was stripped naked, thoroughly searched and deloused with spray. However despite the violation of these two clauses I believe that the experiment would not have been able to generate the results that it did if they hadn’t. Since the psychologists were aiming to study the general psychology of imprisonment it was imperative that the roles and the environment and the other variables be recreated as closely to a real prison as possible. So firstly it was important to hold back on a complete debriefing and not exposing the entire details of the study to the subjects. Secondly it was crucial to deceive the participants in order to preserve the natural reactions to the situation which was basically the whole point of the study. If these two ethical principles were stringently observed it would completely take away any element of surprise and devoid the experiment of the natural responses of individuals in the predicament they were to be a part of. Without the element of surprise being central to conducting the research what the subjects would be doing would be more or less acting in ways that they would perceive ought to be fit for the situation. This pretty much takes away the validity and reliability of the whole experiment. References Philip, Zimbardo. The Stanford Prison Experiment. Retrieved from: http://www.prisonexp.org/psychology/9 APA Ethical Guidelines. Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Retrived from: http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx?item=11 Assignment 2 While looking at how interlinked deception, as an ethical concern, and social research is I came across an interesting article that addresses this very relationship. Numerous times has deception been a key ethical concern that has been repeatedly attacked and labeled as unacceptable. However there is research that has revealed that participants of a experiment in which deception has been used embarked that the experience had been much more educational and beneficial when compared with nondeception experiments. Furthermore these subjects revealed that they did not mind being deceived or having their privacy invaded. These results lead us to conclude that deception although might be viewed as immoral from a certain perspective but it is not altogether intolerable, averse or objectionable methodology from the subject’s point of view. The main assumption that highlights how unacceptable deception is seems to be mainly because deception as a concept has been analyzed mainly from the viewpoint based on moral philosophizing; this leads one to conclude that deception is unacceptable and categorize it as perpetually averse. That being said the role of deception in social research is mainly to investigate harmless public behaviors and to enhance studies which involve an investigation of private behavior. This fact combined with the notion that the subjects do not mind the use of deception in order to conduct social research on important problems, the scale tilts largely in favor of the use of deception in psychological research (Christensen, 1988). References Christensen, L. (1988). Deception in Psychological Research When is its Use Justified? Pers Soc Psychology Bull December, 1988, vol. 14. no. 4, 664-677. Assignment 3 The topic that interests me most is that of violence and aggression. To be more specific I am interested in the effects that the media has in progressing violence and aggression in children. The study that I found that addresses the problem of learnt aggression in children is that of “Bashing Bobo” by Albert Bandura. Bandura was of the belief that human beings learnt behavior by social imitation and copying, rather than inheriting through genetic factors. For this purpose what he did was design a Bobo Doll experiment (a Bobo is basically a five feet tall inflatable toy doll), in which he tried to prove that children would imitate the behavior of a adult role model (Martyn, 2008). By the use of a number of aggressive and non aggressive role models he wanted to prove that a child would learn the behavior and imitate it from the adult. The results of the Bashing Bobo experiment were that children who were exposed to a aggressive role model were more likely to be more physically aggressive than those who were exposed to a nonaggressive model. It was also found that boys had the tendency to be more aggressive than girls. The experimenters were able to conclude that when exposed to adult behavior children who are observing are inclined to think that that certain behavior is acceptable hence reducing the aggressive inhibitions of the impressionable child. Similarly I would like to look at the social aspects of violence and aggression. What are the reasons that result in violence and aggressive behavior? My research would mostly focus on the aspects of media influences and aggression that is caused by a number of social variables. In short what role does social learning play which leads to the development of aggression behaviors and actions in an individual? To incorporate the media in a study about aggression and violence in the youth today is mainly because of the advancement of technology and the rapid and intensive exposure that the media has on the youth today through the internet, video games, television and movies. This makes it imperative that the learnt behavior from such overexposing media be studied. The research method used for the study would be mainly experimental. This would aim to examine, analyze and judge the intensity of the relationship between the dependant variable, behavior of the youth, and the independent variable, exposure of the media. Hence the research would look at how media violence and aggression exposure can result in behavioral changes in teenage boys and girls. The ethical dilemmas that can have an impact on the validity of the research are firstly the fact that from a certain perspective the conducted experiment can be seen as a way for the children to actually learn aggression. It is a possibility that the children suffer from long term impacts of learnt aggression due to the experiment. This would be in direct violation of the 3.04 Avoiding harm clause (APA Ethical guidelines). Another ethical dilemma would be that of 4.03 Recording, that states the absolute compulsion of receiving full consent from all parties involved in order to make any kind of recordings of the experiment. 5.04 – Media representations, ethical concern also falls closely to the aspect of making professional and impersonal video recordings solely for the purpose of the research experiment. Furthermore Deception and debriefing might also be possible ethical concerns mainly because the subjects cannot be given full disclosure of the process and nature of the study otherwise compromising their behavior and leading them to act unnaturally or display controlled reactions. This would defeat the purpose of the study as it would be absolutely necessary to hold back key information and details of the research in order to be able to conduct it as realistically as possible. Reference APA Ethical Guidelines. Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Retrived from: http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx?item=11 Baron, R., Branscombe, N., Byrne, D. (2009). Social Psychology (12th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.  Shuttleworth, Martyn (2008). Bobo Doll Experiment. Retrieved from Experiment Resources: http://www.experiment-resources.com/bobo-doll-experiment.html Read More