Bocchiaro

• Bocchiaro Background question (4)

  1.Social power2.Whistleblowing and defiance3.Milgram- what did he find?4.What do we still not know? How did this inspire Bocchiaro?Social power refers to the influence an individual has to change another’s thoughts, feelings or behaviour. Individuals in authority have social power to influence those with lesser power or status.Research has shown that it is difficult to defy an authority figure, suggesting that there are more than situational explanations responsible. Whistle-blowers report or expose unjust behaviour in organisations or institutions after observing the behaviour take place.Previous research by Milgram found that a high proportion of people will obey an authority figure when asked to harm another person.However, little is known about the nature of disobedience or defiance to someone in authority and the dispositional factors which may cause someone to defy social power. Bocchiaro therefore wanted to expand on Milgram’s research by giving participants the option to obey, disobey or whistle-blow in relation to an unjust request.
• Bocchiaro aimed to investigate (3)

  -to investigate rates ofobedience, disobedience and whistle blowingin a situation where instructions are ethically wrong-to investigate the accuracy ofpeople's estimationsof obedience, disobedience and whistle blowing-to investigate the role ofdispositionalfactors in obedience, disobedience and whistle blowing
• What is the researched method for Bocchiaro's study?

  'scenario study' in alaboratory at the VU University in Amsterdam
• What was the purpose of the 8 pilot studies in Bocchiaro's study?


  to ensure the fake cover story was credible and believable
• Comparison group in Bocchiaro's study (2)

  -138 students

  -asked what they would do and predict behaviour of other students when presented with the ethical dilemma
• What was the sample in Bocchiaro's study? (5)

  -149 undergraduate students

  -96 women,53 men

  -age 20.8

  -VU University in Amsterdam

  - paid €7 or course credit
• What happened to 11 p's in the initial sample in Bocchiaro's study?

  were removed from the initial sample of 160 because of their suspiciousness about the nature of the study
• Procedure for Bocchiaro's study (8)

  1.Participants were informed that their data would be kept confidential and they could withdraw whenever they wanted.

  2.Each participant was greeted in the laboratory by a male, Dutch experimenter (authority figure)

  3.The experimenter asked them to recommend three friends and give him their names, to take part in the following ‘fake’ experiment (cover story)

  5.Participants were told that Research Committee forms were in the next room. They were given 3 minutes in a room alone to decide whether to; obey and write the letter to 3 friends recommending the study, disobey and do nothing, or blow the whistle and report the ethical violations of the study to the research committee.

  6.Participants were told to be enthusiastic when writing their statements and had to use two adjectives among “exciting”, “incredible”, “great” and “superb”. Negative effects of sensory deprivation were not to be mentioned.

  7.The experimenter left the room for 3 minutes to allow participants to reflect on what they were going to do.

  8.Then participants were escorted into another room to do what they had decided to do. After 7-minutes, the experimenter returned and invited the participant to follow him back to the first room where he/she wasadministered two personality inventories;HEXACOand(SVO)
• In Bocchiaro's study what was considered as obeying, disobeying and whistleblowing (3)

  -obey= recommend 3 friends to the study

  -disobey=do nothing

  -whistleblow=report ethical violations to research committee
• What was the appearance of the Dutch experimenter in Bocchiaro's study (2)

  -formally dressed

  -stern demeanour
• What were the 2 personality tests administered in Bocchiaro's study?

  HEXACO and SVO
• what is the HEXACO test?


  measures 6 personalities
• What does SVO stand for?

  Social Value Orientation
• What does the SVO measure?

  pro-social ,individualistic or competitive personality scenarios
• Qualitative findings in Bocchiaro's study? (2)

  -no significant difference in relation to gender, religious affiliation or religious involvement

  -trend found between those that had high faith and whistleblowing
• Quantitative findings from comparison group in Bocchiaro's study (3)

  obey= 3.6% predicted to obey= 18.8%

  blow the whistle=64.5%
• Quantitative findings from actual 149 p's in Bocchiaro's study

  obey= 76.5%

  blow the whistle= 9.4%
• Conclusions from Qualitative and Quantative data in Bocchiaro's study (4)

  - What people said predictive obey=3.6% differs form what they will actually do in a given situation obey=76.5% (Aim 2)

  - Significant decrease in the % of people that whistle blew, people think they will do the right thing

  - People with faith could have morals that encourage them to whistleblow (Aim 3 )

  - People tend to obey authority figures, even if the authority is unjust
• Strengths of the use of a scenario study in Bocchiaro's study (3)

  -researchers can ensure all p's experience standardised condition (increases internal reliability)

  -controlled environment- prevents distractions that would have affected levels of obedience

  -enabled researchers to test obedience in a ethical way
• Weaknesses of the use of a scenario study in Bocchiaro's study (2)

  -reduces levels of ecological validity, as being in a controlled lab environment in a artificial environment

  -p's are alert to the contrived situation, might try to figure out the aim(demand characteristics), reducing internal validity
• What are individualistic cultures?

  culture that values independence rather than reliance on others
• What are Collectivist cultures?

  culture that values collective effort rather than interdependence
• Weakness that p's and experimenter were Dutch in Bocchiaro's study (2)

  -possibly made p's more obedient:therefore high levels of obedience in this situation may be lower in other social situations

  -links to ethnocentrism
• What did Bocchiaro's research suggest about if similar results would be collected in different countries

  he suggests that Milgram's study were not only true to people in USA
• Strengths of Qualitative and Quantative in Bocchiaro's study(4)

  - Direct assessing of levels of obedience and personality test

  - Comparisons between number of students that obeyed and personality traits

  - Increases external reliability, other studies can be replicated in other countries and comparisons could be made to check for consistency

  - Comments p's made during debriefing helped to understand why they obeyed
• Weakness of Qualitative and Quantative data in Bocchiaro's study

  Oversimplified explanation of a complex behaviour, reduces obedience and personality to a number :reduces the validity of the study as it lacks insight/reasons
• Strength of a snapshot study in Bocchiaro's study

  allowed Bocchiaro to compare different individuals of their level of obedience to unjust authority figures
• Weakness of a snapshot study in Bocchiaro's study

  unable to see if levels of obedience changed
• How is the ecological validity of Bocchiaro's study high?


  Bocchiaro worked hard to create a scenario that seemed plausible to students
• How is the ecological validity of Bocchiaro's study low?

  As this is a scenario study it is hard to understand how people would behave in a real-life situation of whistle-blowing , real catastrophic consequences could not be created in artificial-laboratory style conditions
• Strength of the sample in Bocchiaro's study

  large sample of 149 undergrads, enabling researchers to establish consistent effect in their findings
• Weakness of the sample in Bocchiaro's study

  Sample is restricted as p's are all undergraduate students with a mean age of 20.8 years, limits the extent to which the sample is representative of the wider population, doesn't reflect how older people would behave in the same situation
• Strength of the sampling method in Bocchiaro's study

  Reached a wider range of people, responses of students that studied various courses opposed to just psychology which would have been likely using opportunity sampling
• Weaknesses of the sampling method in Bocchiaro's study (2)

  -Volunteers made a choice to take part in research, the sample might have felt a greater level of obligation, affected their behaviour during the study, making them more obedient.

  -Volunteer sample may attract p's interested in psychological research, influence their behaviour and increase risk of demand characteristics.
• How was confidentiality addressed in Bocchiaro's study?

  p's were respected, no names or personal info was ever disclosed
• How was consent addressed in Bocchiaro's study?

  -gained twice

  -second time for their data to be used
• How was debrief addressed in Bocchiaro's study?


  -attempted to convey to convey that how they behaved in the study was not feel ashamed
• What are examples of deception in Bocchiaro's study? (2)

  -p's were told that they were helping recruit p's for an unethical study

  -also the researchers told p's to help pass this unethical study by the ethics committee
• How does Bocchiaro's study illustrate the individual debate?

  Bocchiaro supports the individual debate as he investigated dispositional factors in his participants through the HEXACO and SVO, finding that those who whistle-blew had a trend of a faith
• How does Bocchiaro's study illustrate the situational debate?

  Bocchiaro further supports the situational debate as he found due to the presence of the Dutch authority figure and prestigious setting of VU University participants behaviour was affected