Bocchiaro

• Aim

  • To create a situation that allowed them to test whether people would obey, disobey, or blow the whistle on an authority figure who was encouraging immoral behaviours
  • To investigate if disobedient participants and whistleblowers have different personality characteristics to those who obey
• Sample

  • 149 Undergraduate students
  • 96 women 53 men
  • Recruited by flyers in the campus cafeteria at the VU Uni in Amsterdam
• Pilot study

  • Before main research began, a series of 8 pilot studies were conducted to ensure that the study was:
  • Credible
  • Morally and ethically acceptable
  • Standardised so that the authority figure would behave the same to each participant
  • 'Cool and interesting research, good for science'
• Room 1 - Preliminary stage

  • The participant meets a researcher in the lab of university. The researcher was: Formally dressed, had a stern demeanour
  • The researcher asked them to write down the names of 5 fellow students and then gave them a fake cover story about the research he was conducting
• Cover story

  • Sensory deprivation on brain function
  • Six participants who spent some time in Rome completely isolated, unable to see or hear anything
  • What happened was traumatic: people panicked, their cognitive abilities were temporarily impaired, some experienced visual and auditory hallucinations. Two participants even asked us to stop because their symptoms were too strong, but they didn't because would've made invalid data
• Room 2 - the task

  • Participants are taken into a new room, are sat in front of a computer and asked to write a statement for their fellow students recommending the research
  • Were not allowed to mention any negative affects of sensory deprivations
  • Researcher came back after 7 minutes
  • Participants then filled out a debrief form and signed consent forms
• results

  • those wrote the recommendation were obedient= 76.5%
  • those who reported the experimenter to the research committee were whistle-blowers= 9.4%
  • those who refused were disobedient=14.1%
  • there are no personality differences between those that do and do not whistle-blow/those who obey or disobey
  • no difference between males and females, between those who are religious and those who are not
  • people who have more faith tend to be more likely to whistle-blow
• conculsion

  • behaving in a moral manner is challenging for people, even when it appears to be the easiest path to follow
  • most people will obey when asked to do an unethical thing by an authority figure
  • people's personality and individual characteristics do not seem to influence how obedient they are