Bocchiaro

• Theme

  Responses to people in authority
• What kind of experiment

  Lab experiment
• Where did the study take place

  VU University in a lab
• Participants disobeyed by refusing to write the statement (whistleblowing)
• Bocchiaro gave them the chance to obey, disobey, whistleblow
• How many pilots tests did he do

  8
• The comparison group was provided with detailed description of the experiment to see if it would differ to what they actually did
• The participants where deceived and was told the experiment was on sensory deprivation on brain function
• The experimenter left the room for 3mins to let the participants reflect on the decision they were about to make
• Participants where moved into a 2nd room where there was a computer to write their statement to convince someone they know to do this 'horrible' experiment.
• Strengths of Ethics


  fully debriefed, asked to sign a second consent form.
• Comparison Group

  3.6% said they'd obey. 31.9% said they'd disobey. 64.5% said they'd be whistleblowers.
• Experimental group


  76.5% obeyed. 14.1% disobeyed. 9.4% whistle blew.
• Sample


  149 undergraduate students
• 96 women and 53 men took part in the research for 7 euros or course credit
• Participants where told to be enthusiastic when writing their statements: exciting, great, incredible.
• Whistle blowing

  Writing to the ethics committee form
• Qualitative Data


  people who disobeyed blamed external forces or felt responsible for their own actions.
• Personally measures tests


  HEXACO & PI-R
• People tend to obey authority figures even if the authority is unjust.
• Strength of sample


  149 large sample. Self-selected sampling, likely to end up with students studying a range of different courses
• Weakness of sample


  all students, had a mean age of 20.8yrs not representative of the population as a whole.
• Strength of ethics


  Given a debrief. Could withdraw at any point
• Weakness of sample

  High level of deception.