discuss issues relating to the ethics of socially sensitive research

research is guilty of Eurocentricm as it has taken results from the Western world and applied it to the rest of the world. This is a danger because those who do not fit into this ‘norm’ are considered inferior which could lead to issues such as racism.Kohlberg’s theory of moral understanding is seen as a universal description of human behaviour. This theory was applied to all cultures and the stages were to fit all cultures around the world. When it was compared to eight different countries, it was found that not all boys aged between 11 and 16 had reached the higher levels, 5 and 6 and they were therefore considered as not morally developed. However, this could have been because they were brought up differently and told that other values were more important than the others suggesting that a different upbringing does not affect your levels of moral understanding.Another etic approach is the SSC which was the strange situation classification study where we would expect attachment to be very similar across the world; however this was not the case. In Japan mothers hardly ever leave their infants alone with a stranger whereas in Israel, infants can live in a kibbutz and are looked after much of the time who is not part of their family. So these children probably showed anxious and resistant behaviour for different reasons. The Israeli are used to being separated from their mother but rarely have to be looked after complete strangers and is why they showed resistant attachment towards the stranger. Japanese children were rarely separated from their mother and this would be the main cause of their resistant attachment behaviour. This suggests that ones imposed etic should not affect the conclusions of findings as each culture is different in every way.Another infamous study was into obedience by Milgram (originally). He had found that 65% of his American participants had obeyed orders from an authority figure to give ‘fatal’ shocks to another human being as part of an experiment in learning. This experiment was conducted in eight different countries and they each showed different results. Germany had an obedience rate of 85% which may be shocking to many people but it was established from the SSC results that they were brought up to be independent and obedient so the results were bound to show high results. Holland had an obedience rate of 92%, however instead of being asked to apply shocks, they were told to shout out verbal abuse and to harass the victim. Also, at they time this study was taking place, unemployment rates were very high so many people were willing to do anything to get a job, having being told it was an interview. The Australian separated the males and females and found that there was a 40% obedience rate compared to the females who only had 16%. This was because the female participants were asked to give shocks to a female victim and it suggests that there are gender differences that Milgram had ignored.A problem with all these ‘replica’s’ was that they weren’t done exactly the same way as Milgram had done it so these cultural differences that are being shown may have no value at all. Also a danger of replicating any study and carrying it out in a different country is that you may not receive the same impact as you were hoping to because the emphasis in language plays a huge role but is interpreted differently in all languages.