Each test was different but looked at the same idea conformity and obedience.
It was said in the Asch test because the participant did not know that only he was being tested and that also the same in Milgrams test, as the other people there were confederates. They did not give their fully informed consent. This can be justified so not to influence the outcome. Providing that they debrief the participants on all aspects of the procedure after the test.
However other ethical issues were brought up in both their tests. Deception, embarrassment, conflict situation, ecological validity, as in the Asch line test were participants were put into a situation were the group were all strangers and participants felt embarrassed. Evidence for this was obtained by Bogdonoff et al. (1961), who found that the participants in Asch’s test had greater levels of autonomic arousal. This also suggests they were in a conflict situation because they found it hard to say what they saw or conform to avoid embarrassment. In Milgrams test the right to withdraw was removed because everytime the participant wanted to leave the experimenter constantly pressured the participant to carry on for the benefit of the test, therefore the participant felt he could not leave. In Milgrams test participants were also put through psychological stress due to the fact they could not believe how much they were willing to hurt someone and how far they would go, also at least one participant suffered convulsions and fits. Can any of these be justified? For Asch there is no justification as all guidelines were broken through out the whole procedure, except for the fact he did debrief the participants. However this was for his results and not the well being of the participants. Milgram however defended himself on ethics by revealing the methods were not unethical due to the unexpected results and momentary excitement was not the same as harm.
Participants could leave, as they were not physically restrained. Even though the experimenter was forcing the issue to stay for the experiment to go on. All of the participants were fully debriefed for there benefit not the experiments benefits.
In Zimbardo’s case the study was ethically approved beforehand. It was the dramatic and disturbing results that caused the ethical problems, but these came from the participants not Zimbardo. All participants gave fully informed consent and were all given full debriefs. The psychological affects were put down to a loss of personal identity, emasculation and dependency in the case of the prisoners. The effects on the guards were put down to the sense of empowerment legitimised by the role of the ‘guard’ in the prison system.
In conclusion, in all of the tests ethics were ignored in some procedures some justifiable some not. However every later study of conformity and obedience has broken some of the ethical guidelines. From deception to distress. Embarrassment to physical harm. So does this mean ethics are not as important as we are led to believe or will an experimenter just ignore them deliberately to get his results.
Barry Hollinshead, HEFC psychology.
