Instructor S Manual And

Chapter 2 Research in Psychology, IM, 7e 2-1

Course Enhancements, Activities, and Exercises

 It is sometimes maintained that John Watson intended to remove Little Albert’s fear, but circumstances prevented it—the child was suddenly removed from the institution. Although Watson and Rayner (1920) described potential techniques for removing the fear, it is apparent that although they had the opportunity to remove the fear, they chose not to. One of their goals was to see if the conditioned fear would last for a period of time, but they were disappointed that they would only be able to assess the fear’s durability for up to a month because they knew he would be gone within the month. In their words (p. 10), “It was desired to make the time test longer. In view of the imminence of Albert’s departure from the hospital we could not make the interval longer than a month.” Thus knowing they had one month left, they chose to determine if the fear would last that long rather than to see if they could eliminate it.

 The chapter highlights Milgram’s (1974) obedience experiments as a way of illustrating some of the ethical dilemmas faced by research psychologists, but other studies, especially in the area of social psychology, could be added. Perhaps the most interesting companion study to the Milgram study is Zimbardo’s (1973) prison simulation study. Zimbardo was interested in testing the hypothesis that the environment of the prison and the role expectations of its inhabitants could affect the behavior of both prisoners and guards. Two dozen males were randomly assigned to the role of prisoner or guard and paid $15 a day for their participation. Subjects volunteered knowing that the prison (in the basement of the research laboratory at Stanford University) was merely a simulation and that the study would only last two weeks. However, Zimbardo was forced to close down the “prison” after six days because many of the prisoners began to show signs of experiencing severe stress and the guards were behaving in ways suggesting that there is a bit of Nazi in all of us. That is, although the guards were not allowed to hit the prisoners, they were told to “maintain order,” and they did so in a number of humiliating ways (e.g., forcing prisoners to do pushups if they failed to show “respect”). The prisoners were further humbled by having to appear naked in front of guards during “delousing,” by having their hair cut short, and by having to wear uncomfortable smocks and nylon stocking caps. The study was criticized for exposing subjects to unnecessary risk and stress and for one element of deception—prisoners knew they would be playing that role, but did not know they would be “arrested” on campus by real police in the presence of neighbors, friends, etc. Asking students to attack or defend either the Milgram and/or the Zimbardo study can be an effective way to get them to identify how the ethical principles apply in specific cases. More information about Zimbardo’s study can be found at http://www.prisonexp.org/. Interestingly, students often have the misconception that Zimbardo did not provide a clear consent for participation. I (KAG) like to show students Zimbardo’s original materials related to informed consent on this website, found in the FAQ’s.

 Students can be given a first hand experience of deception by using a procedure suggested by Beins (1993). He exposed the students in his methods class to the well-known Barnum effect. The students took a bogus personality test. After they were all given exactly the same personality profile, they were asked to indicate how well the profile fit them personally. The usual result occurred (“it fits me quite well”). The debriefing and subsequent class discussion gave students some insight into both the need for deception in certain cases and the effects of deception on subjects.

 Ask students to search through recent issues of research journals for studies involving the deception of participants. Journals reporting research in social psychology (e.g., the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) are especially good sources. Students should come to class with answers to these questions: o what was the basic purpose of the study? o exactly how were participants deceived (e.g., cover story) about the study’s purpose? o was the deception necessary? if so, why? if not, what could be an alternative? The third question is the difficult one, of course, and is the one that should occupy class discussion time. Students just beginning the research methods course may not be able to think of

1 Chapter 2 Research in Psychology, IM, 7e 2-2

an alternative procedure on their own, but in the classroom setting some ideas are bound to emerge.

 A study by Britton (1979) surveyed more than 1500 students who had served as participants in a number of studies over a period of several years. The studies included those in the areas of learning, memory, social psychology, perception, and clinical psychology. The students judged (on 10-point scales, with a 10 being the highly valued end of the scale) the experimenter’s politeness, how well the experiment was explained in debriefing, whether the experience was educational, and “how comfortable” the subject felt about the experience. Depending on topic area, the mean scores ranged from: o 8.7 - 9.9 on experimenter politeness o 8.8 - 9.6 on how well the experiment was explained o 6.4 - 8.6 on the educational value of the experience o 8.6 - 9.6 on the level of comfort felt In a later study, Britton and his colleagues (1983) found that participants report minimal distress as a result of participating. Depending on whether surveys were administered anonymously or not, the percentages of participants who indicated that they were distressed by participating in a study were 6% (in a nonanonymous survey) and 9% (in an anonymous survey). In a replication of the nonanonymous survey, 8% reported stress. Subsequent interviews with these distressed participants revealed that the stress was generally mild and associated with studies involving electrical shock. Britton reported that even if participants were distressed by their experience, they recognized the need for it in certain circumstances.

 To sensitize students to IRB concerns, form small groups and have each group consider specific research hypotheses with regard the issues of the safety of participants, informed consent, risk to participants, and confidentiality. Here are some examples of hypotheses used in workshops by members of my university’s IRB: o Children who exercise regularly achieve more in school than children who don’t exercise regularly. o College students whose parents are divorced declare a major later in their college careers than those whose parents are not divorced. o When someone else is also in a public bathroom, people are more likely to wash their hands than when they are alone. o Obese adults who ride bikes six days a week for a half hour lose more weight than those who ride three times a week for an hour.

 Another exercise that enhances student knowledge of IRB procedures, while at the same time giving them practice in critical thinking, has been suggested by Hubbard and Ritchie (1995). By answering the kinds of question posed by an IRB application form, students are forced to think more critically about their study. Hubbard and Ritchie (pp. 64-65) ask students to answer these questions about a specific study: o What are the objectives of the study? o How is your subject population defined and how will participants be selected? o What are the risks that your study might present to participants? o What are the operationally defined measures that you plan to use? o What are the potential benefits to be derived from your study?

 As the chapter points out, IRB’s, while necessary, have been controversial at some universities. A thorough discussion of the issue can be found in Kimmel (2007), and an article by Kallgren and Tauber (1996) makes a strong case for exposing undergraduates to the review procedures of IRB’s, based on a survey of undergraduates who thought their research was significantly improved by having submitted their proposals to an IRB.

 An article by Brinthaupt (2002) describes some of the difficulties that researchers encounter when dealing with IRBs, based on a survey of researchers. It includes several case examples, including one in which an IRB balked over the wording in a standardized marital adjustment questionnaire. The item was “Have you ever thought about divorce?” The IRB thought it was harmful because it would “put ideas in their heads” (p. 244).

 An article by Brookhart (2001) in the APS Observer outlines the typical complaints about IRBs (inconsistent standards, competence of IRB members, long delays between submission and approval), provides several websites on IRB-relevant material, and excerpts a portion of the IRB handbook from UCLA.

 A comment by Herzog (1991) in American Psychologist can be used as background for a discussion of the criteria to be used when deciding on an “appropriate pet.” Ask students this:  “On ethical grounds, is it more defensible to have a cat or a boa constrictor as a pet?” Motivated by a neighbor’s erroneous complaint that he was feeding kittens to his pet boa, Herzog focused his discussion on the question of what pets eat (rather than on “how cute they look”) and concluded that his pet boa did significantly less damage to other animals than his neighbor’s pet cat. One study showed that the approximately 5 million domestic cats in England killed at least 70 million small animals per year, including 20 million birds. Furthermore, large numbers of other animals are routinely killed, with pieces of them finding their way into the contents of cat food tins. An adult boa, on the other hand, requires about 5-6 rats per year in order to survive.

 Hal Herzog, an experimental psychologist with a great deal of experience in conducting animal research, and a nationally know scholar on the ethics of animal research, has also written a series of thoughtful articles on the issue of using animals as research subjects. These include:  “The Movement is my Life”: The Psychology of Animal Rights Activism (1993a). An article based on structured interviews with animal rights activists.  Human Morality and Animal Research (1993b). Semi-autobiographical, a reflective piece making the point that “[n]either animal researchers nor animal activists inhabit a tidy moral universe” (p. 348).  Ethical Ambiguities and Moral Standing: Practical Lessons from Animal Care and Use Committees (1996). An essay on the decision-making processes of animal care and use committees, with two of Herzog’s favorite example—rodents and snakes.

 Give students some hypothetical cases involving animal research and ask them to play the role of an Animal Care Committee in judging whether the research should be done. A 1990 article by (who else) Hal Herzog includes a set of four such cases.

 The text points out that peer review can provide one means of identifying research fraud. White and Kirby (2005) describe an interesting class exercise that has students simulating the peer review process by reviewing each other’s papers.

 Fraud seems to occur with some regularity in research designed to demonstrate the existence of some paranormal phenomenon. Although it is important to realize that the majority of ESP researchers are honestly (and fruitlessly, so far) trying to find reliable evidence of paranormal events, there are several well known cases of fraud that cast a shadow on the entire realm of paranormal research. For example, in the late 1960s there was a brief stir when it was reported that animals showed the ESP ability of precognition (knowing what is about to happen). The procedure involved placing an animal in a two-compartment chamber and electrifying the floor of each compartment in a random sequence. Presumably, an animal in this situation has no chance to reliably avoid the shock because there is no way for it to know when the shock is coming or in which compartment it will occur. On the other hand, if the animal somehow “knew” (i.e., had a precognition) that a shock was coming in compartment A, it could wisely move to B and avoid the shock. Just this result was found in a series of studies headed by W. L. Levy (Levy, Mayo, Andre, & McRae, 1971), Director of the Institute for Parapsychology (once affiliated with Duke

University). Somehow, his mice were able to be in the nonshocked compartment significantly more often than chance, thereby showing the precognitive ability to “know” when and where a supposed random shock was coming. This was big news for believers in ESP, but some of Levy’s more honest coworkers noticed that he seemed to be “hovering about one of the data-recording devices while experiments were in progress” (Hansel, 1980, p. 234). You can guess the rest. It’s not clear what Levy was doing, but the results didn’t replicate when he was kept away from the apparatus. Confronted with the inconsistency in results, he admitting manipulating the data and resigned.

Answers to Applications Exercises Not Answered in the Text (in Appendix C)

Exercise 2.1. Thinking Scientifically About Deception

2. Researchers could avoid deception by instructing subjects to “imagine” that they are in a deception study; they are then asked to behave as they think a typical person would behave.  Using the Milgram study as an example, participants could read a detailed description of the procedure, then estimate the shock level at which a typical person would disobey; the same thing could be done with a second group given a slightly different scenario, one in which it is made clear that the learner has a heart condition. In the simulation, the two groups will almost certainly five different estimates of a cutoff point. In fact, Milgram found no difference in performance between his basic design and a “heart attack” variation.

4. Deception seldom works in research with university students, because they talk to each about the studies in which they have participated and tell each other the “true” purpose of the studies.  In a survey designed to evaluate the subject pool, students could be asked some questions about the extent to which they knew about the studies in which they were participating.  Another possible study would be to run the same study with two groups of college students at a college that has a strong honor code. One group would be asked to sign a pledge not to discuss the study and a second group would not be told anything about the issue. Participants in research for that semester could then, at the end of the semester, report in a survey whether they knew about the studies for which they were signing up.

Exercise 2.2. Recognizing Ethical Problems

2. The flat tire helping behavior study  This helping behavior study could be a problem for Standards 6.07 (unwitting driver/participants could be placed in danger if distracted by the flat tire situations; that is, the experimenter might not have shown “due concern” for the welfare of participants), 6.11 (lack of informed consent), 6.15 (deception – the study might impose too high a level of “unpleasant emotional experience” if the driver passed by and later felt guilty), 6.17 (minimizing invasiveness). To defend the study to an IRB, the researcher would stress that it is important to understand the circumstances under which help will be given, and that if it can be shown that modeling can enhance helping behavior, society could benefit from applications of the principle. The researcher would be obligated to demonstrate that permission of the proper authorities (e.g., state police) had been obtained.

Exercise 2.3. Studying Obedience to Authority

 Burger extensively screened subjects, selecting those he thought would be able to withstand the stress of the procedure. He also eliminated the “you must continue” prompts of the Milgram study and made it clear to subjects that they could quit any time. He also stopped the experiment at 150 volts, arguing that in Milgram’s study most people who went to 150 also went to 250. The first issue of American Psychologist for 2009 is a special issue on obedience, and it includes an article by Burger, historical articles, and articles evaluating Burger’s claim. In this special issue, Thomas Blass (Milgram’s biographer) was quite impressed by the Burger replication (Blass, 2009), but Alan Elmes (who, as a graduate student, worked with Milgram in the original studies) thought that some of Burger’s modifications (e.g., screening subjects perhaps made the two groups very different from each other) might have changed the fundamental nature of the study (Elmes, 2009).

Exercise 2.4. Decisions about Animal Research

There may be no right or wrong answers to these problems, but below we describe information to consider for the cost-benefit analysis for each scenario.

2. Rats. A psychologist seeks permission to conduct a classroom learning demonstration. Rats are to be deprived of food for 23 hours and taught to press a lever for food reinforcements.  Costs: Rats may be uncomfortable due to food deprivation; rats may experience mild distress when initially learning the reinforcement schedule being tested.  Benefits: Rats will receive food; students will have a powerful learning experience which demonstrates learning via reinforcement and research methods used in operant conditioning/learning experiments.

4. Dogs. Stray dogs awaiting euthanasia in an animal shelter are to be used to teach surgical techniques to veterinary students.  Costs: Dogs may experience discomfort, pain, or death from surgical procedures. Couldn’t students use the dogs after they have been euthanized?  Benefits: Veterinary students would benefit from learning and practicing surgical procedures, particularly if surgery requires animal to still be alive, with blood flowing.

References

Beins, B. C. (1993). Using the Barnum effect to teach about ethics and deception in research. Teaching of Psychology, 20, 33-35. Brinthaupt, T. M. (2002). Teaching research ethics: Illustrating the nature of the researcher-IRB relationship. Teaching of Psychology, 29, 242-245. Britton, B. K, Richardson, D., Smith, S. S., Hamilton, T. (1983). Ethical aspects of participating in psychology experiments: Effects of anonymity on evaluation, and complaints of distressed subjects. Teaching of Psychology, 10, 146-149. Brookhart, S. (2001). IRBs and the review of psychological research. APS Observer, 14(3), 1, 7-8. Cornell, E. H., Heth, C. D., & Rowat, W. L. (1992). Wayfinding by children and adults: Response to instructions to use look-back and retrace instructions. Developmental Psychology, 28, 328-336. Fontes, L. A., & Piercy, F. P. (2000). Engaging students in qualitative research through experiential class activities. Teaching of Psychology, 27, 174-179. Gilovich, T. (1991). How we know what isn’t so. New York: Free Press. Grahe, J. E., Williams, K. D., & Hinsz, V. B. (2000). Teaching experimental methods while bringing smiles to your students’ faces. Teaching of Psychology, 27, 108-111. Hansel, C. E. M. (1980). ESP and parapsychology: A critical reevaluation. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. Herzog, H. A. (1990). Discussing animal rights and animal research in the classroom. Teaching of Psychology, 17, 90-94. Herzog, H. A. (1991). Conflicts of interest: Kittens and boa constrictors, pets and research. American Psychologist, 46, 246-248. Herzog, H. A. (1993a). “The movement is my life”: The psychology of animal rights activism. Journal of Social Issues, 49, 103-119. Herzog, H. A. (1993b). Human morality and animal research: Confessions and quandaries. The American Scholar, 62, 337-349. Herzog, H. A. (1996, June). Ethical ambiguities and moral standing: Practical lessons from animal care and use committees. Lab Animal, 29-32. Hubbard, R. W., & Ritchie, K. L. (1995). The human subjects review procedure: An exercise in critical thinking for undergraduate experimental psychology students. Teaching of Psychology, 22, 64-65. Kallgren, C. A., & Tauber, R. T. (1996). Undergraduate research and the Institutional Review Board: A mismatch or happy marriage? Teaching of Psychology, 23, 20-25. Levy, W. J., Mayo, L. A., Andre, E., & McRae, A. (1971). Repetition of the French precognition experiments with mice. Journal of Parapsychology, 35, 1-17. Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York: Harper & Row. Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3, 1-14. White, T. L., & Kirby, B. J. (2005). ‘Tis better to give than to receive: An undergraduate peer review project. Teaching of Psychology, 32, 259-263. Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). The psychological power and pathology of imprisonment. In E. Aronson & R. Helmreich (Eds.), Social psychology. New York: Van Nostrand.