Activities

1. As a group or individual, draw up your own list of ethical guidelines. What do you think is not acceptable in psychological research?
2. Look through examples of psychological research that you have examined in other units and decide whether they break your ethical guidelines. Are there alternative ways in which the information could have been collected?
3. Imagine you were the experimenter in a study that involved Asch’s procedure. How would you debrief a participant who had shown high levels of conformity? Would it be possible to do this without making them feel gullible and inadequate?
4. If you had to conduct a study involving Milgram’s procedure what would you tell participants before they decided to take part? Is it possible to divulge all the details of the procedure in order that the participant can make an informed decision to take part?
5. Zimbardo’s study has been recreated as ‘reality TV’ (rather like ‘Survivors’). The ‘cast’ of prisoners and guards, have been recruited from volunteers just as in the original experiment. Discuss the ethics of making and showing such a TV show. Can an exercise such as this contribute to our understanding of social influence processes?

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