Download Week 1 DQ 1 Research Ethics Review the following studies from the

Week 1 DQ 1 Research Ethics
Review the following studies from the reading/multimedia this week:
a. Milgram’s study of obedience
b. Thinking critically about Harlow's experiments
c. “Little Albert”
d. Guidelines for ethical care in the care and use of nonhuman animals in research
e. Standard 8: Research and publication
Choose one of the above studies and incorporate the following in your response:
a. Summarize the study.
b. Explain how classical and/or operant conditioning is applied in the study.
c. Discuss the ethical issues associated with the methods of research. What were the
risks to the subject(s)? What information was gained as a result of the research? Was
the information gained from the study worth the risks?
d. Identify which ethical principles should be applied when conducting research
with human or animal subjects.
Your initial post should be a minimum of 250-300 words. You must use at least one
scholarly, peer-reviewed source that was published within the past five years and is
cited according to APA guidelines as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
Guided Response: Review several of your classmates’ posts. Respond substantively
to at least two of your classmates who chose different studies than you. Do you agree
or disagree with the ethical principles they addressed in their posts. Why or why
not? What, if any, additional ethical principles should they consider?
John B. Watson conducted the Little Albert experiment to demonstrate that
emotional reactions such as fear could be classically conditioned in human beings,
concentrating on their behavioral patterns (Lieberman, D.A., 2012, Chapter 2.3). Watson
introduced a nine-month-old child named Albert to a white rat, in which the infant initially
displayed no fear and actually exhibited fondness toward the animal. After the initial test,
Watson introduced a loud noise while Albert was being exposed to the rat. The baby
elicited fear and would burst into tears every time the rat was presented to him, validating
Watson’s theory that fear could indeed be conditioned. The experiment, which continued
for a long time, produced long lasting effects on Little Albert’s behavior; he developed
phobia on rats and the fear response even extended to other similar furry objects such as
rabbits.
I believe that this experiment is harmful and unethical, and our present ethical
guidelines will not allow any experiment of this kind to be carried out. Moral standards
dictate that psychologists must never cause human participants to suffer any physical or
emotional distress and must maintain the dignity and value of all people (American
Psychological Association, 2010). Little Albert’s rights as a human being, especially as a
child, were grossly breached to satisfy the objectives of the researchers. All in all,
experiments such as the Little Albert experiment will not be permitted in our time, more so
when researchers try to condition emotional response such as fear in the behavior of
vulnerable people groups such as children.
S. Milgram tried to measure people’s obedience to authority by devising an
experiment wherein a participant was asked to administer electric shocks in increasing
voltage levels to a subject. The participant administering the shocks wrongly believed that
the subject was receiving actual shocks, and he/she must follow the instructions of the
experimenter (point of authority) until the participant signifies the desire to stop the
experiment.
Milgram tries to validate the theory of operant conditioning by creating a scenario
wherein people exhibit less than desirable actions because they were forced to do so. In the
experiment, the administrators begin to show increasing signs of distress as the voltage
level increases, and some begin to question the purpose of the test and ask whether they
could stop even if they are required to continue. They would also apologize to the subjects
even though the subjects were not actually hooked into the shock generator.
There are reasons why researchers cross the fine line of ethical research. Some
believe that certain details have to be kept hidden to the participants in order to produce
valid results that are not subject to participants’ manipulation and adaptation. However,
today’s ethical guidelines strongly put the welfare of human subjects as a primary
consideration when conducting researches on people. Milgram’s study failed to recognize
the effects of the test on the participants who experienced unnecessary anxiety and guilt
over an action that they did not actually commit. No pain was done to the subjects, but the
thought of inflicting pain caused much harm to the participants’ psychological being.
Due to possible negative effects that might be inflicted on human and animal
subjects in the course of an experiment, the American Psychological Association has
outlined guidelines that would consider the physical and emotional health of all that are
included in the experiment and would guarantee that the research has a sound purpose.
Lieberman, D.A. (2012). Psychology of learning. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education.
American Psychological Association. (2012). Guidelines for ethical care in the care and use
of nonhuman animals in research. Retrieved from
http://www.apa.org/science/leadership/care/guidelines.asp
American Psychological Association. (2010). Standard 8: Research and publication. In
Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct: 2010 amendments. Retrieved from
http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx#
Lieberman, D. A. (2012) Psychology of Learning. Retrieved from
https://content.ashford.edu/books/4