Nowadays ethics and morality play a massive part in what can and cannot be done during psychological experiments.
Nowadays ethics and morality play a massive part in what can and cannot be done during psychological experiments. There are strict rules that experimenters must adhere to during the whole experimental procedure, from recruiting participants, to the experiment itself. However, standards haven’t always been so strict and some of the most famous and influential studies in psychology are the most unethical of them all.
Little Albert
The experiment conducted by John B. Watson, that’s now known as The Little Albert Experiment, is a study of classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is widely associated with Ivan Pavlov and his dogs and it involves creating a response in an animal or a human towards an object or sound that previously received a neutral response.
The Little Albert Experiment tested classical conditioning on a nine month old baby that Watson named Albert B. At the beginning of the experiment, the boy loved animals and had a particular bond with a white rat. Every time the rat was present, Watson started using a loud sound of a hammer hitting metal. The young boy soon developed a fear of the rat, along with most other animals and furry objects.
The boy died of an unrelated illness aged just 6 so it’s impossible to say whether or not the phobias that Watson produced would have continued into adulthood. However, he was never desensitised to the phobias, which is why the experiment is considered so unethical.
Asch’s experiments on conformity
In 1951 Solomon Asch did an experiment on conformity. He placed participants in groups and asked them to compare line lengths. Each group was shown a reference line along with three others. They were asked to identify which of the three lines was closest in length to the reference line. Each participant was unknowingly put into a group of actors that had been instructed to give the right answer on the first two occasions and the wrong answer thereafter. The aim of the experiment was to see whether the participant would conform and also give the wrong answer to avoid being the sole outlier.
Of the 50 participants, 37 of them went along with the incorrect group despite the correct answer being obvious.
Despite the study causing no harm to participants, it could not be replicated today because participants were deceived during the experiment and Asch failed to obtain any informed consent.
Milgram and obedience to authority
Stanley Milgram, psychologist at Yale, did an experiment on authority and obedience to try and understand how so many people came to participate in the disturbing acts of the holocaust. He began to conduct his experiments on obedience in 1961, with the theory that people are inclined to obey authority figures which would mean that the majority of people involved in the holocaust were obeying orders.
The participants were told that they were taking part in a study on memory and paired up with another ‘participant’, who was actually an actor that had been recruited for the experiment. The pair were then assigned roles of learner and teacher (the real participant was always the teacher) and they were moved to separate rooms.
The teacher was given instructions to press a button and ‘shock’ the learner every time they got a question wrong and the shocks increased in intensity each time. Eventually, as the shocks got stronger, the actor would start to complain of pain and this was followed by screaming.
Despite the screams, the majority of participants continued to deliver the shocks, despite the clear pain the learner was suffering, for as long as they were instructed.
This is another unethical study that would not be allowed today because the participants were left open to psychological harm. At the end of the experiment it was revealed to the participants that if the shocks had been real the majority would have killed the learner, a fact that could have left them psychologically traumatised.
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FAQs
Some of the most controversial and unethical experiments in psychology include Harlow's monkey experiments, Milgram's obedience experiments, Zimbardo's prison experiment, Watson's Little Albert experiment, and Seligman's learned helplessness experiment.
Why is the Asch experiment unethical? ›
Asch used deception in his experiment without getting informed consent from his participants, so his study could not be replicated today.
What famous psychology experiment where ethical principles were violated? ›
Perhaps the most infamous psychology trial, the Milgram experiments were conducted by Yale University's Stanley Milgram in 1961. The experimental setup involved an experimenter, a volunteer dubbed the “teacher” and an actor, who pretended to be another volunteer –the “learner”.
What are some unethical studies that have been conducted? ›
Examples include American abuses during Project MKUltra and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the mistreatment of indigenous populations in Canada and Australia. The Declaration of Helsinki, developed by the World Medical Association (WMA), is widely regarded as the cornerstone document on human research ethics.
Who is the most controversial psychologist? ›
Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American social psychologist known for his controversial experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale.
Why is the Little Albert experiment unethical? ›
Today, an experiment like this would not be approved by the Institutional Review Board, which protects the rights of human research subjects in studies. The experiment caused a young child a lot of discomfort and fear. Albert's health condition might've deteriorated faster by undergoing this stressful experiment.
Was the smoky room experiment ethical? ›
This ensured that the participant's behaviour was unbiased and natural. However, at the same time, it causes ethical concerns as participants did not consent to being observed at that moment and may have been very distressed upon seeing the smoke. They were also deceived regarding the experimental procedure.
What is the major flaw in the Asch study? ›
what is the major flaw in the Asch conformity study? Asch ignored the importance of several factors influencing conformity-including race, class, and gender.
What is one weakness of the Asch study? ›
One weakness of Asch's (1951) study was that it only measured the conformity rate of males. This meant that the results could not be generalised to the whole population as female conformity levels were not investigated.
What is the most famous experiment in psychology? ›
Experiment Details: One of the most widely cited experiments in the field of psychology is the Stanford Prison Experiment in which psychology professor Philip Zimbardo set out to study the assumption of roles in a contrived situation.
The Asch conformity experiments are among the most famous in psychology's history and have inspired a wealth of additional research on conformity and group behavior. This research has provided important insight into how, why, and when people conform and the effects of social pressure on behavior.
What is the forbidden experiment psychology? ›
The "forbidden experiment" would involve withdrawing all language input from children, and then measuring their ability to develop language after different periods of deprivation. This, of course, would be highly unethical.
What is the most common unethical behavior? ›
Misusing company time, whether for covering up for a person who arrived late at the workplace or modifying the attendance log, is usually the most significant unethical behavior example. It also comprises knowing a co-worker managing their business during work hours.
What is one past historical unethical breach of research conduct? ›
One of the most notorious cases of unethical research, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study involved the denial of syphilis treatment to African-American males in Alabama.
What are 5 unethical during research? ›
Five general categories of unethical behav- ior in research can be listed: 1) falsification of data; 2) failure to credit others; 3) plagiarism; 4) conflicts of interest; and 5) biased design and interpretation due to outside influences.
What is unethical in psychology? ›
Oversharing information or unnecessarily violating the patient's right to privacy: Therapists must sometimes divulge certain information to authorities but should not share any more information than is reasonably necessary. Disregarding the importance of therapist-patient privilege is unethical.
Is the Milgram study unethical? ›
Why was the Milgram experiment unethical? The Milgram experiment was considered unethical because participants were deceived about the true nature of the study and subjected to severe emotional distress.
What is an example of psychological data that is unethical to collect? ›
On the other hand, an example of unethical psychological data to collect, store, and use is personal information obtained without the knowledge or consent of individuals, such as hacking into someone's private social media account to gather data.
