what ethical considerations remained in bocchiaros study
- confidentiality was respected
- consent was sought from them twice
- they could withdraw from the study
- they were given a debrief in which the researchers actively attempted to convey that how they behaved in the study was not something of which they should feel ashamed
what ethical consideration did bocchiaros study not have
- participants experienced a high level of deception and the consent they gave at the start of the study clearly was not fully informed
- participants could have left feeling embarrassed about how they behaved as the majority presumably learned something about themselves that they were unlikely to be proud of
how does bocchiaros study have ecological validity
procedure was very lifelike because the situation investigated was a psychologist carrying out a study, and this is exactly what happened, there was nothing artificial about the procedure.
how does bocchiaros study have high construct validity
IV’s were controlled due to the artificial setting of the scenario study
Bocchiaro et al. could accurately measure disobedience because the study took place in a laboratory in VU University in Amsterdam.
how does bocchiaros study have low population validity
- university students may be more motivated to carry out research and this could make the results unrepresentative of the wider population. E.g: all p’s were students from VU University in Amsterdam which may have made it difficult for the results to be generalised to the wider population.
- there could have been demand characteristics due to how the study took place in a laboratory, so the p’s behaviour may have changed to suit this artificial environment, which lowers the internal validity.
how does bocchiaro have high external reliability
the procedure was standardised as all participants will have received the same cover study, suggesting a highly standardised and replicable procedure
how does bocchiaro have high internal reliability
the study was carried out on a large sample of participants meaning that the results can be said to show a consistent trend as a sample of 149 is large.
sample bias
- bocchiaros sample were all undergraduate students with a mean age of 20.8 years which limits the extent ro which they can be seen as representative of the wider population as a whole.
- they were all following the same occupation of being a student and how they behave in this situation might not reflect how older people would behave in the same situation
sample method for bocchiaro
- self-selecting sampling method
- participants made the choice to respond to the flyers posted in the campus cafeteria at Amsterdam VU university
strengths of using self-selecting method
- the researchers are likely to end up with a sample of students studying a wide range of different courses.
weakness of using self-selected sampling
- as volunteers who had made the choice to take part in the study, their sample may have felt a greater level of obligation to the research and this could have affected their behaviour during the study, possibly leading them to be more obedient
how is bocchiaros study seen as ethnocentric
- it only focuses on students in Amsterdam and who are studying in Amsterdam making it ethnocentric
- this means that the results are not generalisable to other cultures as students who have studied in different countries may behave differently.
SITUATIONAL SIDE
how does bocchiaros study link to the individual/situational debate
- the fact that only 3.6% of people in the sample of students asked about the study said they were being obedient suggests that the situation had a strng effect on the persons behaviour
- especilly beause it was the same sort of people (students at the VU university in amsterdam) sayung that they wouldnt be obedient and then actually being obedient
- the gap between what students said they would do (3.6% said they would be obedient) and what students actually did (76.5% were obedient) suggests that the power of the situation shaoes behaviour
INDIVIDUAL
how does bocchiaros study link to the individual/situational debate
- however not everyone was affected by the situation in the same way
- 23.5% of particiaonts were either disobedient or a whistleblower
- the behaviour of these participants suggests that there are individual factors that enable some people to resist the power of the situation.
DETERMINISM
how does bocchiaros study link to freewill/determinsm debate
- the fact that so many people were obedient than what was predicted suggests the extent to which the situation created had a determining influence on the behaviour of the partipants
free will
how does bocchiaros study link to freewill/determinsm debate
- the fact 23.5% of particiants were not obedient can be pointed to as evidence of free will as these people showed how they are capable of controlling their own behaviour as opposed to having their behaviour controlled for them by the pressures of the situation
how can bocchiaros study be useful
- negative uses than positives (e.g. bad employers could draw the conclusion that requiring employees to behave unethicay would be much more likely to result in obedience to the request than either disobedience or whistleblowing
- however it could be used by other researchers as this represents as replicable scenario (paradigm) that could be applied in other places or at other times to see if people elsewhere or in the future are any less likely to obey than was seen in this study
how does bocchiaros study link to social area
it confirms the infleunce that other people can have on our behaviour leading people to be much more obedient than they would probably predict themselves to be
bocchiaros key theme
responses to people in authority
how does bocchiaros study link to the key theme
- in relation to the key theme of responses to people in authority, bocchiaro study would appear to tell us that people are as obedient now (2012) as they were in the early 1960
- people in the netherlands are atleast as obedient as people in the usa and that people are much more likely to obedient than they think they are
how does bocchiaros study change ur understanding of the key theme of responses in authority
- it doesn’t change much of our understanding as the results are very similar to results obtained by Milgram
- however, it does introduce the concept of whistleblowing to research in this area
- the fact that it was carried out in the Netherland changes our understanding of individual, social and cultural diversity
- the fact that bocchiaros study included female participants and it was based n students could suggest ways in which groups might differ in their levels of obedience
- however, there is no significant difference between the males and females in their study in their obedience levels
how is bocchiaros study similar to milgrams study
- both participants:
- recruited in the same self-selected way
- received payment for their involvement in the study
- took part individually
- took part in a laboratory or a university campus
- were led through the scenario by a formally dressed male with a stern demeanour
- experienced a high level of deception
how is bocchiaros study different from milgrams study
- the 2 studies were carried out in different countries
- the 2 studies were carried out in different countries
- the 2 studies were carried out in different time periods
- milgrams study were all male whereas bocchiaros sample included female participants
- participants were left on their own for a while in bocchiaros study and given some ‘cooling off’ time
- in bocchiaros sample, the procedure was not incremental, participants were not led into ever greater obedience in a series of small steps
- in bocchiaros study, the people who would be hurt would be known to them, rather than the person being hurt being someone they’d only met briefly.
- in bocchiaros study, the participants are very deliberately given the intellectual tools to refuse to obey the experimenters requests as they are told from the start that the experiment that they will be asked to write a statement
- in bocchiaros study, it was possible to be a whistleblower without having to go through any awkward confrontation with the experimenter as participants could just tick the box on the research committee form and leave.
