Bocchiaro et el

AIM:

• To see how many people will comply with an unethical request and how many people will respond by whistle blowing to a higher authority
• To compare the accuracy of people's estimates of obedience, disobedience and whistle blowing

SAMPLE:

• volunteer sample
  
• recruited by flyers in the university cafe
• 149 undergraduate students
• mean age of 20.8
  
• took part in the research for 7 euros or course credit
  

• labatory experiment
• greeted by a Dutch male experimenter who was formally dressed and had a stern demeanour
• participants had to give names of students
• informed them that they were carrying out reserach into sensory deprivation and presented the cover story
• said they were waiting for ethical approval from university
• instructed to write a statement to convince other students to take part
  
• told to be enthusiastic and had to use two adjectives eg exciting and great
• experimenterleft the room for 3 minutes to allow them to reflect 
• moved to a second room where there was a computer to write their statement, a mailbox and the Research Committee forms
• told them to begin andleft for 7 minutes
• if a participant believed it violated ethical norms they could put theirform in a mailbox
• after 7 minutes, he returned and they followed him back to the first room
• lasted 40 minutes

RESULTS:

• 76.5% obeyed
• 14.1% disobeyed 
• 9.4% whistle blew
• 6.4% of whistle blowers had written a message then whistle blew
• 3.4% refused to write a message
• no significant differences were found in any of the groups in relation to gender, religious affiliation or religious involvement
• a significant difference was observed with regards to faith

• people are very obedient and whistle-blowing is uncommon
• people overestimate the tendency to blow the whistle 
• people underestimate the likelihood of obedience
• little or no evidence to suggest that dispositional factors affect obedience, disobedience or whistle blowing
• results support the findings of previous research showing that we tend to see ourselves as 'special' and rate ourselves as less likely to follow destructive orders
• results have implications for social psychology research- innacuracy of estimates of behaivour in this situation suggests that all scenario-based research lacks validity

RELIABILITY:

• High external reliability as done in a laboratory so easy to replicate
• High internal reliability as the standardisation helped each participant to have a similar experience 

ETHICS: 

• None of them reported any extreme levels of stress
• Allowed to comment on ethical issues
• Aware they could withdraw
• Had confidentiality
• Were debriefed after as well as signing a second informed consent form
• Some minor emotional stress to participants

VALIDITY:

• High ecological validity - task was more realistic than Milgram's study and even though artificial environment real situation it set out to represent was a lab experiment
• High internal validity as participants did believe they were communicating concerns to Committee
• Low validity because in this scenario based research people had to imagine what they would do
• High control in lab reduces validity 

SAMPLING BIAS:

• Volunteer sample so relatively easy for researchers to obtain a reasonably sized sample
• All University students so may share background
• Large sample so results more generalisable
• Volunteer sample so participants may share personality traits 

PARTICIPANTS:

• 138 comparison students
• VU university 

PROCEDURE:

• provided with a detailed description of the experimental setting
• asked 'what would you do?' and 'what would the average student at your university do?'
• informed about what their task was, the potential benefits/risks of participation and their right to withdraw
• assured of the confidentiality of the information collected

RESULTS:

• 3.6% said they would obey 
• 31.9% said they would disobey
• 64.5% said they would whistle blow

• 8 pilot studies
• invloved 92 undergraduates from the VU University
• were conducted to ensure the procedure was credible 
• served to standardise the experimenter authority behaivour throughout the experimental period
• was found that the participants thought the procedure was both believable and ethical