It is well-known by all psychologists that personal expectations can tint a participant’s experience in an experiment. In order to eliminate this bias in the results of an experiment, psychologists created the double and single blind experiments. In double and single blind experiments, you “blind” either both the participants and the experimenter or just the participants to who got the real product and who got a placebo. By not allowing the participants to know who has the real product, you can tell whether the participants’ personal expectations for the experiment biased the results they reported. In a double blind experiment, even the experimenter doesn’t know who got the real product, and who got a placebo. Therefore, I believe that
although both single and double blind experiments eliminate the possibility of bias tinting the results, double blind experiments are a better alternative because they eliminate even the bias of the experimenter. In many ways, double and single blind experiments are very alike. Both of these attempt to extinguish the possibility of bias. Although neither can fully promise that the results are accurate, both types of experiments do a better job than non-blind experiments, in which both participants and researchers know who got the real product, and who did not. Single and double blind experiments alike are used in the medical, psychological, and biological fields, as well many others. Although double and single blind experiments attempt to do the same thing, they are very. In my personal opinion, double blind experiments are better at canceling bias. By not allowing the experimenter to know who got what, it eradicates the unconscious cues that an experimenter can show to a participant, which can change the participant’s words. Even a slight nod or raised eyebrow can clue a participant in as to what the researcher thinks of their answer. So, by not allowing the experimenter to know all the facts, it terminates even more of that potential bias. In conclusion, although double and single blind experiments, useful tools in psychology, are very similar, a simple factor, the knowledge of the experimenter, sets them very far apart from each other. Though both try to cancel the possibility of bias in an experiment, double blinds do a better job of it. Both types of experiments are extremely advantageous for many fields of sciences, and have furthered science immensely since they were created.
In Chapter 4, In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing, the author Lauren Slater starts the chapter off telling the true story of how a young woman, Kitty Genovese, was brutally murdered and raped outside of her apartment complex. What was most shocking in the aftermath is there were a total of 38 witnesses and not a single person did anything to help her. This raised many concerns as to why the witnesses did nothing. When they were being interviewed by the cops, they stated that they just did not want to get involved(p.94), thus “diffusing responsibility”, this is a term used by two psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latane, who were very concerned with and wanted to understand why nothing was done to aid young Kitty Genovese as she was being stabbed and raped.
The Asch and Milgram’s experiment were not unethical in their methods of not informing the participant of the details surrounding the experiment and the unwarranted stress; their experiment portrayed the circumstances of real life situation surrounding the issues of obedience to authority and social influence. In life, we are not given the courtesy of knowledge when we are being manipulated or influenced to act or think a certain way, let us be honest here because if we did know people were watching and judging us most of us would do exactly as society sees moral, while that may sound good in ensuring that we always do the right thing that would not be true to the ways of our reality. Therefore, by not telling the participants the detail of the experiment and inflicting unwarranted stress Asch and Milgram’s were
Upon analyzing his experiment, Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, concludes that people will drive to great lengths to obey orders given by a higher authority. The experiment, which included ordinary people delivering “shocks” to an unknown subject, has raised many questions in the psychological world. Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California and one of Milgram’s colleagues, attacks Milgram’s ethics after he completes his experiment in her review. She deems Milgram as being unethical towards the subjects he uses for testing and claims that his experiment is irrelevant to obedience. In contrast, Ian Parker, a writer for New Yorker and Human Sciences, asserts Milgram’s experiments hold validity in the psychological world. While Baumrind focuses on Milgram’s ethics, Parker concentrates more on the reactions, both immediate and long-term, to his experiments.
When and why do you think the subject in the experiment began to "second guess" himself?
In the field of psychology one of the main goals is studying and determining the behavior of individuals. It is imperative to study human’s behavior under controlled environmental settings, and how these individuals react to the stimuli around them. But it is also important to note how far is too far in the environmental settings, and is it possible for the subjects that are in the experiment able to change their own personal beliefs and conform to the people/ environment around them knowingly. There are few well-known experiments that demonstrate these changes in the personal behavior of the subjects. These being; the Stanley Milgram’s “shock experiment”, and Philip Zimbardo’s “ Stanford Prison experiment ”. These two controversial experiments
At Harvard, B.F. Skinner looked for a more objective and restrained way to study behavior. Most of his theories were based on self-observation, which influenced him to become a enthusiast for behaviorism. Much of his “self-observed” theories stemmed from Thorndike’s Puzzle Box, a direct antecedent to Skinner’s Box. He developed an “operant conditioning apparatus” to do this, which is also known as the Skinner box. The Skinner box also had a device that recorded each response provided by the animal as well as the unique schedule of reinforcement that the animal was assigned. The design of Skinner boxes can vary ...
...n had over everyone involved has been shown when participants were interviewed months later, and were all extremely surprised about the way they acted during the experiment.
Experimental research is the one type of research that allows psychologists to make causal statements. It is where the researcher changes one or more variables that may have an effect on some other variables (King, 2016). The hypothesis is a specific expectation about what is going to happen in the experiment (King, 2016). In the research, the hypothesis was that women would perceive fat talk to be more socially acceptable than men (Katrevich et al., 2014). The other elements of experimental method are dependent and independent variables. The independent variable (IV) is the cause of the results, and it is changed by the experimenter to find the effects, but the dependent vari...
Wright, D., Carlucci, M., Evans, J., & Schreiber Compo, N. (2010). Turning a Blind Eye to Double Blind Line-Ups. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24, 849-867. doi: 10.1002/acp.1592
In order to have a successful, reliable experiment you need sufficient data and evidence, reliable research, variables to test and a follow – up experiment. There are several types of variables you need to do an experiment. An independent variable is the manipulated experimental factor that is changed to see what the effects are. A dependent variable is the outcome. This factor can change in an experiment in reaction to the changes in the independent variable. An experimental group is the group of participants that are exposed to the change that the independent variable represents. The control group is participants who are treated in the same way as the experimental group except for the manipulated factor which is the independent variable (King 24). Proper data, evidence and research is also needed so the experiment turns out correctly and you know what you are testing. A follow – up experiment is not required, however it helps the validity of the conclusion of the experiment. Validity is “the soundness of the conclusions that a researcher draws from an experiment” (King 25). Conducting a follow – up experiment will help researchers and people alike see if the experiment worked properly, continues to help people and see how participants are doing after the experiment is over.
Slater, Lauren. Opening Skinner's box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. Print.
In this lab we apply the technique known as a two point discrimination test. This test will allow us to determine which regions of the skin are best able to discriminate between two simultaneous sensory impulses. According to (Haggard et al. 2007), tactile discrimination depends on the size of the receptive fields located on the somatosensory neurons. However receptive fields for other types of sensations are located elsewhere. For vision we find that the receptive fields are located inside the visual cortex, and for hearing we find receptive fields in the auditory cortex. The ability for the body to discriminate two points depends on how well that area of the body is innervated with neurons; and thus conferring to the size of the receptive fields (Haggard et al. 2007). It is important to note that the size of the receptive field generally decreases in correlation to higher innervations. As was seen in the retinal receptive fields, the peripheries of tissue had contained larger receptive fields (Hartline, 1940). In our test we hypothesized that the finger region will be able to discriminate better than the forearm. This means that they will be much more innervated with neurons than the forearm, and likewise contain smaller receptive fields. This also means that convergence is closer to a 1:1 ratio, and is less the case the farther from the fingers we go. We also think that the amount of convergence is varied with each individual. We will test to see if two people will have different interpretations of these results.
Experimental research is lab restrained where volunteers, people who are involved in an experiment willingly, are given a stimulant and will either be a part of the experimental group or the control group. The procedure is the same for both groups, but the content given to them will be different. The experimental group will be given the experiment remedy and the control group will either be given a placebo or will not receive the treatment at all. As with all research methods, there are limitations that include people behaving differently than they would be if they were not in a laboratory setting as well as some questions cannot be resolved in the experiment. Fortunately, for the APA Ethical Guidelines, it is unethical to damages someone’s
The knowledge question being pursued in this essay is: what role does what we expect to see- or are used to seeing- play in what we observe? What we expect to see greatly influences the observations that we make, as confirmation bias is created therefore we are more likely to accept something as true. It is difficult to make observations with neutrality once bias is formed.
Unethical experiments have occurred long before people considered it was wrong. The protagonist of the practice of human experimentation justify their views on the basis that such experiments yield results for the good of society that are unprocurable by other methods or means of study ( Vollmann 1448 ).The reasons for the experiments were to understand, prevent, and treat disease, and often there is not a substitute for a human subject. This is true for study of illnesses such as depression, delusional states that manifest themselves partly by altering human subjectivity, and impairing cognitive functioning. Concluding, some experiments have the tendency to destroy the lives of the humans that have been experimented on.