Worksheet On The Ethics Of Social Psychology Experiments

Ethics of Social Psychology Experiments

Student Worksheet

If you have not already carefully read the instructions for this assignment along with the descriptions of the ten social psychology experiments to consider, please go back and do so now.

Now choose three (3) experiments for which you will answer the questions below. You are free to do outside research on any of them as you please. Please indicate your three choices here:

1. The Little Albert Experiment

2. The Milgram Experiment

3. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment

For each of the three experiments you chose, please insert your answers directly below the question. Although there is no minimum word count for each response, it is unlikely that you would be able to fully answer each question with less than 3-4 complete sentences.

1. What was

Regarding the ethics of this study (keeping in mind that ethics and morals are not necessary interchangeable), do you feel the experiment was ethical? Why or why not? If you would not consider it ethical by today’s standards, do you think it was ethical at the time when the experiment was conducted?

Response for Experiment One: The Little Albert experiment was most definitely unethical. Regardless of the age of the participant, it is wrong to condition an involuntary reaction into a person or do something that frightens them. Unfortunately, the experiment was probably ethical at the time because the APA Ethics Code was not in existence during the early part of the twentieth century.

Response for Experiment Two: The Milgram experiment was unethical because Milgram hid what the experiment was about until after it was concluded. By doing so, he placed the participants in an unexpected and stressful situation. However, Milgram used the same experiment quite often afterwards, with the only alteration being done to what the participants were expected to do, so the experiment was probably ethical during the middle of the twentieth