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When psychologists want to conduct an experiment, the American Psychological Association has a Code of Conduct they must follow. Experimenters must comply to multiple rules, some of which are: consent, confidentiality and overall beneficence. They have review boards who make sure each study is adhering to these rules. Modern ethical experiments makes it clear that participants must not be deceived, they also have to be aware of any consequences. They must understand that sometimes there will be long term psychological damage. The Association was not always this strict; before these rules, many psychologist preformed unethical experiments on humans that would make you cringe to this about what these people went through. Every experiment I will discuss today shines light on how many psychologist preformed unethical studies which all of them became the most famous studies in psychology. Do you think it was worth it, or did they do more harm than good?
The first experiment I will be talking about today is The Little Albert Experiment. This study commenced at Johns Hopkins University in 1920. The study of classical conditioning was preformed by John B. Watson. “This type of conditioning can create a response in a person or animal towards an object or sound that was previously neutral.” (Meredith Dank,1) Little Albert was only 9 months old when Watson did his experiment on him. He introduced Albert to a white rat, over time Watson, or his grad student Rosalie Rayner, started to bang a hammer against something metal to startle little Albert. This went on for several hours till finally the moment Albert saw the rat he immediately started to cry even if there was no loud noise. From this experiment little Albert “associated fear with a number or objects” (Andrew Alpin,6), they showed him other animals like a rabbit and he was still terrified. Even pictures of Santa’s and cotton balls would make him cry. One of Watsons quotes during the experiment was ‘ “The instant the rat was show, the baby began to cry. Almost instantly he turned sharply to the left, f
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fell over on [his] left side, raised himself on all fours and began to crawl away so rapidly that he was caught with difficulty before reaching the edge of the table.” ‘ (Andrew Alpin,7)
This experiment was completely unethical; thinking about how much trauma that baby went through made a lot of people angry. Some reports say that Alberts mother was a wet nurse at the hospital and she was bullied into allowed Watson to experiment on her son. If this experiment was done in today, it would not successfully pass the Psychology Association Code of Conduct. Four important criteria’s that Watson ignored were confidentiality, informed consent, provision of access, and honesty. Little Albert’s confidentiality was completely throw out the window because so many people knew who he was and who his mother was. Watson also lied to his mother and didn’t tell her the whole truth as to what he was doing to her poor son.
The second experiment I will be talking about is The Milgram Experiment which occurred in 1961. Stanley Milgram wanted to understand how so many people participated in the Holocaust. He couldn’t understand how people could just sit back and watch other human get tortured so he decided to start the experiment in Yale that changed peoples lives. He figured out that people will listen to people with “authority” even if its something completely unethical.
The participants were told that they were part of a memory study. (Meredith Dank) Within the group of people who signed up to be apart of the experiment, half of them were actors working with Stanley. The groups were split up into the “teacher” and the “learner”, all of the learners were the actors. Once they were separated the teachers were given the instructions to ask the learner questions. Every time they got a question wrong the teacher would press a button which allowed the learner to undergo a shock. The only catch is, that each time they got a question wrong the teacher had to increase the voltage. They
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were in a room with an “instructor” in a white lab coat. That person was also working with Stanley, they had to make sure the teacher would continue to increase the shocks. You were not allowed to see into the room where the learners were which was all part of Milgram’s plan. He never had his “learner” sit in a chair and get shocked. He made them answer questions and when they got it wrong they would play a tape recording of someone screaming bloody murder, begging to stop the experiment. The shocks were labeled from light-fatal. Some participants refused to finish but most of them actually “killed” the learner. “Having this fact revealed to the participant after the study concluded would be a clear example of psychological harm” (Meredith Dank,4) Milligrams question at the end of his experiment was ‘ “could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them accomplices?” ‘ (Meredith Dank,4) Even though the Milgram experiment had no long term effects on the people who participated, his experiment would not be ethical today.
The Monster Study which was conducted at the University of Iowa in 1939 is the next experiment on my list. Wendell Johnson and his team decided to take 22 orphans and see if they can turn them into stutterers. They were split up into 2 groups of 12, the group that had stutters were all given positive feedback. The latter group was always told that they had stutters and were constantly being brought down with negativity. The second group did not form a stutter but they did however evolve multiple issues in the self-esteem department. Johnson had a stutter problem when he was younger so many people thought that he sparked an interest in it because of all the suffering he went through growing up. “At the time he believed stuttering was learned behavior attributable to external forces, such as parents’ criticism of their children for even the slightest speech imperfections” (Dan Collins, CBS)
August 6th, 2003 Dan Collins from CBS News interviewed Mary Nixon a 76 year old woman,
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who was one of the orphans that Johnson experimented on, and asked about what happened on during those dreadful 6 months in 1939. ‘ “I don’t think anybody today likes the idea of seeing orphans, children, used that way…but its really important to keep things in historical perspective” ’ (Dan Collins, CBS) Nixon and 3 others found out in the last 1990’s, early 2000’s about what Johnson had done and they were furious. They made the story public and tried to sue the school, many speech experts and therapist said that the experiment was “highly unethical by today’s standards, but not necessarily by the standards of the day.” (dan Collins, CBS) They whole debate on whether or not the judge should rule on the orphans behalf or not was due to the fact that back in the day the experiment was not unethical, only to today’s standards. ‘ “ From the 2003 perspective, he conducted a hugely unethical project,’ said Arthur Caplan, head of the University of Pennsylvania’s bioethics center. But 60 years ago, ethical rules did not exist, and experiments were done using minorities, disabled children or prisoners ‘ because you didn't think of them as morally equivalent to others’ ”. These kids had life long issues from this experiment all because Johnson was curious about how a stutter forms.
The last experiment I’ll be talking about is The Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971. Just like The Milgram experiment, Zimbardo wanted to focus on the importance of roles. He hand picked 24 college students who were totally normal and as healthy as they could be. They were told they were learning about prison life, but what they did not know is how much of an impact it would make not their lives. Getting paid a total of 15$ a day, they got to flip a coin so who became guard and who became prisoner, so it was totally by chance. Once the roles were given the experiment commenced. They got to go home and the next day the guards showed up like any normal day, but the prisoners were part of a mock arrest and brought in by police car. The guards were given a specific
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uniform with handcuffs and sunglasses so you couldn't see their eyes. The prisoners were stripped down and humiliated (all by the guards) and told to put on a night dress. During this entire experiment, Zimbardo and his staff stayed behind the senses. What ever the guards did to the prisoners were totally up to them. Unlike the Milgram experiment, they had no pressure making them harass the prisoners.
Each prisoner had a number on their uniform, which they were called by. They also had a chain around their ankle which constantly reminded them that they lost their freedom. As the study went on the guards grew more and more resentful towards the prisoners. On the first day they had a rough time because the prisoners decided to rebels, locking themselves in their cell and refusing to be called by their number. The guards decided (all not their own) that they would not put up with it. They broke down their cell door and pulled them out and punished them. Some forms of punishment was physical and others were mental. They even made a solitary confinement area which was in a closet where there was no room to sit, you could only stand or squat.
There is a video on youtube that explains the study from the eyes of multiple participants in this experiment. Zimbardo explained his views, his partners and also some of the guards and prisoners. Zimbardo states that Milgram expressed his happiness about this experiment because it was taking some of the heat off of him and his unethical study. Dave Eshelman, who was a guard, admitted that he did put all of the prisoners through humiliation and if the experiment lasted longer he believed it would have gotten way worse. He also stated that he never realized, at the time, what a horrible impact on someones life he was making. This study only lasted six days because Zimbardo’s girlfriend came by to see what was going on and immediately told him that he was a monster for putting these people through that type of torture. Many prisoners had molten breakdowns, some were even released before the sixth day. What Zimbardo learned was that anyone that is given a little bit of power and control can into someone
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different.
Each one of these experiments have two main thing’s in common one of which is mistreatment of humans. No matter who you are, babies, orphans, strangers, or healthy college men, they were all taken advantage of. All of this was for learning purposes, but does that seem right? Little Albert went into that study fearless, and left with everything frightening him for the rest of his life. In the Milgram experiment, strangers felt pressured to shock innocent strangers to almost death just so a psychologist can learn about behavior. The Monster Study left kids with horrible self-esteem issues because Johnson had a fascination with stutters because he had one himself growing up. Just because he believed that stutters can be given by negative by authorities, these kids had to grow up believe every negative comment those people said to them. They were already struggling with not having a family and he added more stress onto them. Last but not least, Zimbardo admitted that he didn't realize what he was doing to those poor men, if it wasn't for his girlfriend opening his eyes to what kid of a person he was becoming that study could have lasted weeks. The other main common denominator is the science behind each study. Each psychologist’s experiment made a huge impact on the world of psychology. You can not take a class without learning about one or all of these experiments. But does that make it right? All of the suffering those people had to go through, was it worth it ? Does the science behind it, and the years they were conducted make it okay? Just because the studies were done before the American Psychological Association had created a Code of Conduct, should we over look the horrific acts of pure evil that was bestowed upon these innocent people? Think about it.