Psychological Research

Class 2 – SSC 101 Intro to Psych

Emaan Rangoonwala
Review

• Important things to consider in psychology:

• It’s scientific – deals with research, facts & proof, not opinions
• Need to take culture into consideration
• Goals of psychology: describe, explain, predict & apply, control
• The journey of psychology
• Supernatural perspective
• Psychoanalytic
• Behaviourism
• Humanistic
• Cognitive Psychology
• Biological/neuroscience
• Eclecticism
• Feminist/Multicultural psychology
Cool New Products/Apps

• Lumosity
• Actavia Yoghurt
• Volkswagen Clean Diesel cars
• Loreal Youth Code
• Qray Bracelet

• Feedback?
Psychology as a Science

• What is science about?

• Facts
• Proof
• Research
• That’s what Psychology attempts to do as well, which is
why we call it a science.
Research in Psychology

• Research helps us in finding answers that are supported by factual

evidence, instead of just relying on opinion, intuition, what people say, and
luck
• Objective understanding of ourselves and our world
• History has many examples of how our “common sense” or intuition failed
us
• Mental illness and possession
• Earth being square
• “spare the rod, spoil the child”
• Question: What effect do you think watching violence on screen has on us?
• Makes us more violent or less violent since watching/playing it gets our aggression out?
Hallmark of Scientific Research?

• Evidence to support a claim

• Objective, tangible evidence that can be observed time and
time again, regardless of who is observing (aka evidence that
you can find no matter how many times you replicate a study
or research)
Using Research Information

• Research can be used to further our knowledge regarding

general & debated topics
• Eg the link between media exposure and subsequent violence and
aggression, the effectiveness of certain treatment methods
(medical or psychological), whether certain prevention programs
are helpful (eg drug/bullying prevention programs), cultural
influence on things such as attitudes towards conflict, gender,
mental health, individualism vs collectivism (can be helpful with
international relations esp, eg Egyptian culture of burping)
• Consensus that media violence exposure is a risk factor for actual
violence
Using Research Information as a consumer

• We should strive to think critically, and should maintain a healthy

degree of skepticism when dealing with research or claims
• Evaluate claims and information from different perspectives
• What is the expertise of the person making the claim?
• What might they gain if the claim is valid?
• Does the claim seem justified, given the evidence?
• What is the evidence?
• How did they find this evidence?
• What do other researchers, or others in the field, think of this claim?
Why should we be so critical?

• Think of all the information you see in advertising campaigns and

on the internet that claims to be based on “scientific evidence”
• Sometimes it’s just a belief or perspective of a few individuals trying to sell
a product or draw attention to their perspective
• Eg Lumosity
Recall the videos

• Actavia Yoghurt
• Volkswagen Clean Diesel cars
• Loreal Youth products
• Qray Bracelet

• What claims do they make?

• How persuasive are those claims?
• What does the company have to gain if their claim is correct?
• Research: does it actually support what the ad says?
Actavia Yoghurt

• “The Activia ad campaign, fronted by actress Jamie Lee Curtis,

claimed that the yogurt had special bacterial ingredients. As a
result, the yogurt was sold at 30% higher prices than other similar
products. However, the Cleveland judge overseeing the case said
that these claims were unproven.
• a class action settlement of $45 million in 2010, 
according to ABC News. The yogurts were marketed as being
"clinically" and "scientifically" proven to boost your immune system
and able to help to regulate digestion.”
Volkswagen "Clean Diesel" vehicles

• “On March 29 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a 

lawsuit against Volkswagen, which claimed that the car company had
deceived customers with the advertising campaign it used to promote its
supposedly "Clean Diesel" vehicles, according to a press release.
• In 2015, it was exposed that VW had been cheating 
emissions tests on its diesel cars in the US for the past seven years.
• The FTC alleged that "Volkswagen deceived consumers by selling or leasing
more than 550,000 diesel cars based on false claims that the cars were low-
emission, environmentally friendly."
• On top of potential fines for false advertising, the company could have to
pay out up to $61 billion for violating the Clean Air Act, according to Wired.”
Believable?

• Loreal – Video
• In 2014, cosmetics company L'Oréal was forced to admit that its Lancôme
Génifique and L'Oréal Paris Youth Code skincare products were not
"clinically proven" to "boost genes" and give "visibly younger skin in just
seven days," as stated in its advertising.
• According to the FTC, the claims were "false and unsubstantiated."
• In the settlement, L'Oréal USA was banned from making claims about anti-
aging, without "competent and reliable scientific evidence substantiating
such claims," the FTC said. Though L'Oreal escaped a fine at the time, each
future violation of this agreement will cost the company up to $16,000.
Why should we be so critical?

• We need to be informed consumers, because decisions based on this

“scientific” information can have significant consequences.
• Eg in politics or public policy – DARE drug prevention program (pg 37)
• Eg when you’re picking what to study (the lucrativity, job prospects, scope in
your country)
• Eg the flawed research on African Americans being intellectually inferior to
Caucasians
• Bc google is not always right
Why should we be so critical?
• According to a 2015 research published in the Journal of Global
Fashion and Marketing, only 18 percent of all claims made in
commercials for cosmetics prove to be trustworthy.
• Despite the variation of categories and claims, only 18 percent of
the 757 claims reviewed actually stood up to their advertised
features. Makeup ads made most of the claims in
the beauty industry—294 of them, in fact. And as for the other
classifications, researchers found that almost half of the brands
reviewed actually make false scientific or subjective claims.
But…

• there is also a responsibility on the consumer's part to maintain a

sense of skepticism about some ad claims.
• "The main reason why lies succeed is because the target doesn't
want to know the truth," says psychologist and author Dr. Paul
Ekman. "We're all in collusion with advertisers, unwittingly,
because we'd like to believe that products do what they claim."
Bottom line

• Research is what makes the difference between facts and

opinions.
• Facts: Observable realities
• Opinion: personal judgements, attitudes, or conclusions that may
or may not be accurate.
Scientific Method

Question / Test Draw Report

Hypothesis
Theory Hypothesis Conclusions Results
Theory versus Hypothesis

• Theory: a broad and well-developed set of ideas or explanations

about an observed phenomenon, based on a body of facts that has
been repeatedly confirmed through experiment and observation.
Theories are too complex to be studied all at once.
• Eg we need sleep to function in the day, all living things breathe, TV creates
false expectations about reality
•
• Scientists create hypothesis to test specific aspects of a theory
• Hypothesis: a testable prediction about how the world will behave if
our idea is correct (“if …. then…..”). It’s more specific and precise.
Theory vs hypothesis

• Theory: broad, well developed idea

• Hypothesis: specific and measurable “if…then…” statement
• Eg. If we don’t drink, we will die vs if all humans do not drink at
least one 8 oz. glass of clean water in 48 hours, they will die.
• Eg. People who watch TV regularly are unhealthy vs individuals
who watch TV for 10 hours in a 24 hour period will have a body
weight of at least 5kg more than those who do watch TV 5 hours or
less.
Operational Definition

• Essential in a good, solid research project

• Operational definition:  a clear, concise detailed definition of
your process, your materials, and your hypothesis.
• Eg eating chocolate causes violence
• Define chocolate (which kind, how much, when)
• Define violence (cursing, punching, kicking, throwing, threatening)
Operational Definition – Practice

• Drinking orange juice results in more productivity

• People get sad when they receive bad grades
• Spending too much time on Facebook increases lonliness
• Spending too much time on Facebook increases eating behaviours
Operational Definition

• Practice:
• Drinking orange juice results in more productivity (fresh or boxed juice, how much
juice, what is “more productivity”? Is it staying awake longer than usual (if yes, how
much longer), is it doing more readings, is it staying at school till later?)
• People get sad when they receive bad grades (how sad? Like just a slight feeling of
sorrow, or is it like persistent sadness? How long does sadness last? How do you observe
or measure the sadness (like via a rating scale or what), what is a “bad grade” – one
grade below what they expect, or a C, or a Fail?)
• Too much fb time increases loneliness (how much fb time, feelings of loneliness or
observable loneliness like not hanging out with people? Increases loneliness like
temporarily or more long lasting loneliness, and how do you measure this loneliness? Bc
different people experience varying levels of loneliness even if in the same situation)
Falsifiable

• A hypothesis must be falsifiable aka capable of being shown to be

incorrect.
• In other words, it should be something someone else can factually
show to be false.
• One of Freud’s criticisms was that most of his ideas were not
falsifiable – eg., how can you prove for sure that the Id, Ego, and
Super ego (the three elements of personality described by Freud)
do not exist?
Your turn

• What are some topics we can research on?

• Come up with at least 5 hypothesis in groups related to any topic
• Prediction
• Operationally defined
• Falsifiable
Correlational Research

• Correlation: a relationship between two or more variables

• When two variables are correlated, it means that as one variable
changes, so does the other.
• It doesn’t necessarily imply cause and effect between the
variables.
• Correlation is not causation
• It does not tell you about cause and effect
 More icecream = more crime?

• Research shows that as sales in ice-cream increase, so does the overall rate
of crime
• Does that mean people who have more ice-cream could possibly commit
crimes?
• Or, maybe it means people are so stressed by the rise in crime that they end
up having more ice-cream?
• Or, criminals decide to treat themselves to ice-cream after a job well done?

• A relationship between the two does exist, but clearly one does not cause
the other. There could be another variable (confounding or extraneous
variable) involved.
• Therefore…..
Correlation is not causation
Does a correlation imply causation?
 Correlations

• Extraneous/Confounding variable: outside factor or variable

(often unanticipated) that causes the change
• i.e the “third” factor or variable that’s responsible for the change, or
that could be the reason for the change
• Eg in the icecream/crime example, the weather was the extraneous
variable (aka the weather is actually responsible for both higher icecream
sales and more crime)
Other correlations – 0.997
Other correlations – 0.958
Other correlations- -0.939788
 Correlational Research

• Positive correlation: two variables move in the same direction (if one
increases, other increases too. If one decreases, other decreases too)
(eg icecream sales and crime, height and weight, foot size and
reading ability)
• Negative correlation: variables move in the opposite direction (if one
increases, the other decreases, and vice versa). (eg hours of sleep
and tiredness, amount of food eaten and hunger)
• No correlation: no relationship between two variables; variables may
move in random directions
• The stronger the correlation between two variables (aka the stronger
the relationship between two variables), the more predictable
changes in one variable will be as the other variable changes.
Correlational Research

• Sometimes adverts use correlational research to promote their

product(s)
• Recent research found that people who eat cereal regularly have healthier
weights, compared to people who don’t regularly have cereal
• How would cereal companies use this info?
• Could also mean that healthy weight people are more likely to have a good breakfast
(versus people who skip meals to “diet” or who have unhealthy breakfast foods.
• Illusory correlations: things people think are correlated even though
they aren’t
• Eg full moon = weird human behaviour (because ocean tide’s flow is tied to
gravitational forces of the moon, and our bodies are water too).
Positive or Negative Correlation?

• •The more children & youth used various media, the less happy
they were with their lives
•The more altruistic content teens saw on TV, the more likely they
were to express altruism in their lives.
•The longer children were fed by their mothers, the greater their
later academic achievement
•The more income rose among a sample of poor families, the fewer
symptoms of mental illness their children experienced
 Measuring correlation

• Correlation coefficient is a number from -1 to +1 that

indicates the strength and direction of the relationship
between two variables.
• Direction:
• Anything below 0 (minus): negative correlation
• Anything above 0 (positive number): positive correlation
Measuring correlation
• Correlation coefficient is a number from -1 to +1 that indicates the
strength and direction of the relationship between two variables.
• Strength:
• The closer your correlation coefficient is to 0, the weaker the relationship
between the two variables (and thus changes in one are less likely to help you
predict changes in the other).
• The closer your correlation coefficient is to 1 (+1 or -1), the more strongly
related the variables are (and the more predictable changes in one variable will
be as the other variable changes)

• +1 : strong, positive correlation

• -1 : strong, negative correlation
• 0: no correlation (no relationship between 2 variables)
Correlation Practice

• What is the strength and direction of these correlation coefficients?

• r = + 0.90
• r = + 0.10
• r = - 0.95
• r = - 0.27
• r = 0.85
• r=-1
• r = - 0.30
Correlation Review
Positive Correlation
Definition
Indicates that as the value of
one variable increases, we can
predict that the value of the
other variable will also
increase
Example
The more time students spend
studying for a test, the higher
their grades on the test will be
The less they study, the lower
their test scores will be
Correlation Coefficient
Correlation indicated by a
positive number
ranging between 0 and +1.0
Negative Correlation
Definition
Negative correlation tells us
that as the value of one
variable increases,
the value of the other
decreases.
Example
As the number of hours spent
studying increases, the number
of hours spent partying
decreases
Correlation Coefficient
Correlation indicated by a
negative number
ranging between 0 and -1.0
 Correlations – Visually
• Scatterplots give us visual representations of correlations.
• The stronger the correlation, the closer the data points are on a
straight line.
Cause and effect

• The only way to make cause and effect

statements is to conduct an experiment to answer
a research question.
• Other research methods (non experimental)
cannot give you cause-and-effect.
Experiments
• We do experiments to see if real world data supports our
hypothesis or our idea
• Experiments help you establish cause-and-effect
• You need a hypothesis
• You have to operationally define everything (your hypothesis as
well as the process) – if someone else reads your research, they
should be able to know exactly what you mean, and should be
able to replicate it.
• Eg. distraction while studying at café
• Eg. Violent behaviour after watching a violent tv show
Basic Experimental Design

• The most basic experimental design has 2 groups

• Experimental Group (gets the treatment)
• Control Group (doesn’t get any treatment)
• Both groups are the same (composition, method of experiment), with one
exception: the experimental group is what gets the “treatment” or
experimental manipulation (also known as the Independent Variable).
• To establish a cause-and-effect relationship the effects of the
manipulation must be compared with the effects of no manipulation or a
different kind of manipulation.
• Thus the responses of at least two groups (Experimental and Control
Group) must be compared.
IV and DV

• Independent Variable: the variable that is given, introduced, influenced,

or controlled by the experimenter. This is the only important difference
between the Experimental and Control group. (the “cause”)
• The effect of ______________

• Dependent Variable: The variable the experimenter measures to see what

effect the Independent variable had. This is the result or outcome of the
Independent Variable. (the outcome, or the “effect”).
Examples of IV and DV

• A researcher wants to see the effect of 2 cups of orange juice on students’

ability to do a math problem.
• Independent variable (the thing the researcher or experimenter
adds/manipulates/controls)
• Dependent variable (the outcome or result of the Independent Variable)
• I want to see if journaling every day makes students want to go out more.
• Independent Variable
• Dependent Variable
Practice!

• Groups of 4
• Identify the following:
• Experimental Group
• Control Group
• Independent variable (the thing or variable the
experimenter is introducing or adding or
manipulating)
• Dependent variable (what the outcome or result is, or
what outcome or result the experimenter wants to
measure)
Example 1

• In a fastfood company, it is found that 100

individuals have low levels of motivation which is
affecting their work performance. 50 of these
individuals attend regular motivational seminars for 8
weeks, while the other 50 people are placed on a
waiting list for 8 weeks. At the end of the 8 weeks all
100 are given psychological tests to assess their level
of motivation.
Example 2

• A sports manager wants to decrease levels of aggression in

his players. He goes to a psychologist who is studying the
effects of anabolic steroids on reducing aggressive behavior
of female rats. 24 female rats receive daily injections of a
placebo (fake drug), while 24 others receive daily
injections of the steroid. 24/7 videotapes of the communal
cages of all rats allow all aggressive encounters to be
counted and timed.
Example 3

• An industrial psychologist is interested in whether

lowering the temperature in a packing room will
increase productivity (number of products packed).
Workers in two equivalent packing rooms participate in
the study. One room is maintained at 65 degrees, the
other room is left at the usual company temperature of
76 degrees.
Recap

• You have an operationally defined hypothesis.

• You have your experimental group and your control group
• You know what your Independent Variable (treatment or
manipulation) is, and what Dependent Variable (the outcome) you’ll
be looking at.
• OR
• You know what variables you want to do a correlation study on (your
variables will be operationally defined).
• What else do you need?
Participants

• We take a sample from the larger population that we want to study

instead of everyone – why?
• The sample must be representative of the population you want to study.
• Random sampling: Pick participants in a way that everyone has an equal
chance of being selected
• Random sampling with a large sample: can be reasonably sure that your
sample will be representative of the population (in terms of age,
gender, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic background)
• Split participants into Experimental and Control Groups via random
assignment (for equal distribution).
Random samples and Random assignment

• Why is it important to have a random sample, that is then randomly

assigned to experimental and control groups?
• Random sample means you probably won’t end up with everyone being the exact same
(eg all males)
• Random assignment means there is unlikely to be systematic differences between the
groups (less likely to end up with two different groups of people)
• This is important so we can be more certain that the difference in outcome between
experimental and control groups is due to the Independent Variable/the manipulation,
and not because of preexisting differences.
• Random assignment allows us to assume that any differences observed between the
experimental and control groups is because of the Independent variable/manipulation.
How else can you collect participants?

• Opportunity sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Volunteer/ self selected
Some fun words

• Experimental group
• Control group
• Placebo
• Single Blind
• Double Blind

• Video
Experimental Research

• Advantages
• Can determine cause & effect
• Control variables
• Can be replicated
• Disadvantages/Limitations
• Artificiality
• Experimenter bias
• Sampling issues
• Ethical issues (confidentiality, informed consent, deception or other harm to
participant)
Reliability and Validity

• Reliability: the ability to give stable and consistent results. Reliable,

dependable (aka will give consistent results or measurements every
time).
• Validity: the ability to accurately measure/test what it’s supposed to
measure/test.
• If something is reliable, it may or may not be valid/have validity
• BUT
• If something is valid, it WILL be reliable.
Methods of Research

• Each method or approach to research has it’s own pros and cons, and each may only
be appropriate for certain types of research questions.

• Experimental (can determine cause and effect)

• Correlational (can speak to important relationships that may exist between two or
more variables)
• Clinical/Case studies
• Naturalistic observation
• Surveys
• Archival Research
• Meta analysis
• Focus groups
Case studies

• Case study: your research focuses on one person/case or just a few

individuals.
+ Large and rich amounts of information
+ Deep understanding of and insight into the individual and their
particular phenomenon
+ Suitable for rare cases
- Can’t really generalize this information to understand the larger
population (generalize: the ability to apply findings of a research to
larger segments of the population or society)
- Can’t determine cause-and-effect relationships
Case Study Examples

• Phineas Gage
One day in 1848 in Central Vermont, Phineas Gage was
tamping explosives into the ground to prepare the way for
a new railway line when he had a terrible accident. The
detonation went off prematurely, and his tamping iron
shot into his face, through his brain, and out the top of
his head. Remarkably Gage survived, although his friends
and family reportedly felt he was changed so profoundly
(becoming listless and aggressive) that “he was no longer
Gage.” There the story used to rest – a classic example of
frontal brain damage affecting personality.
 Case Study Examples

• Wild Boy of Aveyron

The “Wild boy of Aveyron” – named Victor by the physician Jean-Marc Itard –
was found emerging from Aveyron forest in South West France in 1800, aged
11 or 12, where’s it’s thought he had been living in the wild for several
years. Victor became a kind of “natural experiment” into the question of
nature and nurture. How would he be affected by the lack of human input
early in his life? Those who hoped Victor would support the notion of the
“noble savage” uncorrupted by modern civilisation were largely
disappointed: the boy was dirty and dishevelled, defecated where he stood
and apparently motivated largely by hunger. Victor acquired celebrity status
after he was transported to Paris and Itard began a mission to teach and
socialize the “feral child”. This programme met with mixed success: Victor
never learned to speak fluently, but he dressed, learned civil toilet habits,
could write a few letters and acquired some very basic language
comprehension.
 Case Study Examples

• David Reimer, 1965-2014

• “Reimer lost his penis in a botched circumcision operation when he was just 8 months old. His
parents were subsequently advised by psychologist John Money to raise Reimer as a girl, “Brenda”,
and for him to undergo further surgery and hormone treatment to assist his gender reassignment.
David's parents eventually agreed to the radical procedure, believing Dr. Money's claims that this
was their sole hope for raising a child who could have heterosexual intercourse—albeit as a sterile
woman with a synthetic vagina and a body feminized with estrogen supplements. Money initially
described the experiment (no one had tried anything like this before) as a huge success that
appeared to support his belief in the important role of socialization, rather than innate factors, in
children’s gender identity. In fact, the reassignment was seriously problematic and Reimer’s
boyishness was never far beneath the surface. When he was aged 14, Reimer was told the truth
about his past and set about reversing the gender reassignment process to become male again. He
later campaigned against other children with genital injuries being gender reassigned in the way
that he had been. His story was turned into the book 
As Nature Made Him, The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl by John Colapinto, and he is the subject of
two BBC Horizon documentaries. Tragically, Reimer took his own life in 2004, aged just 38.”
• After surviving being trapped in an avalanche, a young man
suffered from seizures, but only when he did Sudoku puzzles.
• a woman who suffered a painful reaction to a snake bite a
whopping 50 years after she was bitten
• The girl who couldn’t feel physical pain
Focus Groups

• Focus Group Interviews

• A group of people who discuss a subject under direction of a moderator.
• Can be about their perceptions or thoughts about a product, ad, campaign
etc
• Typically includes people who the product/ad/campaign is directed at
 Naturalistic Observations
• Observing behaviour in its natural context/natural setting.
• Eg observing to see how many people actually wash their hands after they use
the bathroom
• Problem?
• People might change their behaviour if they know they’re being observed (Hawthorne Effect)
• Eg driving down deserted road vs if police behind you, being rude to your parent vs if you were in
front of someone you liked
• Important for the observer to be as unobtrusive and as discreet as possible (so
people don’t feel like they’re being watched, so they can behave more
naturally)
• Some naturalistic observation has been done with animals as well
• Have to maintain your distance so as not to interfere with animals, so that animals’ behaviour isn’t
influenced by them.
Naturalistic Observations

+ Valid (accurate) and information – high degree of realism

+ More likely to be able to generalize findings to real world settings/to the
rest of the population.
- Difficult to set up and control
- Eg with handwashing study, what if no one came into the bathroom all day, or if
the same person came more than once, or school got cancelled for a week. Or if
you observe gorillas and they migrated while you were asleep.
- Significant investment of time and money
- Observer bias (the tendency to unconsciously skew your observations to
fit your research goals or expectations)
- Ethical issues
Surveys
• A list of questions to be answered by participants – can be done via pencil/paper,
electronically, or verbally. Can ask any number of research questions through the use of
surveys.
+ Can be completed in a short time
+ Easy to administer
+ Easy administration makes it possible to collect data from a large number of people (large
sample)
Larger sample = more able to generalize to population
+ Larger sample better reflects diversity of population, leads to better generalizability
- Information is not in-depth (only collect basic, superficial information)
- Participants may not respond accurately.
- Response rate is low
- Suggestive questions may provide unreliable and inaccurate information
Archival Research

• Using existing data and records (archives) such as college records, newspaper
clippings, census documents etc to answer research questions/test a
hypothesis.
• Archival research relies on looking at past records or data sets to look for
interesting patterns or relationships.
• Eg College records may be used to determine if there are gender differences
in academic performance, can look at student information from the last 10
years and see if their SAT scores had any relationship with their overall GPA
at the time of graduation.
• Eg. Can see how long it took students from different programs to graduate, or
who is most likely to graduate, and can even help identify risk factors for
struggling students.
Archival Research

+ Don’t directly interact with participants (saves time and money)

+ Not much concern with ethical issues related to participants
- No control over what information was collected
- Out of date information may be irrelevant
- May not provide a complete picture of the situation
- Possibly incomplete information
Meta-Analysis

• Refers to a research strategy where instead of conducting new

research with participants, the researchers examine the results of
several previous studies.
The Ethics of Research

• Informed consent should be documented

• Participants must be informed of nature and procedures of research
• Assurance that participation is voluntary
• Risks and limits on confidentiality must be explained
• Deception involving participants must be justified
• Debriefing refers to explaining the research process to the
participants at the end of the study.

• Ethical guidelines are in place to protect participants

The Ethics of Research

• Informed Consent
• Participants sign a document affirming that they know:
• the basic goals and procedure of the study
• what their participation will involve
• the risks the experiment may hold
• that their participation is purely voluntary
• they may terminate the study at any time
• Deception in research
• Debrief (purpose of experiment, how the data will be used, why deception was
necessary, they can withdraw their info if they want, where to find more info about
the study etc).
Human Research

• No Coercion- must be voluntary

• Informed consent
• Anonymity/confidentiality
• No significant risk
• Must debrief
Earlier ethics

• Some of the research conducted years ago would not pass ethical
guidelines today (and thus cannot be replicated)
• Syphilis study – Alabama, 1932
• Poor, rural, black males recruited
• Milgrim study
• Zimbardo study
• Little Albert
Ethics with animals

• Many basic processes in animals are sufficiently similar to those in

humans, these animals are considered to be acceptable
substitutions for research that would be considered unethical in
human participants.
• Mice
• Rats
• Pigs
• Monkeys
 Should Animals Be Used in Research?
• Procedures that subject animals to distress are
permitted only when an alternative procedure is
unavailable and when the research is justified by its
prospective value
Animal Research

• In the USA, animal research is regulated

by an Institutional Animal Care and Use
Committee (IAUCC)
• Research using animals must:
• Have a clear purpose
• Treat the animals in a humane way
• Acquire animals legally
• Have the least amount of suffering
possible.
 Monkeys addicted to drugs
• The point of the experiment was to understand the effects of addiction and drug use

• In a series of experiments in 1969, a large group of monkeys and rats were trained to inject
themselves with an assortment of drugs, including morphine, alcohol, codeine, cocaine, and
amphetamines. Once the animals were capable of self-injecting, they were left to their own devices
with a large supply of each drug.

• The animals were so disturbed (as one would expect) that some tried so hard to escape that they
broke their arms in the process. The monkeys taking cocaine suffered convulsions and in some cases
tore off their own fingers (possible as a consequence of hallucinations), one monkey taking
amphetamines tore all of the fur from his arm and abdomen, and in the case of cocaine and
morphine combined, death would occur within 2 weeks.
• Potential ethical guidelines violated in this research?
Case Study – Facebook
Facebook and “Emotional Contagion”

Kramer, A.D.I., Guillory, J.E., & Hancock, J.T. 2014. Experimental evidence of massive-scale
emotional contagion through social networks. PNAS, 111, 8788-8790.
Available at: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full
 Facebook and “Emotional Contagion”
• The Essentials:
• Over a one-week period in 2012, researchers manipulated the news feeds for a random
sample of close to 700,000 Facebook users.
• News Feed is the constantly updating list of content from your friends that is shown on
the middle of your Facebook page.
• Because there are typically more stories than can be displayed, Facebook uses an
algorithm that tries to show the stories a user would find most engaging or relevant.
• One group had reduced negative content; one reduced positive
• Used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software (LIWC2007) to determine
emotionality of content
Facebook and “Emotional Contagion”
• The Essentials (cont.):
• The hypothesis was that subsequent user posts to Facebook would be affected
by what they saw in the News Feed
• People in the positivity-reduced group would have less positive posts
• People in the negativity-reduced group would have less negative posts
• The results supported the hypothesis that people’s emotions may be affected by
what their friends say (social contagion)
Facebook and “Emotional Contagion”

• The Controversy
• Facebook users were not asked whether they wanted to
participate in this study
• It was assumed that the Facebook Data Use Policy, to which every
user agrees, had informed users that their data might be used for
such research purposes:
• Among other things, Facebook uses information “for internal operations,
including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service
improvement.” (https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy)
Facebook and “Emotional Contagion”

Assignment
What ethical issues are raised by this study? (brainstorm
and prioritize)
Could Facebook have addressed the hypothesis without
explicitly manipulating the content of the News Feed?