Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [277]
Protests by the scientific community mounted all through the 1970s, and in 1981 the Department of Health and Human Services (successor to DHEW) eased the restrictions somewhat, allowing minor deception or withholding of information in experiments with human beings provided there was “minimum risk to the subject,” the research “could not practicably be carried out” otherwise, and the benefit to humanity would outweigh the risk to the subjects.42 “Risk-benefit” calculations, made by review boards before a research proposal is considered eligible for a grant, have permitted deceptive research—though not of the Milgram obedience sort—to continue to the present. Deception is still used in about half of all social psychology experiments but in relatively harmless forms and contexts.43
Still, many ethicists regard even innocuous deception as an unjustifiable invasion of human rights; they also claim it is unnecessary, since research can use nonexperimental methods, such as questionnaires, survey research, observation of natural situations, interviews, and so on. But while these methods are practical in many areas of psychology, they are less so, and sometimes are quite impractical, in social psychology.
For one thing, the evidence produced by such methods is largely correlational, and a correlation between factor X and factor Y means only that they are related in some way; it does not prove that one is the cause of the other. This is particularly true of sociopsychological phenomena, which involve a multiplicity of simultaneous factors, any of which may seem to be a cause of the effect under study but may actually be only a concurrent effect of some other cause. The experimental method, however, isolates a single factor, the “independent variable,” and modifies it (for instance, by changing the number of bystanders present during an emergency). If this produces a change in the “dependent variable,” the behavior being studied, one has rigorous proof of cause and effect. Such experimentation is comparable to a chemical experiment in which a single reagent is added to a solution and produces a measurable effect. As Elliot Aronson and two co-authors said in their classic Handbook of Social Psychology, “The experiment is unexcelled in its ability to provide unambiguous evidence about causation, to permit control over extraneous variables, and to allow for analytic exploration of the dimensions and parameters of a complex phenomenon.”44
For another thing, no matter how rigorously the experimenter controls and manipulates the experimental variables, he or she cannot control the multiple variables inside the human head unless the subjects are deceived. If the subjects know that the investigator wants to see how they react to the sound of someone falling off a ladder in an adjoining room, they are almost sure to behave more admirably than they otherwise might. If they know that the investigator’s interest is not in increasing memory through punishment but in seeing at what point they refuse to inflict pain on another person, they are very likely to behave more nobly than they would if ignorant of the real purpose. And so, for many kinds of sociopsychological research, deceptive experimentation is a necessity.
Many social psychologists formerly prized it not just for this valid reason but for a less valid one. Carefully crafted deceptive experimentation was a challenge; the clever and intricate scenario was highly regarded, prestigious, and exciting. Deceptive research was in part a game, a magic show, a theatrical performance; Aronson has likened the thrill felt by the experimenter to that felt by a playwright