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Summary Bocchiaro et al. (2012) - disobedience and whistle-blowing
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A summary of contemporary key study - Bocchiaro et al. (2012)
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Bocchiaro et al. (2012): Disobedience and WhistleblowingBackground
Whistleblowing – informing the appropriate authorities about unethical practices, in
particular, unethical professional practice.
Aim
To investigate the rates of obedience, disobedience and whistleblowing in a situation
where no physical violence was involved but by where it was clear that the
instructions were ethically wrong.
Additional Aims
To investigate the accuracy of people’s estimates of obedience, disobedience and
whistleblowing in this situation.
To investigate the role of dispositional factors in obedience, disobedience and
whistleblowing.
Participants
149 undergraduate students (96 females, 53 males) took part in the main study.
11 participants were removed from the original sample of 160 due to their
suspiciousness of the nature of the study.
They were recruited via flyers placed around the VU University of Amsterdam (self-
selected sampling).
All participants were either paid 7 Euros or given course credit for taking part.
A further 92 students were used in the pilot studies.
Ethics
Participants were told what the task was, and they were informed of the potential
benefits/risks of taking part. They were told they could withdraw at any time without
penalty, and that all information collected would be confidential.
Participants were asked to sign a consent form at the beginning of the study (gaining
consent), and again at the end of the study and debrief (gaining informed consent).
Procedure – Pilot Studies
8 pilot tests were conducted prior to the main study – small scale preliminary tests
carried out to assess the suitability and to identify any issues that might need to be
resolved.
In this case, the pilot tests were carried out to make sure that they were morally
acceptable and credible to participants.
Post-pilot interviews revealed that the cover story stating things like ‘I thought it was
altogether real…it was a big surprise that it was not true” and that they felt it was
ethical saying “Cool and interesting research, good for science”.
92 students participated in the pilot studies; they were different participants who
were not used in the main study.
Procedure – Main Study
Participants were greeted in the laboratory by a male experimenter who dressed
formally and had a stern demeanour.
The experimenter asked each participant to provide a few names of other students
(without reasoning) and then presented the cover story.
When the participants moved to the second room, they found a mailbox and
Research Committee forms. If a participant believed that the research on sensory
deprivation violated ethical norms, they could anonymously challenge it by putting a
form in the mailbox.
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