On all matters 'ethical'...

Just a warning, this is going to be slightly long, as im also adding an article... enjoy!
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One thing that's always surprised me is the never-ending list of ethical considerations a researcher has to take into account when trying to figure out the unknown. However, are these ethical considerations necessary? or do they limit the extent of our knowledge of the mind? Don't get me wrong, im not sadistic, and placing humans in conditions of severe discomfort is not how i want to spend my day, but, looking back at the most controversial research; studies that give human/animal right activists food for thought today, those are the studies we have learnt the most out of.

Take Milgram's study on Obedience: He showed the power of an authority figure in conducting a brutal task that (in most cases) resulted in the idea of killing a human. His results were so shocking (haha) that he couldn't replicate a cross-cultural study in Germany as he previously intended on doing. However, had the setting of an authority figure in a lab not been so imposing, would the subjects have conducted the series of shocks on the man/ actor? Surely applications of obedience work under office pressures, or other such work environments.
His studies have been supported by Hofling, which showed obedience of nurses to an unknown doctor to administer an unhealthy dose of medicine despite warning labels.

Today, Milgram's study was replicated using what our generation is best at; Computers:

Scientists have recreated Milgram's classic obediency psychology experiment using virtual reality. Back in the 1960s Stanley Milgram appeared to show that student participants would obey a researcher and administer lethal electric shocks to a stranger, but the studies have not been replicated because of ethical concerns. Now Mel Slater at UCL and colleagues have tested participants' willingness to administer electric shocks to a computer animated woman in a virtual reality environment.

Although the participants knew the woman was unreal, six of them chose to stop the experiment before it was due to end on the woman's 20th incorrect response. A further 6 said it had occurred to them to stop early because they had negative feelings about what was happening. Bycontrast, of eleven participants who completed a control experiment in which they only interacted with the (unseen) woman by text, just one chose to stop the experiment early, and no others said it had occurred to them to stop.

There was further evidence that the participants who could see and hear the computerised woman were affected by the experiment as if it were real. Their stress response was raised (as judged by sweating and heartrate) compared with the 11 control participants. And on those trials in which the woman protested, the participants tended to give her longer to answer before administering the shock. Some participants emphasised the correct answer among the available choices, as if trying to help the woman avoid a shock.

"Humans tend to respond realistically at subjective, physiological, and behavioural levels in interaction with virtual characters notwithstanding their cognitive certainty that they are not real", the researchers said. The findings reinforced the notion that immersive virtual reality environments could be a vital tool for social psychologists, they added, especially for pursuing research of extreme social situations.

-Slater, M., Antley, M., Davison, A., Swapp, D., Guger, C., Barker, C.,Pistrang, N. & Sanchez-Vives, M.V. (2006). A Virtual Reprise of theStanley Milgram Obedience Experiments. PLOS ONE, 1, e39.
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Do studies like the one stated above avoid ethical implications? Or will it lead to just another one on the list; "no participant can undergo distress at the hand of a machine".

It seems to me, that a negative correlation can be made from the increasing list of ethical considerations, against decreasing ecological validity.


- Prerna Menon