Bocchiaro et al. (2012) - Disobedience and Whistleblowing

What was the aim?

To investigate the rates of obedience, disobedience, and whistle-blowing in a situation with no physical violence but ethically wrong instructions

What was the experimental design?

Independent measures

What was the procedure?

Participants asked to provide a few names of other students (without a reason), they were then told the cover story which included “negative effects of sensory deprivation”, they were then instructed to write a statement including positive adjectives such as “incredible” to convince the students previously named to participate

What was the procedure for the comparison group?

They were given a details description of the experiment then asked what they would do in that situation

Who were the participants?

Experiment group - 149 undergraduate students (self selected sampling, mean age 20.8)

Comparison group - 138 students (self selected)

What are the results?

Experiment group - 77% obeyed, 9% blew the whistle

Comparison group - 4% obeyed, 65% blew the whistle

What conclusions can be made?

• people tend to obey authority figures, even if the instructions are unethical or unjust

• Individuals are bad at predicting their own and other’s behavior