What issues are found within Social and Biological Psychology regarding socially sensitive research?

Both Social and Biological Psychology entail issues surrounding the social sensitivity of their research, referring to at what cost the ethical implications as a by-product of studies come, in terms of the benefit they achieve as a result. In Biological Psychology an example of this is in Raine’s 1997 study, looking into whether the neural activity of murderers (pleading not guilty for reason of insanity - NGRI) differed from that of non-murderer control participants. By utilising PET scans, Raine found that murderers had lower activity in their frontal cortex, corpus callosum, and left amygdala and hippocampus, whilst they had higher activity in their right amygdala and hippocampus. This pointed to the conclusion that indeed the activity in murderers’ brains differed from that of the general population. However this raised a socially sensitive issue relating to what would be done with such information. If it were to be interpreted as a cause and effect relationship (in that the imbalance of neural activity caused the criminal behaviour), the data in effect could be used to look at whether people were predisposed to such activities. This may be done in the form of conducting similar scans to children (prior to any criminality), which would not only be invasive to them and perhaps their parents, but would have wider implications regarding how the situation would be handled if they did indeed find the same brain activity in the children as they did in the NGRI participants of Raine’s study. This child may be ‘branded’ a criminal which would not only arouse upset, but perhaps enact itself as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Raine’s results were merely correlational thus no cause and effect relationship can be drawn, so in effect giving a child this label could be the cause of what it is trying to prevent – effecting the child’s self-image and how others aware of the label see them, and eventually being so instilled into their perception that they commit criminal acts. Thus, although Raine’s findings could theoretically prevent criminality for example by instilling early intervention in the form of counselling, there is no causal evidence that establishes the link between brain activity and murdering, so perhaps the utility of his findings would, in a cost-benefit analysis, promote more bad than good.

In Social Psychology, we could look to research such as that carried out by Stanley Milgram in his range of experiments investigating obedience in the 1960s to highlight the dangers of conducting research that is socially sensitive. Milgram’s studies involved the participant acting as a ‘teacher’ to a confederate ‘learner’ who they perceived to be another participant, asking them questions about word pairs and if they got them wrong, having to administer ‘electric shocks’ to the learner, increasing in voltage every time they got one wrong. The electric shocks were not real; however the participants were made to think that they were as a result of deception by experimenters administering a ‘sample’ 45V shock to the Pps. It is this very idea of deception that raises the initial issues about Milgram’s study. Participants were in effect tricked into thinking that they were harming another individual, and although they had a right to withdraw from this, this was only after several verbal ‘prods’ reminding them that they ‘must continue’. Thus, even though the participants were debriefed afterwards, this could result in some degree of psychological damage to participants, at least in terms of having to live with the fact that they had the capacity to perform such violent acts, perhaps leading to some form of self-deprecation – especially to the 65% who reached the full ‘450V’. Not only this, but the stressful nature of the experiment additionally led to 3 participants having full blown seizures, events which have the potential to significantly damage their wellbeing and also as a by-product affect their families and loved ones who would be concerned about their health. Although the benefits of Milgram’s studies help explain such atrocities as the Nazi death camps, and have led to the development of theories such as Agency Theory which could prevent such events occurring in the future, this is at the expense of the potential health and well-being of all participants involved in the study. Whilst more people could potentially be helped as a result of this research, this is only a possibility and is not guaranteed, thus perhaps the benefits are not worth the socially sensitive costs – especially when they are in the form of something as serious as a seizure. If the theory were to be utilised in this way, then such costs would be ‘minor’ in comparison to the lives saved, however again, this is not a guarantee, thus Milgram’s research into social psychology poses an ethical risk greater than the potential benefits it could yield.

Overall, both Social and Biological Psychology and the research within them carry significant risks which could put the wellbeing of their participants and those around them at risk. Whilst Raine’s biological findings could potentially provide a basis to spot future criminals and indeed help the participants with their claim of NGRI, the former could be an ethical disadvantage, especially considering the study did not establish a causal relationship. In addition, Milgram’s study provided grounds to develop theories such as Agency Theory which helps understand and potentially resolve obedience-related atrocities, it does so whilst risking the self-concept and also physical health of the participants, thus until the former has been seen in practice, this is too great of an ethical weakness. Thus to conclude, perhaps the most meaningful findings come with an element of risk, which experimenters in both social and biological psychology must carefully consider prior to any future research.