QuestionsPsychology 201, spring 2006Dr. Thomas PierceLab assignment, 1/26/06 EthicsEach group of students will constitute an Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects. You should review each of the following studies in terms of each of the situations listedbelow:A) Describe all ethical issues the committee should consider in determining if the study should be approved.B) Note that there may be information you need that is not provided in the brief descriptions Provided. List any questions you would like to ask the investigators.C) Decide as a committee if you would approve the study as described.D) If your committee decides the study cannot be conducted in its present form, describethe changes that should be made.Questions1) A psychiatrist wants to test a new drug to treat depression. She assigns 20 clinicallydepressed people to a group that receives the new drug for ten weeks. She assigns 20 clinically depressed people to a group that gets a placebo. She plans to administer the BeckDepression inventory before the treatment, after four weeks of treatment, and after eight weeks of treatment.After four weeks of treatment the investigator notices a dramatic improvement in the groupgetting the new drug, but no change in the group getting the placebo. Does this place the investigator in an ethical dilemma?2) The correct identification of criminal offenders by an eyewitness is considered to be an important social issue as well as an important psychological issue. After reviewing severalalternative procedures, a researcher decides that the best procedure is to stage a crime in the presence of eyewitnesses and then ask them for a description of the perpetrator. The experiment is conducted in “the field” and the setting is a fast food restaurant. All employeesare carefully rehearsed regarding the staged crime. The “crime” is committed by an actor who enters the store displaying an unloaded handgun and demands all the money from the cash registers. He tells the employees not to call the police, and, in making his getaway, shouts to the customers that the “first one out the door is going to get blown away.” Immediately after the “thief” leaves, the researcher and his associates enter the store with a questionnaire which is distributed to the patrons. The questions deal with the physical appearance of the thief, whether or not he had a weapon, what he said, and a series of photographs in which identification was sought. Each patron was thoroughly debriefed after the questionnaire was completed, and the important social and psychological issues were discussed. An opportunity was provided for further debriefing and counseling.3) “The proposed research seeks to determine the conditions which lead to unethical and illegalbehavior in businesses and in society. Specifically, this study examines cheating behavior ina natural setting. Previous research has shown that cheating often is affected by situational variables such as the absence of witnesses and the ease with which the cheating can be accomplished. The present research seeks to investigate cheating behavior as a function of the gender of the cheater and the degree of opportunity to cheat. The situations chosen to investigate this behavior are those in which an automobile driver is asked to put money in a machine to gain access to a parking facility or to a highway. Two common situations of this type are unattended automated parking lots and tollways. The goal of the research is to shed light on the social conditions leading to unethical and illegal behavior.The research will be conducted with the cooperation of several parking-lot owners and with tollway authorities in the community. An opportunity to cheat will be manipulated by placinga sign next to a barrier (either to a tollway or a parking facility) which declares that the machine will take money but that the barrier (which is in the open position) is temporarily inoperable. In addition, in one condition the signs will further state that entering without paying the appropriate toll is punishable by a fine. No such warning will be present on the signs in the other condition. Observers will be positioned so that they can identify the genderof the driver and see whether the driver puts money in the machine. Of interest is whether therate of cheating differs between males and females; whether the warning about legal penaltiesaffects this behavior; and if the warning does have an effect, whether it influences one gendermore than another.” (John J. Shaughnessy and Eugene B. Zechmeister, 1994, Research Methods in Psychology, p.68.)4) Psychological conformity occurs when people accept the opinions or judgments of othersin the absence of significant reasons to do so or in the face of evidence to the contrary. Previous research has investigated the conditions under which conformity is likely to occur and has shown, for example, that conformity increases when people anticipate unpleasant events (e.g., shock) and when the pressure to conform comes from individuals with whom theindividuals identify. The proposed research examines psychological conformity in the context of discussions about alcohol consumption among teenage students. The goal of the research is to identify factors that contribute to students’ willingness to attend social events where alcohol is served to minors and to allow obviously intoxicated persons to drive an automobile. This research seeks to investigate conformity in a natural setting and in circumstances where unpleasant events (e.g., legal penalties, school suspension, injury, or even death) can be avoided by not conforming to peer pressure.The research will involve 36 high school students between the ages of 16 and 18 who have volunteered to participate in a research project investigating “beliefs and attitudes of today’s high school students.” Participants will be assigned to four-person discussion groups. Each person in the group will be given the same 20 questions to answer; however, they will be asked to discuss each question with members of the group before writing down their answers.Four of the 20 questions deal with alcohol consumption by teenagers and with possible actions that might be taken to reduce teenage drinking and driving. One member of the groupwill be appointed discussion leader by the principal investigator. Unknown to the participants, they will be assigned randomly to