Page 442 - The Social Animal

424 The Social Animal

cause for concern because the act of lying is, in itself, objectionable—
even if the deception is at the service of uncovering the truth. And
procedures that cause pain, embarrassment, guilt, or other intense
feelings present obvious ethical problems.
More subtle but no less important ethical problems result when
participants confront some aspect of themselves that is not pleasant
or positive. Recall the experiences of the participants in the relatively
mild experiments by Dawes, McTavish, and Shaklee. And many of
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Solomon Asch’s participants learned that they would conform in
the face of group pressure; many participants in our own experiment
(Aronson and Mettee) learned that they were capable of cheating
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at a game of cards; most of Milgram’s participants learned that they
would obey an authority even if such obedience (apparently) involved
harming another person.
It could be argued that such self-discovery is of therapeutic or ed-
ucational benefit to participants; indeed, many participants them-
selves have made this point. But this does not, in itself, justify these
procedures. After all, how could an experimenter know in advance
that it would be therapeutic? Morever, it is arrogant of any scientist
to decide that he or she has the right or the skill to provide people
with a therapeutic experience without their prior permission to do so.
Given these problems, do the ends of social psychological re-
search justify the means? This is a debatable point. Some argue that,
no matter what the goals of this science are and no matter what the
accomplishments, they are not worth it if people are deceived or put
through some discomfort. On the opposite end of the spectrum, oth-
ers insist that social psychologists are finding things out that may
have profound benefits for humankind, and accordingly, almost any
price is worth paying for the results.
My own position is somewhere in between. I believe the science
of social psychology is important, and I also believe that the health
and welfare of experimental participants should be protected at all
times. When deciding whether a particular experimental procedure
is ethical, I believe a cost-benefit analysis is appropriate. That is, we
should consider how much good will derive from doing the experi-
ment and how much harm will be done to the experimental partici-
pants. Put another way, the benefits to science and society are
compared with the costs to the participants, and this ratio is entered
into the decision calculus. Unfortunately, such a comparison is diffi-