Ethics Critique of

Boyatzis, Matillo and Nesbitt (1995).

 

 

I usually begin my units on Ethics with an exercise in coming up with studies designed to test whether watching violent TV increases aggression in children.

 We begin by deciding that an experimental design in which children are randomly assigned to either the violent TV condition or the non-violent TV condition is critical in the study. 

 

We then recall that such a study was done in the famous Bobo doll experiment by Alfred Bandura (check out your Psych 1 notes if you have forgotten).

 

BUT, we quickly decide that we don’t really care if children become aggressive toward a punching bag, but that we really care about children’s aggression with each other.  So we decide to do a study in which we expose some children to violent programming and some to non-violent and then watch their behavior on the playground.  Right?  Wrong!!

 

Why is it wrong?  Because, I always argue, it is unethical to create aggression in any child both for the aggressive child and the child who is receiving those acts of aggression.

 

So, imagine my surprise when I ran across the Power Ranger study that came up in our library assignment.  I was dumbfounded!

 

What do you do then?  Well, this is a great lesson in how science is a living organism and not a bunch of dead papers.  I e-mailed Chris Boyatsis who is now at Bucknell University.

 

 

 

Dear Dr. Boyatzis:
 
I wonder if I could ask you to search back a few years.  I am teaching our Research Methods class this year and thought your 1995 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers paper would be an excellent springboard for discussion as the students in this cohort could easily have been those karate kicking children you were studying back then.
 
My question is about the human subjects protections that you used in the study.  I would appreciate anything you can tell me about the informed consent and debriefing processes that you used. I also wonder whether you had any feedback from parents after the study was conducted.
 
Thanks very much.  I appreciate your help.
 
Doreen Arcus, Ph.D.
University of Massachusetts Lowell

 

 

 

And here is his reply, reprinted here with permission, emphases added:

 

 

Hi Doreen,

It amazes me  how much the interest in this Power Rangers study continues...

I appreciate your questions.  And I am going back quite a few years, and I don't have handy the materials, like consent forms on this, because that study was done over 11 years ago and at another university on the other side of the country.  But I think I have this right:  We went through the usual procedures for review, and at the level of the parents' consent, the letter described the basic design with terms something like "your child may be assigned to the group that will watch an episode of the show...your child will then be observed during regular free play with classmates...."   In all honesty, I'm not certain what we said about assuaging any concerns about the potential negative impact on the kids' behavior.  I imagine we said something along the lines of what researchers on this topic usually say--that "children in the Power Rangers condition would be watching a show that they could usually watch at home (and in the case of that show, every day of the week) and that is the most popular children's show on TV."   I am sure we  told parents to contact us with any concerns about their children's behavior following the study.  As for debriefing, I think we sent a summary of the study to the school and parents.  I don't think we did anything unusually supportive or protective of the kids, in large part because of the ubiquity of the particular show.

Let me go beyond the information here and offer a postscript, 11 years after the fact. 

As I look at the rationale that we probably used in that consent, and the rationale used in this line of research, I feel some qualms of guilt.  Our justification that "kids watch this show all the time" is not fully morally defensible, is it (after all, at home kids get spanked all the time, too, but we can't spank them in a research study)?   But AT THE TIME, we did not have any empirical evidence of the show's effects, so it was worth learning about.

(Another postscript on this:  early in grad school my advisor and I wanted to do a study on the effects of anxiety on kids' play and fantasy, and we wanted to create different anxiety conditions.  We decided on showing kids (like 4-6 yr olds) the clip from Wizard of Oz where the flying monkeys come down and kidnap Dorothy and her pals.  The university rejected it, saying it would be too anxiety-provoking for young children, and in response to our point that this movie is widely watched by children the school said that doesn't justify scaring the kids some more with it.)

 Back to the Power Rangers, thanks to that one small study we learned that some kids (boys, especially) were distinctly more aggressive after watching it than a control group.  There are problems with the design, some serious shortcomings that I teach my own undergrads to detect and rectify.  But it was a little study that made a huge splash due to its topic (Power Rangers, which was the #1 rated shows for kids 2-11 yrs old for 102 consecutive weeks!) and the findings (it seemed to make boys more aggressive).  The media response was deafening, and my "15 minutes of fame" spanned a year and a half.  Interviews with media of all sorts around the world, my colleagues getting sick and tired of seeing news crews with lights and cameras coming to my office, and most prominently segments in 1994 on the prime-time shows Entertainment Tonight and 20/20, a carefully-timed spot just 10 days before Christmas.

That media experience is a story in itself, primarily in the use and abuse of psychological information by media.  But to tell another part of the story is to link research with public policy affecting children.  It's worth noting that on that 20/20 segment, in his interview of me (ABC flew me out from CA to NYC), John Stossel took his usual condescending tone and seemed to mock the idea that there should be any limits on kids' TV--if you don't like it, turn it off (this reflected what we'd learn in later years his overly libertarian values).  I recall him asking  me incredulously if there should be the equivalent of a "Dept of Motor Vehicles" for kids' TV that would police programs, or that would give ratings on them.  He said this in a most dismissive tone, and although I emphasized I was there to discuss the research and not policy, I said that perhaps it wasn't unreasonable that the government might want to take steps such as rating shows, etc.

Jump ahead a bit...Clinton passed Federal TeleCommunications Act of 1996 that included many mandates regarding children's TV, one the installation of V-chip technology and also  the use of ratings of children's TV shows.

I don't think for a  moment that my one study or interview caused any of this legislation but I do feel that that one little Power Rangers study and its media coverage helped spark, and contribute to, broader public and political debate  about the bigger picture of kids' TV, and that latest wave of public concern (we've had many such waves about kids' TV) well could have contributed to the telecommunications act policies and some new thinking about kids' TV.

Much more than you asked for, but it is a fascinating story, one that adults and students tend to be intrigued by.  If you want any more of my take on this, don't hesitate to ask.

Chris Boyatzis

 

 

So, would today’s IRB have approved this study?  Not the one I sit on.  I think the researcher’s qualms in retrospect are right on target.  Notice that there was not an intent to cause harm, but was it reasonably expected?  It was the hypothesis! So, IRB review is not a perfect process, but it is the best we have.  What would you suggest they do to counteract any of the harm they might have created?  The good was probably a contribution to society, but there is a continuing obligation to the participants themselves.  Some kind of program to decrease aggression would be a start.

 

By the way, that was the beginning of a lovely correspondence.  Lesson:  Don’t hesitate to contact researchers. They are real people too!