Whistleblowers Are in the Minority in a University Study of Behaviors

¶ … disobedience between individuals and it deals with unjust authority. An experimental scenario was set up by the authors in order to see -- from a group of 149 individuals -- how many of them would obey an "unethical request" and how many would not obey, and would instead blow the whistle on the request.

The authors did this study because they believe that there has not been enough research into the "nature of disobedience to unjust authority," and the bottom line it seems is this: who are the whistleblowers and how are they different from those who go along with unfair, immoral, or unjust demands?

Summary of the procedure used by the authors: The authors explain on page 37 that the whistleblower doesn't get off just because he revealed a situation that is wrong or unjust; rather, the whistleblower must expect to have "future involvement" with the authorities that he blew the whistle on (Bocchiaro, et al., 2012). The authors used a male Dutch experimenter with a "stern" appearance who described an experiment that clearly would entail "great suffering" due to "extended sensory deprivation" (Bocchiaro, 39).

Basically, the participants were asked to provide feedback on whether this school should agree to a sensory deprivation test on students; the hitch is that in their feedback they had to use two of these four words: "great"; "superb"; "exciting" or "incredible" (Bocchiaro, 39).

What are the three potential responses participants could have? The three potential responses were: prosocial; individualist, or competitive.

What was the purpose of the pilot study? There were eight pilot tests, all designed to assure that the procedure conducted was "credible and morally acceptable" to those participating. Some of the participants in the pilot study actually believed that the cover story was real, and were surprised that it turned out to be a ruse.

Compare the predictions that participants made about other participants to the actual participant results. There was a pretty dramatic difference between what was predicted by participants and what actually happened. Of the 138 students from the VU University of Amsterdam were presented with this project and they were " ... asked to imagine being in this research" (Bocchiaro, 41-42). They were asked what they would do and asked to project what the average student at the VU University of Amsterdam would likely do given this test.

Just 3.6% of a "separate sample" of students (asked "what would you do?") said they would certainly obey the stern man who was the experimenter. However, on the other hand, many of the 138 students (31.9%) projected out in front that they would not obey the orders, and a rousing majority (64.5%) believed that students would be offended by the skullduggery and would become whistleblowers (Bocchiaro, 42).

Meanwhile when asked to predict how other students would respond to this experiment just 18.8% believed other students at the university would obey the stern man and his experiment; 43.9% of the students believed that other students would disobey, and 37.3% of the students figured that other students would become whistleblowers (Bocchiaro, 42). However, the real, actual data from the group shows that 76.5% did obey the experimenter, only 14.1% disobeyed, and a paltry 9.4% blew the whistle on this project (Bocchiaro, 42).