User:PsychMajor14/sandbox

=Moral Blindness=

Moral blindness can be thought of as the tendency to behave unethically without being aware of it. A person could be convinced that they are doing the right thing, only to realize later the consequences of their decision. Moral blindness can also be defined as the lack of ability to assess the ethical aspect of a decision for a moment. This phenomenon does not simply occur overnight, but instead happens over time.

A person becoming aware of moral magnitudes depends largely on the “sensemaking process” of the social group the person is a part of. The sensemaking process that breeds moral blindness is based on the relationship between the tendency toward rigid framing (how we view the world) and contextual (situational) pressures. Moral blindness occurs when there is no connection between an action’s consequences and the actor’s will. A person has to show understanding to strict moral thought to be considered morally aware.

Explaining Moral Blindness
Moral blindness can be understood in three ways. First, it assumes that people often move away from their own values and principles that are usually available to them. Second, moral blindness depends on circumstance and is therefore a temporary state based on any given situation. Third, it is not a conscious matter. People who are morally blind are usually unaware that they have strayed away from their personal values.

Blind spots in morality can be contributed to rigid framing on the part of the individual. These frames are psychological structures that have a tendency to make a difficult reality seem simple. A manager with a degree in business’ bottom line would be profit, and not the welfare of their employees. This person may not think about how letting employees go would affect the person as long as the profits increased. Using a flexible frame, viewing things from the perspective of their employees, the manager may make a different decision. Rigid framing is when a person is locked in one frame and unable to switch to another frame, therefore not being able to see a more complete picture. To help individuals who experience the phenomenon of moral blindness, they need to be acquainted with an environment of open, independent, and serious planning. These frames come about when social situations occur that provokes interest in social occurrences that are filtered time after time in a particular way. When using frames, usually in an unconscious way, people make sense ‘‘by seeing a world on which they already imposed what they believe." They only know how to behave in ways specific to what they have been taught by means of their everyday environment.

Importance of Moral Blindness
In research, the human rights of subjects should never be compromised, but immoral decisions regarding research is part of our history. Experiments did not just begin a couple of hundred years ago. As noted by Hippocrates, the father of medicine, or rather his students, we need a code to follow for medical procedures. This became known as the Hippocratic Oath. Not so differently, we also needed a code for research, and beginning in 1833, Dr. William Beaumont started what was called the Beaumont code, which is a code for protecting the subject by stipulating that they must give voluntary, informed consent and be able to withdraw from the experiment at any time. The protection of all volunteers in these experiments is of the highest importance today, though it did not always seem so important. Our modern history of experimentation is filled with famous and not so famous studies.

Historical Experiments
In 1845, J. Marion Sims performed medical procedures on enslaved African women with no anesthesia. Today, things like that would definitely not be allowed here in the United States. In 1895, a pediatrician, Henry Heiman, infected a four year old with gonorrhea as part of an experiment. Just a year later in 1896, Dr. Arthur Wentworth, performed unnecessary spinal taps on twenty-nine children just to see if it was harmful.

Done in 1932, a more famous study is the Tuskegee syphilis experiment where four hundred black men were denied knowledge of their illness and subsequently denied treatment so the researchers could follow the progression of the disease. The study that lasted forty years violated serious ethical issues. The participants were promised treatment and received none, uninformed, and encouraged to undergo painful diagnostic tests. This eventually ends in their death. In 1941, eight hundred pregnant women of the low class were given “cocktails” to determine how much iron a pregnant woman needs. Overall, these experiments were not just subjected to the poverty stricken or children who do not know any better, these experiments were done on members of the United States Military as well. In 1942, the Chemical Warfare Service begins experiments of mustard gas on four thousand of the military personnel. Another major experiment is part of the Manhattan Project conducted in 1944; they injected soldiers with plutonium, which is a radioactive chemical element. Another experiment done in 1944 was for Malaria; Dr. Alf Alving infected patients with Malaria and then experimental drugs to determine the cure.

In 1961, Stanley Milgram began his obedience to authority study in order to determine if we could hold all the accomplices of the Holocaust accountable for their actions. Milgram’s famous study measured the “conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.” Milgram’s study certainly would not be allowed today, even though we did learn a great deal from it, but McArthur argues that if Milgram’s study had been set up ethically we might have seen a variation in the results. In experiments done today for example, all subjects have the control to discontinue participation if desired. In Milgram’s experiment, subjects were told that the experiment required them to continue. In addition, deception may be used in experiments but requires a thorough debriefing, which was not part of Milgram’s experiment.

Avoiding Morally Blind Research
Luckily, for us, there are ways to avoid morally blind research. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) for protection of human subjects is the most important tool for avoiding ethical issues pertaining to research. The IRB “upholds the highest standards in the ethical conduct of research.” Anyone whose research meets the criteria for both research and human subjects must complete the IRB process, which will alert you to any ethical issues.

Related Phenomena

 * Bounded ethicality is a term used to describe a psychological process that makes a person behaves unethically different from his or her own set of ethics.
 * Ethical fading is a process that certain ethical dimensions are not present while trying to make an ethical decision.
 * Motivated blindness is how a person fails to notice unethical behavior if that behavior could potentially harm them.
 * Indirect blindness is unethical behavior done through other people and the observer does not notice it.
 * Moral disengagement is a term used to describe when someone behaves differently from his or her personal set of ethics but still believe they are ethical people.

Film

 * In the 1988 film The Accused, a small number of men, who were intoxicated, ganged raped Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster) at a bar. While this sexual assault was happening, no one intervened to help Sarah. The other people in the bar see this immoral act happening, but they ignore it and do nothing to help Sarah.
 * Training Day is a 2001 American crime drama. Detective Wyatt “Alonzo” Becker (Denzel Washington) is a dirty cop that persuades Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) to not say anything about his wrongdoings as a cop. Hoyt sees multiple acts of immoral behavior from Backer, but never tells their supervisors about Becker's behavior.
 * Charlize Theron portrays Josey Aimes in the 2005 American drama North Country. Aimes was employed at a mine in Northern Minnesota. An ex-boyfriend sexually harassed her. She reports the harassment to her supervisors, but they never took her complaints seriously. Josey's supervisors knew that their male employees were harassing her from the complaints she made, but nothing was done.

Television

 * In the season two finale of Breaking Bad titled “ABQ”, Skyler (Anna Gunn) reveals to her husband Walter (Bryan Cranston) that she knows that he is a drug dealer and leaves him. Skyler never tells anyone of her husband’s secret job. During the second season, Walter was the go-to meth drug dealer in Albuquerque. He was wanted by the DEA. Skyler never told, maybe out of fear, or the lifestyle her husband could give.
 * In season six, episode 7 of Dexter titled “This is the Way the World Ends” Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) catches Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) in the middle of a kill. Through this, she realizes that he’s the serial killer and never discloses what he does to the cops. Debra knew her brother was wrong, but she never told anyone to protect him.

Books

 * In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, no one attended Jay Gatsby funeral, even though hundreds of people associated themselves with his lavish parties. They would attend these parties thrown by Gatsby with no problem, but never think to return to the same house for his funeral.
 * Gloucester in King Lear written by William Shakespeare, never see the immoral or unethically behavior of his children, and that leads to his physical blindness when his impaired judgments makes him vulnerable to his enemies.