Time to Reflect

Well, the time has finally come to write my final blog post for the term; it is hard to believe that it has already been nine weeks since I started this blog!  I have to say that this journey has been really insightful for me.  I have enjoyed it, and I appreciate the feedback that I have received along the way from my readers.  I think that in the future I will continue to blog after graduate school slows down or maybe after I graduate!  

For my final post, I would like to start off by discussing one of my favorite controversial experiments that I have had the opportunity to study this term: Stanley Milgram's shock experiment.  I watched a video this week that discussed the conception of experiment, as well as the results from the experiment, which were quite surprising at the time.

If you would like to watch the video, here it is:

I like to think that if I had been a participant in this experiment, I would have listened to my heart and not gone through with the shocking the other "participant" because it is wrong to hurt someone in order for a researcher to obtain data.  The participants in the study had no idea that they were not really hurting the "learners."  The "teachers" were under the impression that the shocks were gradually increasing in severity with each wrong answer that the "learner" provided.  What I found to be most interesting about this experiment was the four prods that the "experimenter" used to encourage the "teacher" to keep moving forward with the study.  I think that this is where the ethical line was crossed in this study because the participants were made to feel that they had to comply with the experiment, as opposed to being told that they could leave the experiment at any time.

The four prods that the experimenter gave the participants were as follows:  
"Please continue.  The experiment requires you to continue.  It is absolutely essential that you continue.  You have no other choice but to continue"  (McLeod, 2007).  

To me, the "experimenter" sounds like he would have been pretty convincing that the experiment had to continue, especially if he got all the way to the fourth prod.  This might have made it difficult for people to stand up and walk out of the room; however, there was a number of participants who did exactly that.  What do you think you would have done if you had been a participant in this study?  Would you have followed the "experimenter's" directions, or would you have rebelled and walked out of the experiment?  

On another note, this week we were asked what kind of advice we would give to a new or aspiring public servant, and this question elicited some thought-provoking responses from my classmates.  The main piece of advice that I would give an aspiring public servant would be to live and work by the Golden Rule, which means to treat others how one would want to be treated.  This kind of aligns with the duty-based approach of the ethics triad, which asks if you would want other people to make the same decision that you did.  An interesting piece of advice that one of my classmates posted was about failure and learning to move past it when it inevitably happens.  While not everyone will fail on a grand scale, I think his advice was solid because people are bound to encounter setbacks at one point or another during their public administration journey.  Instead of being discouraged by the setbacks, though, one should use the experience as a learning point and work on improvements for the next time.  I think it is unrealistic to think that we will never have any hardships in our careers because some aspects are simply out of our control.  When failures occur, we need to make the best out of them and learn from our bad experiences to be able to turn them into something positive for future endeavors.

I would like to wrap up this blog by sharing one of the most important aspects I have learned during this term.  In order to make decisions effectively, a person needs to look at the issue through multiple schools of thought in order to think about different approaches to the issue at hand.  The ethics triad, which considers three schools of thought (results-based, duty-based, and virtue ethics) is a comprehensive decision making tool that allows a person to make a well-rounded decision after they have contemplated all three schools of thought.  With that said, I know that I will be using this triad in the future to help me figure out the best way to handle tough decisions, and I hope that if you are unsure of how to handle a situation, you will use it, too.

Thank you very much for reading my blog.  I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

References:
McLeod, S. A. (2007). The Milgram Experiment. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html

Issues within Public Service

This week and last week, our textbook focused on the issues that arise within public service.  Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world, and problems are bound to arise, which we are reminded of in the news on a daily basis.  Over the past eight weeks, classmates in my ethics course have been posting about current events that focus on ethical issues, and it has been interesting to read about the different topics that people have found.  I know I said this last week, but it could not be more apparent: ethical issues and ethical dilemmas are everywhere if you keep an eye out for them.  It really is no wonder that many organizations implement annual or even quarterly ethics trainings for their employees.  While many people may shrug the training off as “common sense,” the numerous headlines that are generated on a daily basis make me think otherwise.  I read an article this week called “Audit Finds Provo Police Need More Ethics Training,” and in this article it was determined that at least two hours a year of annual ethics training should be incorporated for the officers (Reavy, 2011).  Personally, I think that ethics training is beneficial because not only does it address areas of concern that people may struggle with, but it also opens the floor for a dialogue between coworkers.  If people have justified their actions in their minds to the point where they do not feel like what they are doing is wrong, then this creates a real issue.  Without conversations to address “right versus wrong” behaviors, that line can become blurred.  I definitely believe that ethics training should be incorporated for all organizations and businesses, and if possible, I think that the training should be conducted in a face-to-face setting as opposed to an online setting.  In the military, we receive both types of ethics training, but I know that I, personally, get much more out of an interactive training than I do with an online training.

This week in our textbook, Bowman and West (2015) discussed how transparency within the government has both pros and cons.  Looking at pay confidentiality, specifically, this area has raised concerns over whether being transparent about financial matters or if confidentiality is best for everyone involved.  Like almost everything else in life, the key is to find the proper balance between the two. 

In keeping with the issues theme of the week, I watched a TEDTalk by Philip Zimbardo, who was the mastermind behind the Stanford Prison Experiment.  This specific talk discussed good and evil, and more specifically, the psychology behind it.  Typically, I would post the video in my blog so that you could watch it for yourself right here, but honestly, this one had some highly graphic pictures in it that were taken by U.S. military members, so I am hesitant to do so.  If you really want to watch it, here is the link, but be forewarned that there are some extremely graphic pictures in it: http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.  A portion of his talk focused on the wrongdoings of people within the military at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq.  As a military spouse and an “army civilian” I found this to be extremely disturbing that people would behave this way!  He mentioned that not all people are bad, and of course there are “bad apples” in any group; however, the pictures that the military members took were absolutely horrific.  What makes people do such terrible things to other human beings?  Zimbardo (2008) claimed that it was the situation that created the bad apples, which I believe to be true.  Having worked around the military, I fully believe that our military members are good people in general.  Zimbardo (2008) also discussed Milgram’s Shock Experiment, and how people would act evil in order to comply with rules of authority.  While people like to think that they know how they would behave when faced with a trying situation, it is tough to know for sure until they are actually in a situation that demands their response. 

Zimbardo (2008) discussed the power associated with anonymity, and he found that when people change their appearance, such as wearing a mask or changing in a way that makes the person unrecognizable, then they were significantly more likely to torture or even kill than someone who did not change their appearance.  He concluded his talk by saying that while some situations conjure up evil acts, those same situations can also conjure up heroic acts, as well.  Zimbardo (2008) discussed inaction as an evil behavior because knowing that something “bad” is happening and not taking a stance to correct it is evil, not heroic.  In order to act heroically, a person must act when others are too afraid to stand up and do what is right. 

Think about an instance where you have had to make a choice whether to take a stand against something or just sit back quietly because that was the easier option of the two.  Which did you end up doing?  

Thank you for visiting my blog!

References:

Bowman, J. S., and West, J. P. (2015). Public service ethics: Individual and institutional responsibilities.  Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press.

Reavy, P. (2011, February 2). Audit finds provo police need more ethics training. Deseret News. Retrieved from: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705365780/Audit-finds-Provo-police-need-more-ethics-training.html?s_cid=fb_share

Zimbardo, P. (2008). The psychology of evil [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil