David Shoemaker wonders whether he is (a) an ethical person and (b) in conformity with his university's human experimentation guidelines.
I don't know about (a), I'm pretty sure that the answer to (b) is "no" (at least as your average dean's assistant would interpret it), but I also think that David Shoemaker is almost surely a good teacher:
PEA Soup: Teaching or Experimentation?: One of our hopes in creating PEA Soup was to provide a forum for discussion about certain issues that may crop up in teaching moral philosophy. I suppose, then, that this is the first post on that topic. For several years now, when introducing Hobbes to students, I run a version of the Hobbes Game, which I believe was created by John Immermahr and published in Teaching Philosophy over ten years ago. The idea is to introduce the Prisoner's Dilemma (an interpretation of one aspect of Hobbes' state of nature) to students in a dramatic way, one that forces students to really figure out for themselves what it's individually rational to do in cases of strategic interaction. So this is how I present the game. At the beginning of the class period I say that 10% of their grade in the class will be determined by the grade they request during the class period. The twist is that they'll write down the grade they want (either an A or a B), and they'll be brought up in pairs to submit them simultaneously. If they both request a B, they'll both get a B. If one requests an A and the other requests a B, the first will get the A and the second will get an F (and vice versa). And if they both request an A, they'll both get D's. I then have them think about their strategy for a few minutes (without talking to one another), and then we begin. Some students at first will try to "cooperate" by asking for B's, but soon enough someone will request an A, resulting in an F for the other, and inevitably the strategy mostly becomes asking for an A (which then results in lots of D's). Some students invariably get rather distressed by what's going on, and I'll occasionally offer students who got F's another chance at it (and it's always suprising when they ask for B's yet again and get burned). As soon as the exercise is over, I immediately announce that the grades don't count (much to their relief), and we then discuss what the best strategy was, and why, before talking about the direct relevance to Hobbes.The issue is this: most universities have in place a policy against psychological experimentation on human subjects without their permission. I'm interested in hearing from others who have used this game in their classes (or exercises like it) about whether or not they think it constitutes "human experimentation." Clearly the game wouldn't have its intended effect if we were to get students' permission beforehand to run it. On the other hand, there is some distress involved during the game itself (which is very quickly replaced by relief and laughter, once the truth has been revealed), but is this enough (a) to think of it as experimentation, and (b) to undermine it as a legitimate teaching tool? It is amazingly effective: there are very few other examples I use in class that are burned into students' minds as well as this one, and that's precisely the impression I want to leave. But it remains a serious question: is this kind of manipulation (however brief) appropriate in class? And this is related to a larger issue: what precisely are the limits to getting across a serious point in class? I'm very interested to hear what others thinks about this.
I've found that two isn't enough to get people to reliably tip to defect-defect. You need four--with one request for an A and three requests for a B giving the B-requesters Fs--in order to have the class tip quickly. But I teach in Berkeley, where norms of reciprocity are unusually strong.
Posted by DeLong at July 15, 2004 04:49 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this post
The fact that students would play the game at all seems to show that they are willing to put up with almost anything from the all-powerful teachers, and I would guess that they would also have no qualms about cheating themselves if they thought they could get away with it. A grade's a grade.
I was on the other end of the stick when in one of my senior level management classes they pulled the fishing fleet exercise out of the hat. As an econ major I quickly sussed out the exploitation of a limited resource and figured the best response to the tradgedy of the commons issue. Build like heck the first couple of turns and sell out your fleet at the halfway point and then coast. My team did win and we did get the A- but the resistance I encountered when I suggested that we sell our *highly profitable fllet* from the MBA types was comical. Brad your classes are too inbred if youmust increase the take to 4 to get one to defect!
Posted by: AllenM on July 15, 2004 05:33 PMAllen -- The fishing fleet exercise sounds interesting for in-class use. What are the details of running it?
Thanks.
Posted by: Dan on July 15, 2004 05:50 PMUnder federal regulation and as implemented by most institutions human subjects committees have jurisdiction only if the purpose of the experimentation is for research. If you plan to publish the results you may be subject to human subjects committee jurisdiction. It sounds like that is not your intention, in which case you should be able to do as you like - subject to the ordinary ethics of classroom teaching, which includes such stressful and often upsetting circumstances as taking difficult exams.
Human subjects committees sometimes believe that they have jurisdiction over what happens in the classroom, but they do not.
Posted by: David K. Levine on July 15, 2004 06:29 PMGet real
1st day of law school the dean says, "look left and right, one of the two ain't coming back"
Posted by: Moe Levine on July 15, 2004 06:56 PMBTW, there's a show on the Game Show Network called "Friend or Foe" hosted by Kennedy (yes, the ex-MTV VJ) that runs the dilemma.
Two contestants answer questions together to build a pot. At the end, if they both pick "Friend," they split it 50-50, if both pick "Foe," they both get nothing, and if it's split, the one who picks "Foe" gets it all and the other gets nothing. Each contestant has a chance to say something to the other before they choose.
It's not a particularly interesting show, though. Even when they brought back players who'd gotten screwed.
Posted by: fling93 on July 15, 2004 07:06 PMDavid Levine is right, I believe, that the guidelines for human experimentation are limited to research, but it's not publication that makes something research. The Federal government defines research as follows [45 CFR 46.102(d)]:
Research means a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and
evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge. Activities which meet
this definition constitute research for purposes of this policy, whether or not they are conducted
or supported under a program which is considered research for other purposes. For example,
some demonstration and service programs may include research activities.
taken from: http://www.llnl.gov/HumanSubjects/appendices/Appendix03.pdf
So I think most classroom exercizes would not constitute research, since they are not intended to develop or contribute to generalized knowledge, but rather to demonstrate some previously discovered phenomenon to students.
Posted by: Kevin Miller on July 15, 2004 07:27 PMThere is another solution to the game. The F students get together and trash the A students' cars, homes, persons, and children.
Posted by: zizka / John Emerson on July 15, 2004 08:00 PMThe problem is a very specific one, as the game concerns an aim and a demonstration of optimal strategy to achieve that aim. You couldn't have this type of dilema in teaching principles of natural science. The crux of the problem, and the power of it as a teaching tool, lies in the difficulty of determining the optimal strategy. If you are using the student for research, gaining permission assures in some way that they agree with the aims of their manipulation. If you are teaching them moral philosophy, you are in a position, and are probably trying, to change their fundamental value and judgement structures. Do you need their permission to do this? One could argue that their presence in class is the permission you need. But the more general tension is that between the subject as developing judgement through education, and the subject as independently participating in a widely accepted method of evaluation of claims. How do individuals participate in the construction of the latter? Scientific methods are fine tuned not by direct tinkering, but by extended and aggressive application. But application of "optimal" strategies for action can never be independently evaluated in the way that claims about the world can. It seems that their persmission would be meaningless in the moral philosophy class as they wouldn't really have a basis on which to give it in that their sense of judgement with respect to these issues is not fully developed. Also, the concern probably arises from considering the experiment in light of a demonstration of a concept rather than something to be directly evaluated as a useful characterization of moral choice. Consider whether or not it would be unethical to use a student as Pavlov's dog. It seems a wrong thing to do, but it is not really an experiment. But the separation of the individual from the lesson of the demonstration is clear.
Posted by: William Stafford on July 16, 2004 07:16 AMThe proper response is to drop the class.
Posted by: dibert dogbert on July 16, 2004 08:59 AMMay I be so gauche as to suggest that experience, rather than experiment, is what is at issue here. It seems that the subjective event, rather than the objective data, is what matters. It's not experimentation, its class demonstration, and it's effective.
Posted by: 2fair on July 16, 2004 10:55 AMI was told I wasn't allowed to conduct a similar demonstration for my recitation class while teaching Evolution. I wanted to play the arms race game where I offer a pot of 25 exam points that the members of the class were allowed to bid on with their own previously earned points with the highest bidder getting the pot. The twist is that everybody's bid goes into the pot, winning or no. It's astonishing when they realize that there's no natural stopping point to the bidding, that each round gets you deeper into the hole unless you win it all, absolutely bankrupting anyone else who's played.
It's quite boring when done as a thought experiment.
Posted by: AP on July 17, 2004 07:46 AM