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CHAPTER 4: Observation 129into the setting on many different occasions until the participants stop reactingto their presence (i.e., their presence becomes normal). Habituation was usedto film a documentary titled An American Family, which was shown on publictelevision in the 1970s. The camera crew literally moved into a Californiahome and recorded the family for seven months. Although it’s impossible totell how much the family’s behavior was influenced by the presence of theseobservers, the events that unfolded on camera provided evidence that familymembers had habituated to the cameras. Most notably, the family broke up andthe wife asked the husband to move out of the house. When interviewed laterabout having the divorce announced to millions of viewers, the husband saidthat although they could have asked the camera crew to leave, by that time, hesaid, “we had gotten used to it” (Newsweek, 1973, p. 49). It’s likely that similarprocesses of habituation take place during more contemporary “reality shows,”but one must also wonder whether some of the behavior displayed on theseshows occurs precisely because the individuals are on television!Desensitization as a means of dealing with reactivity is similar to the proceduresused by clinical psychologists in the behavioral treatment of phobias.In a therapy situation, an individual with a specific fear (e.g., spiders) is firstexposed to the feared stimulus at a very low intensity. For example, the individualmay be asked to think of things related to spiders, such as cobwebs. Atthe same time, the therapist helps the client to practice relaxation. Graduallythe intensity of the stimulus is increased until the client can tolerate the actualfeared object, for example, by holding a spider. Desensitization is often usedby animal researchers to adapt animal subjects to the presence of an observer.Prior to her violent murder in Africa, Dian Fossey (1981, 1983) conducted fascinatingobservational studies of mountain gorillas in Rwanda. Over a period oftime she moved closer and closer to the gorillas so they could adapt to her presence.She found that by imitating their movements—for instance, by munchingthe foliage they ate and by scratching herself—she could put the gorillas at ease.Eventually she was able to sit among the gorillas and observe them as theytouched her and explored her research equipment.Ethical Issues Whenever researchers try to control reactivity by observing individualswithout their knowledge, important ethical issues arise. For instance,observing people without their consent can represent a serious invasion of privacy.Deciding what constitutes an invasion of privacy is not always easy (seeChapter 3), and must include consideration of the sensitivity of the information,the setting where observation takes place, and the method for disseminatingthe information (e.g., Diener & Crandall, 1978).Recent behavioral studies using the Internet introduce new ethical dilemmas.For example, when researchers enter Internet chat rooms as disguised participantobservers to find out what makes racists advocate racial violence (Glaseret al., 2002), the information they obtained could be seen as incriminating evidencewithout the respondents’ knowledge, much like a “sting” operation. Thedilemma, of course, is that if informed consent were obtained it is very unlikelythat respondents would cooperate. In this case, the IRB approved the researchby agreeing with the researchers that a chat room is a “public forum,” that these