In 1851, the American physician Samuel Adolphus Cartwright presented a paper to the Medical Association of Louisiana on "Drapetomania"—a purported mental disease that caused enslaved Africans to flee captivity. Cartwright asserted that with "proper medical advice," this condition could be entirely prevented and cured. He prescribed preventive measures, such as keeping enslaved individuals in a state of lower submission, and active treatments, which included "whipping the devil out of them" if they showed early symptoms of sulkiness or dissatisfaction.
This diagnosis was widely published and accepted in Southern medical journals, providing a supposedly objective scientific rationale for the institution of slavery. By framing a human desire for freedom as a psychological pathology, the medical establishment of the time sought to justify physical violence and systematic deprivation of liberty.
Outline what is meant by socially sensitive research and explain how this concept applies to the historical case of "Drapetomania" described above.
276 exam-style questions on OCR A Level Psychology Debates, covering Nature/nurture, Freewill/determinism, Reductionism/holism, Individual/situational explanations, Usefulness of research, Ethical considerations, Conducting socially sensitive research, and Psychology as a science. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.