Risk vs. Reward says: There’s no outcome that justifies the emotional expense, on anyone’s part.
It’s just Candid Camera with a smaller audience.
My thoughts are that discovering this was a social experiment rather than their son knocked up a 17 year old might feel like a miraculous deliverance from much worse circumstances. They may be incredibly happy.
I love social experiments like this but
1: She’s not a trained Sociologist. The value of the anecdotal data she collected is minimal. This is more guerrilla journalism than science.
2: I’m really kind of at a loss as to the necessity for the deception. There are a bazillion real pregnant high schoolers available for interviews. The changes in attitudes by peers, parents and authorities toward high school girls that get pregnant is complex and varies across socio-economic class, race, and a number of other variables, but it’s hardly an unknown that requires some stealth deception to winkle out. Pregnant high schoolers and the others in their social networks will generally speak at length about these changes if asked politely.
So yes, IMO she’s kind of a jackass for doing this.
Interesting followup experiment here; gauging responses. I mean, any undercover operation, whether police, intelligence, or even double blind tests, involve some kind of misdirection. Me, I wouldn’t have cared one way or the other.
But the OP is phrased as a personal affront, and most of the responses seem to agree; that it’s a personal affront to one’s own sensibilities. In other words, even though it was about her, most everyone’s reaction is, it’s really about ME, and MY sensibilities IF I were involved. It’s the same culture that permits and actually encourages strangers to pass moral judgment on any celebrity’s personal sex life, as well as projected/recommended penalties for something that is not only legal, but does not involve the general audience.
In other words, mass voyeurism from a culture of peeping toms, titillated, scandalized, and offended by actions they weren’t even privy to.
Oh, I’m sure they’d be glad that she wasn’t pregnant, but they would still probably think she’s an untrustworthy bitch for lying about it. Llying to people about things that impact them heavily is a shitty thing to do, whether it’s positive or negative.
It reminds me forcibly of the loony roommate I had who claimed to be pregnant, then claimed it was ectopic, and then smoked pot whole ‘recovering’ from the emergency surgery (“to deal with the pain”). :dubious:
Total jerk move. I saw that story earlier and was miffed to see everyone acting like she’s some kind of fucking hero for lying to everyone in order to conduct her bullshit pseudo-research. That story cheesed me off.
edit: dangermom, ha ha ha. Why is that so funny to me?
Then again, there’s a culturally popular pseudo psychology that there’s such a thing a “lying by omission,” meaning that the mere failure to say anything is considered to by “lying.” Don’t know how that’s supposed to work since lying involves the ACTIVE telling of a falsehood. Otherwise, every single defendant could be prosecuted for perjury for maintaining their 5th Amendment right by remaining silent.
But a lot of these things do affect others. The siblings may not directly be affected but it’s got to be pretty emotional to realize your sister jerked you around like that. And the parents of the boyfriend were probably under the impression that their son’s life was over until it was revealed. Not to be too cliched, but no man (or pseudo pregnant girl) is an island and all that.
Fragile? Perhaps not. Vengeful and bad tempered? Definitely. Something like this is a great way to poison relationships, and can easily come back to haunt her years later.
I worked with a woman and she refused to admit she was pregnant. She got bigger and bigger and bigger and everyone in the hotel was talking about her. Yet she said, “I’m not pregnant I’m just fat.” Then about nine months later, she went away for an extended weekend (4 days) and came back thin again.
Then she claimed she lost all the weight. I guess it COULD’VE happened like that.
In retrospect, it is kind of funny in a bizarro way. At the time of course, it was a huge source of drama. She had broken up with the guy she said was the father months before, and he insisted it had been far too long since they’d slept together. No one really believed him (he had his own problems with reality and our group was not yet aware of the depth of her looniness). Then it all ended way too fast and conveniently, and it turned out to be a recent soap opera plot, and it was all pretty weird. Next thing I knew, she’d met a guy at the Ren Faire and they were getting married.
So this was a social experiment.
What was her methodology?
Qualitative or quantitative?
How reliable/valid are her measuring instruments?
What statistical tests did she use?
Yep. How does it tell you anything about high school girls getting pregnant that you can’t learn from actual pregnant high school girls?
Even worse than that, since she wasn’t pregnant, her behaviour wasn’t that of a pregnant woman (which varies, obviously - but she can only display what she thinks a pregnant woman should act like), and that affects the reactions of those around her too.
It could be called a social experiment into the effects of lying to almost everyone around you, however.
So it’s a bit of an arseholish thing to do and a really terrible social experiment. Given what it demonstrates about her ethics and her knowledge of sociology, I can’t see how it will actually help her college applications.
Huh. I must be the only person who thinks this was not inherently assholish, and is actually quite interesting. The parents and the boyfriend were “in.” She had educated mentors who prepared her. If the BF’s parents were not “in” there was probably a specific reason why not, a reason the BF must have approved of.
Actually, I agree with you. I thought it was pretty neat. I know when I was in high school there were a couple of girls who got knocked up. I was semi-friends with both of them. They basically disappeared. Ostracized by their core friend group (whether intentionally or unintentionally) and eventually shunted off to alternative school. I think it would be interesting.
And what’s her methodology? Come on. She’s in high school. My big experiment in high school was microwaving bean seeds and seeing if they grew as big as regular seeds. I think it’s pretty cool she did this and whether or not it was a flawed exercise, doesn’t make it less interesting.
But in what way would be interesting than studying actual pregnant high school girls?
You’re not the only one. Not telling her boyfriend’s parents makes me think potential blabber mouths. What good is the experiment if you have the boyfriend’s parents running around going about how their kid didn’t really knock her up, it’s just a little game their playing?
But isn’t it their right to do so? If I overheard someone saying, “Oh, poor girl, I hope there’s something I can do to help her, let’s buy some baby clothes/items to help her,” I’d want to step in to say something so they don’t waste their time doing something nice for someone playing with their emotions.
Because they actually are pregnant. She took that variable out, and examined the perception of someone being pregnant that young. She acted like a placebo, exposing bias from, well, preconceived notions.