Testing psychology theories on friends

After watching the video in class of the teacher performing an experiment of Pavlov's theory, and after going through the exercise in class of formulating an example of Pavlov's experiment, I thought I would elaborate on the example Allie (sorry I'm not sure how to spell your name!) and I gave and then consider what made this experiment ethical or non-ethical. 

I was on a long road trip with my rowing coach and five teammates. We were going to the national championship and everyone was under a lot of stress and experiencing lots of anxiety (one person in the car had a full on panic attack). The coach and one of the rowers (rower a) decided to do an experiment on a different rower (rower b). The coach pressed a button on his phone that made a dinging sound. A moment after, rower a reached forward and flicked rower b on the ear. The goal was to see if rower b would anticipate the flick after hearing the ding. The other, non-scientific goal was to have fun in the car. It's quite funny to see someone get annoyed after being flicked on the ear about 15 times.

By the end of the day, however, rower b was so agitated with the flicks that rower a had to stop flicking her. While funny to the rest of us, could have led to a conflict that was detrimental to our team's performance. We told her about the Pavlov experiment, and when she realized why she had been flicked, she found if funny. 

This casual experiment leads me to question when it's ok to be a "weekend psychologist." Even if it's not physically or even emotionally harmful to experiment on people, are there other factors that make it acceptable or unethical to do a casual psychological experiment? For example, when people (like rower b) are part of an experiment without their consent, it can introduce potentially harmful dynamics of superiority in an otherwise professional or friendly relationship. Experiments, even when the authors of the experiment are very careful, can make people seem like animals or can reveal unexpected things about them. Throughout this class I'll keep considering how actively experimenting on people, no matter how casual and harmless the experiment may seem, could actually be harmful to the participants.

-Maggie