What is Psychology?
Marshall High School
Psychology
Mr. Cline
Unit One AE
* Ethics in Psychology
• Let's say a psychologist wanted to test whether people who are thirsty do more
poorly on math tests than people who are well-hydrated.
• She puts out an ad for participants which says that she's conducting a study of
math ability that will take an hour.
• But when her participants turn up, she divides them into thirsty and non-thirsty
groups.
• The non-thirsty people are each given two glasses of water and made to
wait in a room for an hour and then take a twenty minute test.
• This is a little longer than the psychologist said, but they're not too
upset about it.
• The thirsty people, though, are forced to stay in a room without water for
five hours before taking a twenty minute test.
• They're justifiably upset; the psychologist made them uncomfortably
thirsty and kept them for far longer than she said.
* Ethics in Psychology
• The psychologist did not conduct her experiment with adequate ethical standards.
• The importance of ethics in psychological research has grown as the field has
evolved. Some of the most famous studies in psychology could not be conducted
today because they would violate ethical standards.
• Philip Zimbardo designed his Stanford Prison Experiment to look into the
causes of conflict between guards and prisoners.
• Zimbardo assigned some college students to play guards and others to
play prisoners in a 'prison' set up in the basement of the Stanford
Psychology Building.
• The experiment quickly got out of hand--the guards quickly began
abusing the prisoners for the sake of order.
• Zimbardo let this go on until his girlfriend visited the 'prison' and was
shocked at what she found.
• Zimbardo's experiment allowed its participants to hurt each other
both physically and psychologically and would not be approved by
today's review boards.
* Ethics in Psychology
• Ethical standards in psychological research are motivated by two main
principles: minimized harm and informed consent.
• The psychologist studying thirst and test performance failed on both
of these counts; she made her participants unnecessarily
uncomfortable and didn't tell them how long they would really be in
the experiment.
• The experiment would likely not be approved by her university's
Institutional Review Board (IRB).
• The IRB is in charge of determining whether the harm done by an
experiment is worth its potential value to science and whether
researchers are taking all of the precautions they can to make the
research experience pleasant and informative for participants.
• Minimized harm and informed consent underlie the entire process of
designing and approving psychological research.
* Ethics in Psychology
• When psychologists are designing experiments, they try to think
about the least harmful way to test the hypothesis they're interested
in.
• Harm can be physical or psychological;
• deception is considered a form of psychological harm that is
avoided if at all possible.
• If the psychologist is unable to design the experiment
without any risk of harm, she must give patients a
consent form to sign that clearly explains all of the risks
involved in participating in the study.
• The psychologist conducting the thirst experiment
would have to clearly explain in her consent form that
the participants were likely to get uncomfortably
thirsty.
• Psychologists who feel they need to deceive their
participants run into a unique challenge with regard to
consent forms.
* Ethics in Psychology
• Deception is quite common in psychological research
because it allows researchers to design situations in
which participants are more likely to act naturally.
• In another famous unethical experiment, Stanley
Milgram told participants that they were helping
him conduct an experiment about learning.
• He had an actor in another room play the 'learner,'
and told the participants to administer electric
shocks to the learner if he got a question wrong.
• Milgram's experiment was actually on obedience how long would his participants continue to listen
to him and shock the learner?
• But if he had told them his real goals, it would
clearly have affected their behavior; they would
have been far less likely to be obedient if it were
put in their minds that this was what Milgram was
testing.
* Ethics in Psychology
• There is a genuine need for deception in psychological
research, but ethics now require that it be minimized
and that patients are fully informed of the deception in
a debriefing session once the experiment is over.
• After every experiment, whether or not deception is
involved, researchers will explain to their participants
what they were trying to measure and allow the
participants to ask any questions.
• A final consideration in psychological research is the use of animals in
experiments.
• Some psychologists, particularly those that study biological aspects of
psychology, feel that they need to conduct experiments on animals.
• They might want to test a new drug or do brain research that would be
clearly unethical on a human.
* Ethics in Psychology
• The American Psychological Association (APA) allows research to be
conducted on animals, though they require that researchers are careful to as with their human participants - minimize harm and make sure that the
harm they do is worth it for its scientific benefit.
• Most experiments are also now conducted on animals like rats, mice and
birds - research on primates, like in Harry Harlow's famous experiment on
love in neglected monkeys, is far more restricted.