In my last article on psychological research, we looked at the different types of study that a researcher can carry out. Now we’re going to look into another important consideration, known as ethics. It is extremely important to make sure that the research carried out will be both morally and ethically correct, since there are certain regulations and laws around this, as well as for the personal peace of mind of the researcher. There are quite a few practices of importance when it comes to maintaining ethical principles, and we’re going to look at the most important ones now.
The first, and often considered the most important is a consideration of potential harm caused. When a study takes place, it is important that the participants leave in the state they came in. Sometimes it is necessary to cause stress in the participants, but when doing something like this precautions must be taken in order to keep this minimal and make sure this has no harmful, lasting effects. It seems a little unneeded to state why causing harm would be an issue, and these days, it is seen as somewhat of a given, but in the beginning of psychological research, it was a different time, and ethics were not seen as quite so important, resulting in studies that caused significant harm to their participants, such as the Milgram experiment, and the ‘Little Albert’ study.
Secondly, confidentiality is an important consideration for research. This refers to the safety of the participant’s personal information as well as the knowledge of their connection with results in the study. This can be done by storing information about the participant separately from the results found, as well as by using pseudonyms for each of the participants. By doing this, we not only ensure that we do not unlawfully reveal information given to us in confidence, but we may also be able to retrieve more valid data, since participants will be more likely to share information if it is taken anonymously.
Consent forms are an extremely important part of carrying out a psychological experiment today, and they are given to all participants before the experiment so that they can give informed consent to take part in whatever the study entails. These sheets also inform participants about many other ethical considerations, such as the confidentiality agreement and their right to withdraw at any point, regardless of having signed the consent form. In some circumstances, boards of ethical approval may allow the researchers the right to deceive their participants on the consent from and inform them of the whole truth later on, or to get consent for the whole study after it has taken place. This is known as deception, and is taken very seriously. Therefore it is only allowed in cases where the need perhaps outweighs the risk.
The final ethical consideration I’ll detail here does not involve the study itself, but rather the outcome of the study. It is of course also of some importance how the results of the study are used, and if a study is used for unethical ends, it may itself be seen as unethical. This is particularly important for studies into criminal psychology, since if knowledge such as that about the psychology of court cases is used to stop people from being convicted, it is harmful to society, and therefore unethical in itself. It is for this reason that the FBI refuse to release data about their criminal profiling techniques, since they do not want to indirectly help the criminals themselves from avoiding detection.
The methods that research professionals use today to ensure ethical correctness are endless, and this is important, not only because of moral righteousness, but because it improves society’s view of the subject as a whole. Having said that, it does restrict research in the field dramatically, but we simply cannot have it both ways, and unfortunately in keeping to the ethical standards of society, we may have to accept that advancement of the field may come a little slower.
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