Ethical Issues

1
Ethical Issues

• Ethical problems arising from psychological
  research
• Attempts to address/avoid these problems success
  (or otherwise) of these attempts
• Discussion of these issues in the context of
  research into social influence (majority
  minority influence obedience)

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2
Effects on Participants
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3
Ethical Issues

• Informed consent
• Did the pps agree to take part?
• Did they know what they were agreeing to?
• Deception
• Were the pps at any point deliberately misled?
• Psychological harm
• Were the pps put at risk of harm e.g. stress or
  damage to self image?

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4
Ethical Issues

• Asch (1951)
• Informed consent, deception, damage to self-image
• Zimbardo (1973)
• Psychological damage (stress, self image)
• Hofling et al (1966)
• Informed consent, damage to self image
• Milgram (1963)
• All the above

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5
Discussing Ethical Issues

• Could the outcome have been predicted?
• Could consent have been presumed?
• Could another method have been used?
• Did benefits outweigh costs?
• Was the damage undone (debriefing)?
• What did the pps say?

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6
Dealing with Ethical Issues

• Guidelines (e.g. BPS, 1995)
• Remove ambiguity
• Make responsibilities clear
• But
• Still open to interpretation
• Still rely on self-regulation
• Only effective if backed up with action

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7
Dealing with Ethical Issues

• Ethical Committees
• Active enforcement of guidelines
• Removes bias in self-regulation
• More immediate power
• But
• Still may be biased towards researcher not pps
• Mainly in universities what about commercial or
  military research?

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