Ethical Dilemmas and Psychological Research
Overview | Article Summary | For Instructors | For Students
Rosnow, R.L. (1997). Hedgehogs, foxes, and the evolving social contract in psychological science:
Ethical challenges and methodological opportunities. Psychological Methods, 2, 345-356.
Ethical Guidelines for Psychological Research
Doctors are guided by the Hippocratic oath to "do no harm." Since the early 1970s,
psychologists have been guided by a similar contract to "do no psychological harm."
In response to concerns over morality in psychological research,
the American Psychological Association (APA) adopted a code of ethics for
human participant in research in 1972 (it has since been modified somewhat).
The APA code of ethics also contains standards and principles for the use of animals
in psychological research.
The APA code of ethics for human participant research specifies principles for maintaining the physical and psychological well-being of human research participants, as well as respecting an individual's fundamental rights and dignity. All research involving human participants is now evaluated by a review board to determine whether the proposed study meets ethical standards; sometimes methods need to be modified to accommodate ethical principles.
One of the most controversial ethical issues has to do with deception. Deception occurs whenever participants are not completely informed of the procedures and goals of the research. The use of deception, no matter how innocuous it may be, violates the ethical principle of informed consent. But in many cases, fully informing the participant may influence the individual's performance and lead to different results.
Rosnow (1997) has written an article based on an address to a meeting of the APA outlining tensions that arise from maintaining ethical standards, such as informed consent, while attempting to advance scientific understanding. He discusses several examples of seminal research that violates the APA code of ethics and advocates a problem-solving approach to advancing psychological science while maintaining moral standards of psychologists.
Overview | Article Summary | For Instructors | For Students
The Greek poet, Archilochus, wrote, "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Ralph Rosnow uses this line as a metaphor for how ethical standards and principles have influenced psychological research. Before the development of a code of ethics for human participants, he argued, psychologists were like hedgehogs, pursuing a singular vision of human research. Now psychologists need to consider not only the goal of understanding behavior but also respect human rights and dignity and develop methodologies that recognize ethical standards while uncovering psychological knowledge.
In his APA address, Rosnow described the social context that lead to the development of the APA code of ethics and discussed how psychological research has been influenced by the code. Much of his address concerns the issues of deception and informed consent.
Although there are many examples of deception in psychological research, probably none are as famous as the Milgram obedience studies carried out in the early 1960s. The Milgram studies involved deceiving a research participant into believing he was delivering increasingly painful electric shocks to another research participant (really an actor-confederate who did not receive any shocks). Milgram found that under pressure from an authoritative researcher, most participants would be obedient and administer the "shocks" even though they were apparently causing great physical distress. Although Milgram thoroughly debriefed the participants after the experiment - telling them all about the goals and procedure - and psychiatric interviews conducted later indicated no psychological repercussions of having participated in the experiment, there is continuing controversy over whether the ends (understanding the conditions of obedience) justified the means (extreme deception).
Could psychologists have learned about obedience without deception? Rosnow described a study in which some participants were fully informed of the goals and procedures of the experiment and the others weren't. The results obtained from the informed participants were completely opposite of the results obtained from the uninformed participants! Rosnow argued that many classical psychological principles would be backward if today's ethical standards and principles had been used in designing the research.
How can psychologists today continue to advance psychological understanding while maintaining respect for the rights and dignity of their human participants? Rosnow offers suggestions for future work on how to relieve the tension between advancing science and following moral standards:
- Ethics review boards tend to concentrate on the "costs" of conducting research. Psychologists need to help educate these groups as to the "costs" of not doing certain sensitive research.
- The issue of participant confidentiality needs to be examined in detail. Currently disclosure laws appear to take precedence over assurances of confidentiality.
- Researchers need to understand their methodology better. Was a null result obtained because of poor design, not understanding participant behavior, and weak analyses or because there really is no effect?
Regardless of whether a psychologist is directly pursuing research into ethical and methodological issues, he or she needs to reflect on them and be sensitive to how ethical standards influence both the participants and the outcomes of the research.
Overview | Article Summary | For Instructors | For Students
Links to the Lecture
The following Teaching of Psychology articles describe excellent exercises for
introducing research ethics:
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Beins, B.C. (1993). Using the Barnum effect to teach about ethics and deception in research.
Teaching of Psychology, 20, 30-35. In this exercise, students experience being deceived in
order to help them appreciate the affect of a research participant who has been deceived.
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Rosnow, R.L (1990). Teaching research ethics through role-play and discussion.
Teaching of Psychology, 17, 179-181. Rosnow uses role-play and discussion to
help students recognize the difficulties involved in evaluating research according to APA standards of ethics.
An evaluation of Rosnow's approach was evaluated by Strohmetz and Skleder (1992) [Strohmetz, D.B., & Skleder, A.A. (1992).
The use of role-play in teaching research ethics: A validation study. Teaching of Psychology, 19, 106-108.]
and found to be effective in introducing psychology students to complex ethical issues in research.
Ralph Rosnow has been collaborating with Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University for many years.
Their latest book provides a lot of material that can be used in developing lectures on research methods and research ethics.
- Rosnow, R.L., & Rosenthal, R. (1997). People studying people:
Artifacts and ethics in behavioral research. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.
Overview | Article Summary | For Instructors | For Students
About the Authors
Ralph L. Rosnow is Professor and Director of the
Division of Social and Organizational Psychology at Temple University. He has been studying research methods and ethics in research for many years.
About the Journal
The Psychological Methods is a new journal
from the American Psychological Association. Issues concerning research methods and analyses in
psychology are published here.
Check out the Table of Contents of recent issues or read the abstract of this article.
Links to Life
The ethical principles of psychologists,
developed by the American Psychological Association,
is quite lengthy and detailed.
Here is an abstract of the code of ethics.
The Canadian Psychological Association is very specific about
informed consent.
Compare/contrast the APA and CPA codes of ethics.
The CPA code of ethics is currently being revised, in part to include a
consideration of scientific merit of the research.
Here is an APA article
on the proposed changes and implications for American research.
Many other organizing bodies have codes of ethics.
Here is a description of informed consent
from the Alliance of Genetic Support Groups.
In addition, here is a description of four events from the news
that pose interesting and upsetting ethical dilemmas. These come from a site called
The Ethics Center, the ethics clearinghouse on the web.
Doctors face ethical dilemmas every day.
Finally, spend a little time working through this demo of a software program,
developed at the Medical College of Georgia,
for ethical medical
decision making that includes some interactive exercises.
Almost every introductory psychology text includes a discussion of the Milgram studies.
Grant Baxter, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Otago, New Zealand,
reflects on the Milgram obedience studies
(as well as other psychological studies that have influenced him)
in this very interesting and informative site.
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