To learn whether criticism and regulation of research practices have been followed by a reduction of deception or use of more acceptable approaches to deception, the contents of all 1969, 1978, 1986, and 1992 issues of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology were examined. Deception research was coded according to type of (non)informing (e.g., false informing, consent to deception, no informing), possible harmfulness of deception employed (e.g., powerfulness of induction, morality of the behavior induced, privacy of behavior), method of deception (e.g., bogus device or role, false purpose of study, false feedback), and debriefing employed. Use of confederates has been partly replaced by uses of computers. "Consent" with false informing declined after 1969, then rose in 1992. Changes in the topics studied (e.g., attribution, socialization, personality) largely accounted for the decline in deception in 1978 and 1986. More attention needs to be given to ways of respecting subjects' autonomy, to appropriate debriefing and desensitizing, and to selecting the most valid and least objectionable deception methods.
The bricks and mortar of college buildings and the surrounding campus and the various forms of flora growing on them have long hid conduct of concern to ehcists and those in academia. Researchers, scholars, and supervisors have seemed to be beyond the scrutiny of ehcs committees. Academicians, after all, were simply data gatherers, teachers, mentors, and thought-producing initiators of new theories. They were believed immune to the vagaries of professional practice that often landed their clinical colleagues in trouble, such as setting and collecting fees, mediating the needs of clients and the demands of insurance companies and other third-party payors, becoming sexually attracted to patients, or disclosing intimate information gathered in therapy.But science and the public are becoming increasingly aware that donning a white lab coat or a tweed, elbow-patched jacket does not insulate one from unethical behavior. People now know, as one of the excerpts in this chapter briefly relates, that for over 60 years academic scientists working for the federal government engaged in risky research that proved harmful to participants, who were never fully informed about the nature, costs, and benefits of the studies. It has also been acknowledged that professors sometimes do appropriate students' ideas and works as their own; that teachers and supervisors more than rarely develop intimate, sometimes sexual, relations with students and trainees; and that some teachers are often unprepared to face their classes (or continue to lecture from the proverbial time-stained notes) and leave students languishing for months before returning examinations or seminar papers. These issues have become so salient that for the first time in nine revisions, the current (1992) set of APA Ethical Principles contains a specific section of standards (Section 6) that address teaching, training, supervision, research, and publishing.Materials in this chapter introduce the reader to a broadening array of ethical issues within the university setting, although the bulk of the material is devoted to research. Research is an interesting enterprise from an ethical perspective because its purpose is not necessarily devoted to the betterment of those who participate in it. Psychological assessment, intervention, therapy, and other forms of treatment are, at the least, processes intended to benefit participants. Alternatively-although not true of all studies-research usually does not contribute to the welfare of participants at all. It is ironic, then, that subjects of research-animals as well as humans-may be the least well treated of all those with whom psychologists interact. The validity of this hypothesis may be supported by examining the controversy over deception research-studies in which the participant is either not fully informed or is misinformed about the purpose of the experiment so as not to contaminate the data. I have chosen to make such studies a focus of this chapter. This ethical dilemma is not only of central im-355
The bricks and mortar of college buildings and the various forms of flora growing on them have long hid conduct of concern to ethicists and those in academia. Researchers, scholars, and supervisors have seemed to be beyond the scrutiny of ethics committees. Academicians, after all, were simply data gatherers, teachers, mentors, and initiators of new theories. They were believed immune to the vagaries of professional practice that often landed their clinical colleagues in trouble, such as setting and collecting fees, mediating the needs of clients and the demands of third-party payors, becoming sexually attracted to patients, or disclosing intimate information gathered in therapy. In fact, there seems to have been no articles in English published on research ethics with human beings before 1951. The first empirical study on this topic was not published until 1967 (McGaha Q Korn, 1995).But science and the public are becoming increasingly aware that donning a white lab coat or a tweed, elbow-patched jacket does not insulate one from unethical behavior. People now know that for over 60 years academic scientists working for the federal government engaged in risky research that proved harmful to participants, who were never fully informed about the nature, costs, and benefits of the studies. It has also been acknowledged that professors sometimes do appropriate students' ideas and works as their own; that teachers and supervisors develop intimate, sometimes sexual, relations with students and trainees; and that some teachers are often unprepared to face their classes (or continue to lecture from the proverbial time-stained notes) and leave students languishing for months before returning examinations or seminar papers. These issues have become so salient that for the first time in nine revisions, the current (1992) set of APA Ethical Principles contains a specific section of standards (Section 6) that address teaching, training, supervision, research, and publishing.Materials in this chapter introduce the reader to a broadening array of ethical issues within academia, although the bulk of the material is devoted to research. Research is an interesting enterprise from an ethical perspective because its purpose is not necessarily devoted to the betterment of those who participate in it. Psychological assessment and therapeutic interventions are, at the least, processes intended to benefit participants. Alternatively-although not true of all studies-research usually does not contribute to the welfare of participants at all. It is ironic, then, that subjects of research-animals as well as humans-may be the least well treated of all those with whom psychologists interact. The validity of this hypothesis may be supported by examining the controversy over deception research-studies in which the participant is either not fully informed or is misinformed about the purpose of the experiment so as not to contaminate the data. I have chosen to make such studies a focus of this chapter. This ethical dilemma is not only of central i...
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