RESEARCH ETHICS
We’re almost finished with our
broad tour of how scientific research proceeds. However, one last issue demands
comment. It’s not about how research is carried out or how find-ings are
interpreted. Instead, it’s about what research can and cannot be done.
As we’ve seen, the external
validity of an investigation depends on the relationship between a study and
its real-world context. This, in turn, requires us to study real peo-ple and
real animals. And this requirement brings with it a demand that psychological
research be conducted ethically, using methods that protect the rights and
well-being of the research participants.
Psychologists are serious about
research ethics. Virtually every institution sponsor-ing research—every college
and university, every funding agency—has special committees charged with the
task of reviewing research proposals to make sure the procedures adequately
protect human and animal participants. Researchers who study laboratory animals
must protect the animals’ health and provide adequate housing and nutrition. In
the United States, psychological research with human participants must also
follow the guidelines established by the American Psychological Association
(1981, 1982), one of psychology’s most prominent professional organizations.
The U.S. government also has regulations governing research with human
participants. Institutions failing to observe these regulations are ineligible
to receive grants from federal agencies, such as the National Science
Foundation or the National Institutes of Health. Similar guidelines to protect
research participants are in place in many other countries; for example, the
Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences published a set of
international guidelines for research ethics in 2002. And, independent of
international boundaries, most psychological research journals require that
when publishing research, authors clearly state that their study observed all
the rules protecting the participants.
Human participants must not only
be protected physically; we must also respect their privacy, autonomy, and
dignity. Accordingly, an investigator must guarantee that the data are
collected either anonymously or confidentially and that participants are not
treated in any way they might find objectionable. Before the study begins, the
inves-tigator must give participants as much information as possible about what
their task will involve, inform them of any risks, and assure them they can
leave the study at any time. Based on that information, the participants can
decide for themselves whether they’ll continue in the study—and so the
procedure is run and the data collected only after participants have given
their informed consent.
Then, at the end of the
experiment, the investigator must debrief
the participants— that is, explain to them what the experiment involved and
why. If the experiment involved any deception or hidden manipulation, this must
be revealed. If the study involved any manipulation of beliefs, mood, or
emotion, the investigator must attempt to undo these effects. Ideally,
participants should leave the study with some under-standing of how the
research, and their participation in it, may benefit psychological knowledge
and human welfare.
Be aware that these ethical protections—especially
the need to obtain informed consent—can conflict with the procedures needed to
ensure the study ’s validity. In some cases, for example, the validity of a
study requires keeping research partici-pants somewhat uninformed about the
study ’s design. Participants in a control group usually aren’t told they ’re
in a control group, because hearing this might erode their motivation to
perform well on the experimenters’ tasks. In the same way, subliminal self-help
recordings are alleged to work through unconscious mechanisms. Thus, it may be
important to keep the person who will hear the record-ing from knowing in
advance exactly what message will be (subliminally) contained within the
recording.
How can investigators resolve
these conflicts between ensuring experimental validity and continuing to honor
ethical standards? Overall, the ethical considerations must be the greater
priority. Investigators must do everything they can to minimize the use of
deception and guard against risks to research participants. If any risk
remains, the inves-tigators must clearly and persuasively argue that the
information to be gained from the experiment truly justifies the risk.
Similarly, if an experiment involves deception, the investigators must explain
how the scientific value of the experiment justifies that level of deception.
These decisions about risk or
deception are sometimes difficult; indeed, the history of psychology includes
many conflicts over the ethical acceptability of psychological studies (e.g., Baumrind,
1964; Hermann & Yoder, 1998; Korn, 1997; Milgram & Murray, 1992; Savin,
1973; Zimbardo, 1973). This is one reason that decisions about ethical
acceptability usually aren’t made by the investigators themselves, but by a
multidisciplinary supervisory committee—usually called an institutional review board, or IRB—assigned
the task of protecting research participants.
Moreover, the requirement to
protect human and animal rights simply prohibits some studies—no matter how
much we might learn from them. For example, how does child abuse affect a
child’s later social or emotional development? This deeply important question
cannot be studied experimentally, because no researcher would physically abuse
participants to study the outcomes. If we want to learn more about the effects
of abuse, we need to find other means (such as a quasi-experimental design, in
which the researcher evaluates children who—sadly—have already been abused).
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