What ethical considerations should
guide psychological research on humans? How should these ethical
considerations differ from those guiding psychological research on
non-human animals?
Ethics are the right conduct rules
which are required at the time of carrying out a research. It is
the moral responsibility of a person so as to protect the
participants of research from any kinds of harm. The ethical
considerations that should guide psychology research on humans
are:
- Informed consent:
it is important that when the investigators should be carrying out
an experiment, they should be informing the participant about the
experiment that is being carried out. In most of the psychological
researches, the participants are not completely informed about the
experiment they would be conducting so as to obtain natural
reactions from the participant without any biases.
- Debriefing: the
participants are not able to discuss procedures with the
psychologist or its findings. It is important that the participants
should be told that they had been deceived, and if so why. This
should be done as soon as the experiment was over.
- Protection: it is
important that participants should not be in any kind of stress
while they are a part of the research. Mental harm as well as
physical harm should be protected from. Also, researchers sometimes
fail to predict what the risk of a procedure would be. For example
Zimbardo’ experiment.
- Deception:
researchers carry out deliberate misleading of the participants or
presenting the, with wrong information so as to get accurate
results.
As compared to the non human
participants, they cannot debrief or they could not be deceived by
providing incorrect information. As well as informed consent does
not form an issue since consent is never taken. They should be
given proper housing and should be taken proper care of.the
research being carried out should be justifiable and the
acquisition of the laboratory animals should be done in a dignified
manner.