Ethics in Research

Ethics in Research

One of the major difficulties involved in studying human beings, and even animals, is that they often behave quite differently when they are being studied than they would otherwise. As a result, behavioral scientists are faced with a basic challenge: to learn what people do when they are not being studied, behavioral scientists must create research designs that measure important everyday phenomena and that allow research participants the freedom and motivation to openly and honestly express their thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

And scientists must do this in a way that prevents participants from guessing what is being studied and altering their responses as a result. 

           To create situations in which behavior can be validly assessed, scientists sometimes engage in practices that may be questioned on ethical grounds. For instance, researchers may lead people to participate in research without telling them that they are participating. Researchers may require introductory psychology students to participate in research projects and then deceive these students, at least temporarily, about the nature of the research. In some cases, researchers may induce stress, anxiety, or negative moods in the participants, expose them to weak electrical shocks, or convince them to behave in ways that violate their moral standards. And researchers may sometimes use animals in their research, potentially harming them in the process. 

            Of course, behavioral scientists have a basic reason for engaging in these practices. For one, as we will discuss in more detail in the chapters to come, creating such situations is frequently the only way that important behavioral phenomena can be objectively studied. Second, they feel that although there  may well be some costs to human research participants when they participate in research, there is also a great benefit to humanity to be gained from the research. This benefit is, of course, the knowledge about human behavior that accrues through the conduct of behavioral research. Furthermore, scientists also believe that there are potential benefi ts to the research participants in the form of learning about how research is conducted and experiencing the satisfaction of having contributed to the scientific literature. In each case, before beginning to conduct the research, scientists have come to the conclusion that the potential benefi ts of conducting the research outweigh the potential costs to the research participants.