Ethics - AP Psychology

Once the research is completed, the identity of the people involved in the study, under absolutely no condition, may be revealed. The identity of the participant will never be made an integral part of the study, and there are no forms that allow for this.

According to American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines, a participant in a study cannot be placed under significant mental or physical risk. There are no forms that the participant can sign that would allow for these conditions in a study.

The debriefing procedures according to American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines are such that after the experiment, participants are told the end goal of the study and ways to attain the results. Doing so before the experiment could affect the results in an undesirable way, and so this information is provided to the participant after the experiment is completed.

The American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines for participation in a psychological study are such that there may be no involuntary partcipants or coercion involved in the study. The participants must provide clear and written informed consent before participating in the study.

Informed consent is part of the ethical standards adopted by the American Psychological Association. This provision says that all participants must be told the purpose of the study and informed of any potential harm. Informed consent is considered an ethical keystone in medical and psychological research on human subjects.

Animals should be used in experiments that cannot ethically be performed in humans. In this case, an initial study of a psychotropic drug should be conducted first on animals, in order to assess the potential damage of the drug's side effects. In order for a drug to be approved for human use, the drug must first be tested on human subjects, but this is true of later stages of drug testing. Studies of diet and exercise on mood would not be potentially harmful in the same way as a study of a new psychotropic drug, so they would be appropriate instances in which to use human subjects (as long as the courses of diet and exercise were not inherently harmful to the participants).

Some research designs make it necessary to record demographic information from participants; however, the APA ethical guidelines require strict monitoring of the location of research data and that all data be made as anonymous as possible.

The American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines for ethical principles in psychology state that psychologists should refrain from initiating an activity when they know or should know that there is a substantial likelihood that their personal problems will prevent them from performing their work-related activities in a competent manner. In other words, the branch associated with competence warrants against the proposed behavior.

The junior researcher is forgetting all of these concepts of psychological research; furthermore, post-deception the experiment must be followed with a debriefing, in which participants are alerted to the true nature of their participation.

Nearly all research in psychology must be approved ahead of time by either an IRB or ethics board, in order to determine what risks are present in the experimental design and whether proper procedures and practices are being implemented. Examples of research that might not require initial approval are archival research, meta-analyses (though these often eventually require IRB approval for publication), and research using only computer simulations as participants.

In addition to the oversight of the humane treatment of animals during experimentation, each university or research institute's IACUC is also responsible for approving research to be performed on animals, reporting on any preventable animal deaths, and serving as a liaison for animal ethics issues between governing bodies like the APA and colleges.

In this infamous study, employees at the Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois were told ahead of time that they were part of an experiment designed to measure, among other things, worker productivity. Initial results looked very promising; however, subsequent research and investigation revealed that the novelty of being part of an experiment likely caused worker productivity to rise. As a result, this confounded results and inflated (albeit unintentionally) the data. Today, the use of deception or post-experimental debriefing is encouraged if a Hawthorne effect is expected in a research design.

Experimenter bias is the process by which an informed researcher unconsciously shows preference for one or more groups, based on knowledge outside the experiment. Note that this is not a choice—deliberately favoring one group due to outside knowledge is called fraud, and is definitely an ethics violation. A double blind methodology could rectify this issue.

Subjects can be deceived on the absolute true nature of the experiment if these two conditions have been met:

1. It is not feasible to use alternates to deception

2. The potential findings justify the use of deception due to their scientific, educational, or applied value

In order to do ethical research, researchers must obtain informed consent from research participants. Informed consent is sometimes obtained verbally rather than using a written form. Researchers usually need to have their way of obtaining informed consent approved by an institutional review board.

According to the ethic laws for psychological experiments and studies, all participants must be debriefed after the study.

Using deception in research is covered by the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) ethics code. Standard 8.07 of the code states “psychologists do not deceive prospective participants about research that is reasonably expected to cause physical pain or severe emotional distress.” Dr. R's study involves both deception and physical pain; therefore, her study is unethical.

An "institutional review board" (IRB), also known as an ethical review board (ERB), is a committee that has been formally designated to approve, monitor, and review psychological research involving human subjects. In the United States, IRBs are governed by Title 45 Code of Federal Regulations Part 46.

As the intake of sugars increases, the activity of the mice increases. If this were to be graphed, it would indicate a positive correlation from a line with a positive slope. It is important to note that this would be a correlation; furthermore, correlation simply reveals possible relationships and does not necessarily indicate causation, which may be the result of a lurking or confounding variable.