Deception Is Not Based On Ethical Concerns

In his Sermons, John Wesley writes on the morality of lying, “...Officious lies, as well as all others, are an abomination to the God of Truth[sic]. Therefore there is no absurdity, however strange it may sound, in that saying of the ancient Father “I would not tell a willful lie to save the souls of the whole World”(Bok 32). Absolutists such as John Wesley, St. Augustine, and Immanuel Kant stand by the belief that there can be no moral justification for a lie, regardless of the circumstances. While these philosophers maintained the immutable immoral aspect of all lies, they also found ways to distinguish between different forms of lying, so that some forms of lying were considered to be more pardonable than others. Such rigid concepts of

One of the guidelines for experiments is to give participants informed consent. This means that they should be fully aware of the nature of the experiment, and any risks which the participants may be subjected to. In Milgram’s study, he told participants that the experiment was to test human learning through a memory game, which was partially true. In reality, however, the focus point was on obedience to authority figures, and the extent to which people would inflict pain on another individual simply because they were told to. This immediately breaches one of the guidelines, as participants were deceived and the true nature of the experiment was hidden. An issue with deception, however, is it cannot be avoided in all cases in order to provide the results in which the experiment is looking for. For example, if Milgram told

Looking at the history of human research experiments necessitates investigation into the background; why is it not sufficient to simply to undertake an experiment merely to broaden scientific study and understanding? Are not the psychologists and scientists ethical and professional? The answer is quite simply, not always. While many psychologists may have started their experiments with the best of intentions, there were a number that merely seized opportunities that were in their grasp. Hence, there came the need for the Belmont Report and the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Code of Ethics in direct response to testing on human subjects.

Firstly, this essay will discuss the work by Stanley Milgram (1963) and his obedience studies which used technology to see how far people would obey an authority figure. I will follow this with the ethics argument that surrounded it, noting the issues raised by Diana Baumrind (1964). An updated version of Milgram’s (1963) experiment, carried out by Mel Slater and colleagues (2006) which used technology to replicate it. Moving on, friendship will be examined with the work of Brian Biegelow and John La Gaipa (1975), and other work by William Corsaro (2006).

The informed consent were not obtained for the participants to engage in the experiment at their own free will, instead they were deceived and made to belief that they were benefitting, such experiment which has become widely known

The most adept method of compensating for any mandatory deception is in the debriefing. After the experiment is over, researchers are required to debrief the participants. The ultimate reason for debriefing is to allow the participants to leave the experiment without any stress. This also gives the experimenter a chance to go over any and all of the points where deception might have been used and to

However, the question not asked at the time of conception was whether the rights of the actors involved were unacceptably infringed upon. What were the ethical implications that led to Zimbardo’s name being associated with the term “unethical”? The term deception comes to mind. Clearly the American Psychological Association (APA) advises deception may be used when the act of deception is completely unavoidable and a debriefing must follow the experiment (Kuipers, & Hysom, 2014).

One might think that this experiment will stimulate the new research in the area of human obedience, but this did not occur. Despite the difficulties and the courage of Burger to conduct a partial replication of the original study, it did not produce any different outcomes and did not spark any new ideas in psychology (Burger, 2009). Instead, the researcher had to deal with an enormous amount of different commentaries and controversy. My main rationale for disapproving the Burger’s study is ethical characteristics of the Milgram paradigm. More specifically, now we have the Ethical Rules of the APA, which tell us that researchers should honor rights of participants to privacy, confidentiality and the right to withdraw the experiment. However, Milgram’s paradigm clearly challenges these fundamental rights and creates even more ethical dilemmas. Another rationale that I can include is the infliction of increasing pain on an unwilling participant, a characteristic that is unacceptable in modern psychological studies. Therefore, I would disapprove such experiment, because of ethical non-compliance and little contribution to the field. As for me, I view following ethical practices in my dissertation project work as a crucial element for success. It will allow me to produce reliable, meaningful and relevant scholarly data that would not be a subject to ethical

All 464 participants were given a questionnaire that asked participants to evaluate their experience in research studies and if they had ever felt harm in a study. Based on participant’s answers, participants were separated into groups based on the level of harm they had previously experiences. The results indicate that participants who had previously been in a deception study rated their experience as more positive than participants whom had never participated in a deception study. In response to Smith and Richardson, Rubin (1985) believe that the data presented by Smith and Richardson do not support the conclusions they made in their paper. Harm is demonstrated in their data, but they fail to account for this, instead a split of participant’s data is done to eliminate the role of

Class, What is an example of when it would be helpful to use deception in research? The perfect example, when some women are in labor, and want something for the pain. The doctor knows at this stage of the labor nothing can be administered to the woman. Then, to calm her he pays her a magic trick like a placebo IV, and plants this in her intellect that this liquid will take out all the pains of labor. Meantime the IV is only fluids.

Throughout history, deception has been used by people all the time. People have used it to get what they want or to get away with something they know was wrong. Deception has also been utilized in psychology, particularly social psychology experiments. In today’s society, more people have gradually had a problem with the usage of deception in psychological experiments, while others believe that it is an invaluable component of an experiment. These two distinct perspectives on the issue have developed overtime and has created a serious debate. Even though there are different arguments to the issue, the fact is that deception has

Stanley MIlgram is a Yale University social psychologist who wrote “Behavioral Study of Obedience”, an article which granted him many awards and is now considered a landmark. In this piece, he evaluates the extent to which a participant is willing to conform to an authority figure who commands him to execute acts that conflict with his moral beliefs. Milgram discovers that the majority of participants do obey to authority. In this research, the subjects are misled because they are part of a learning experience that is not about what they are told. This experiment was appropriate despite this. Throughout the process, subjects are exposed to various signs that show them

Take Elliott Sharp again for example, His pro-tip for people interested in participating in tobacco research is to always say you smoke name brand cigarettes and when asked how many cigarettes you smoke a day “pick a number, any number, greater than ten” (Sharp, 2012). Even he realizes and states in his article that this type of lying can skew data. Researchers should be looking for those outliers is his defense (Sharp, 2012). What he doesn’t seem to say is that if everyone takes his advice and a trial ends up loaded with people who lied about their health or lifestyle, those liars are no longer a few outliers. Studies can end up wasting their money on inconclusive results or result in inaccurate findings. While this may not seem like a big issues in the field of tobacco research, imagine if this philosophy crossed over into research dealing with life threatening health implications, these little lies on the front end of trials could cause serious issues for

When going about how to do this research, the researchers decided that by withholding information and tricking the participants, they

In some studies, deception is needed in order to gain accurate results without many factors getting in the way such as stereotypes or pre-conceived opinions on different topics. Many famous studies in the 20th century used deception as a technique to gain the whole