Ethical Issues in Psychology

In this article participants were given written and verbal information about the study and confidentiality, anonymity and withdrawal were reassured. All participants were fully informed and consented. Moreover, as the participant for this design is to permit the participants to ‘open up’ and discuss their experiences. It is crucial that any given time the participant should be permitted to discontinue with the interview if they feel uncomfortable. This is called as process consent, whereby the interview continuously negotiates with the interviewee to determine whether they are comfortable in continuing with the interview, (Polit and Beck, 2006). There are many ethical aspects to consider, the above is just one fraction used as an example, by simply suggesting that ethical guidelines were adhered to, does not illustrate ethical consideration. They did not show how to make the participant safe if they were difficult to manage.

There are many research studies conducted in the past that would not be considered ethical today. This essay will review two research methods, whilst taking into account the ethical standards of modern psychology. The focus of this essay will be; ‘Landis’ Facial Expressions Experiment 1924’ carried out by Carney Landis and ‘’Milgram’s Obedience Experiment’ carried out by Stanley Milgram. Both experiments were carried out under immoral circumstances and perhaps should never have been allowed to take place. Nowadays, neither would be considered acceptable.

A code of ethics is a set of guidelines that are designed to set out acceptable behaviors for different profession it is also necessary in order to maintain instruction and guidance for professionals working in collaboration with other professionals. The codes of ethics for counselors, psychologists, social workers, and human service professionals are different in comparison to each particular profession. They are similar because they all encompass the same values such as being honesty, accountability, fairness, respect and avoiding conflicts of interest.

In the context of research, ethics is defined as the systems of moral principles that guide human action (1). Ethics is the reflection of the societies ideals of what is right and wrong. It is required in order for research to be valid and published for an ethics committee to evaluate the proposed research question, design and implementations and provide approval in order for a research project to be considered ethical.

However, when they conducted their experiments they did not breach any ethical guidelines since they did not exist (Matta, 2014). Hence, to protect the welfare, rights, dignity, and mental health of the participants, strict ethical guidelines were introduced in psychological experiments which have positively influenced the field of psychology. Also, due to ethical frameworks, people are viewed as ‘participants’ of a study instead of ‘subjects’ in an experiment. They also make psychological experiments more reputable, leading to an increase in the willingness of participation by people as their safety is ensured. The increased willingness of participation is beneficial in order to discover more about human behaviour, the effectiveness of treatment, mechanisms of a psychiatric disorder etc.

Psychologists are committed to increasing scientific and professional knowledge of behaviour and people's understanding of themselves and others and to the use of such knowledge to improve the condition of individuals, organisations, and society (APA, 2010). The PSI preamble (2010) states “the authority of psychologists derives from the scientific methods of investigation on which their knowledge is based, and the ethics which govern all their professional activity. They accept that codes of ethics are necessary to protect the interest of clients and prevent misuse of psychological knowledge. The Ethics Code provides a common set of principles and standards upon which psychologists build their professional and scientific work. The following is a rough and general summary of the principles that are addressed by the APA, PSI and BPS;

Ethics is defined as moral principles that administer a person’s behaviour. It is the basic perception and essential principle of decent human conduct. Issues concerning unethical approach are known as ethical issues.

We are going to explore the world of ethical issues in psychology. As in any medical or mental health fields there are rules we all must follow as professionals. In this essay today we will be exploring a case study where we have a young lady who has been stricken by a mental disability. We will be looking at the facts in which her disability was handled by a professional in the field of psychology. We also will be discussing the rights and wrongs that are presented in her case study. We will also be discussing the APA ethical codes and gain a clearer understanding of where some things went wrong and why shall we begin.

Ethics are defined as “a set of moral principles and perceptions about right versus wrong and the resulting philosophy of conduct that is practiced by an individual, group, profession, or culture” (Barker, 2001, p. 159). In the field

Baumrind declares that Milgram’s experiments are unethical because of the possible harm that the teachers are exposed to during the teaching. In an article, published on Yahoo’s Associated Content, the author writes that because of Milgram lying to the subjects about what type of experiment they were participating in was the main reason of unethical interpretations (Associated Content). This reason is in agreement to Baumrind’s beliefs when she writes of the manipulation and embarrassment subjects are beginning to encounter when experiments are taking place. She cites the Ethical Standards of Psychologists, using this to present the standards that Milgram possibly overstepped while conducting the experiments. However when reading the the opening line, “Only when a problem is significant ...

A number of key terms describe the system of ethical considerations that the modern research establishments have set up to protect the rights of research subjects. Voluntary participation and confidentiality are principles that demands that the respondents to be free from coercion in any way when participating in the research, protected in the raw data, and published

In the not-so-distant past, psychological experiments were performed in order to accomplish different objectives, or test various hypothesis, often with dangerous or fatal consequences for the participants. A lack of ethical constraints and guidelines led to many horrendous experiments, performed in the name of science that left devastating repercussions to the often-unwilling participants. Many of these unethical experiments provided legitimate insights. Seventy years ago, there were no ethical guidelines, no code of conduct in place, and at the time the zeitgeist was that experiments should be conducted with minorities, the disabled, and prisoners because they were morally inequivalent to the rest of society (Collins, 2003).

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

Between the Milgram experiment and all the other little experiments ended up raising a lot of eye brows and controversial discussions about the ethics of doing such research. Subjects were exposed to emotional stress, psychological stress and physical stress while being in the experiment (Cherry). Milgram wanted to answer questions which plagued society for a long time, such as “Was human nature inherently evil or could reasonable average people be coerced by authority into performing unnatural actions?” Many believe the study to be unethical due to the fact that the subjects were not fully aware of what it was Milgram was doing. The subjects were deceived into believing they were causing pain and suffering to another human being, when in reality the victim was not in any suffering or pain at all. The fact that they believe they were causing pain to someone else could have caused the

In this case, the psychologist is presented with several ethical issues which could cause harm to the client. The first ethical issue that arose in this case is the potential for a role conflict. The psychologist and Mr. Hartwig had contact prior to the development of a therapeutic relationship when the psychologist bought a car from Mr. Hartwig. It may not be enough that the brief, informal relationship ended. The psychologist must assess the dimensions of the previous relationship from the viewpoint of the client as well as his/her own personal feelings (Koocher & Keith-Spiegel, 2008). For example, the client could feel that he gave the psychologist a good deal and that the psychologist was indebted to him. This could leave the