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Essay Ethics in Social Psychological Research

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Research which involves human participants who undergo uncomfortable circumstances can raise moral, social, and political concerns (Schwartz, 2001). This ensues a whole new field of research known simply as research ethics. Research ethics is generally interested in the analysis of ethical matters that arise when people are used as subjects in such studies. Research ethics requires the application of necessary ethical convention to a variety of topics involving any scientific study. There are quite a number of experiments brought to what is known as the Internal Review Board. The IRB 's sole purpose is to look at any and all experiment that must be taken with considerable amount of ... well, review before they can actually take place. …show more content…

Watson (1920) reasoned that fear is habitually innate due to unconditioned responses. He wanted to go in the direction of classical conditioning to prove his hypothesis in the study. This kind of experiment would give Watson the opportunity to condition a child to fear random stimuli that we would not commonly be afraid of as a child. The test subject, 'Little Albert,' was only eight months old at the beginning of the study. Simply due to his age the study would be thought of as unethical by today's American Psychological Association's standards. This experiment was one of the first that led to a call to ethical treatment of human subjects being banned by the APA. On a side note, what really triggered a call to rules and regulations on human experimentation was after World War II. When the Allied powers stumbled upon the Nazi's scientific studies on prisoners that left the world in shock and dismay (Pensar, 2009). Nevertheless, with what results that were found by the now forbidden and, at times, inhumane methods researchers must make an effort to use these findings as a reference point for current, less harmful experiments.
Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment where a patient is introduced to a familiar and unwanted stimulus and being given a level discomfort at the same time. This conditioning is used to make a patient to join the stimulus

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