Think about ONE study that you have participated in so far (or read about, if yo

Question

Think about ONE study that you have participated in so far (or read about, if you are completing research summaries as an alternative to participation).

1. What parts of the study do you think were intended to comply with principle of Respect for Persons?

2. At the start of the study, you should have been provided with an informed consent document that described the risks and benefits of the study. How did this, or other information you received, demonstrate the beneficence of the research?

3. Many studies involve some amount of deception-- participants may not be told the exact goals of the research, or given some kind of false information. Did this study involve deception? How do you think deception fits into the ethical considerations of the Belmont report?

Explanation / Answer

The American Psychology Association (APA) has laid out certain 'rules' that need to be followed by every psychologist during a research experiment to protect the research participant from any kind of harm. The guidelines set by the APA include; respect, dignity and privacy of the participant, the psychologist cannot indulge in any activity which may be considered as being malicious, keeping utmost confidentiality of the information provided by the participant.

I would like to consider the experiment by Stanley Milgram who conducted a research on the concept of obedience to someone in authority during the time of the Nazi War. The study was intended to comply with the principle of Respect for Persons by letting the participants exercise autonomy and make a choice whether they want to be a part of the experiment or not. However, the experiment conducted by Milgram on obedience to authority, had individuals giving up midway who did not want to be a part of the experiment any longer. But, they were forced to do so because a part of the experiment was to comply by the person in authority who was the experimenter himself.

The participants in the study were asked to punish the 'learner' as a 'teacher'. However, in the consent form, the kind of punishment was not included. The participants were not told that they have to administer shocks on other individuals, though the shocks were dummy. They did not harm any individual in the study. The information received in the consent form only included that it is a study based on obedience and the participant must introduce punishment whenever the subject gives a wrong answer. This demonstrated that it is a research based on how obedient a person can be.

Yes, this research did involve deception. The participants were not told that they would have to administer shock on other individuals. If they were told that they have to do what they have to, most participants would have refused to be a part of the study. There are arguments about ethical considerations of this study, however, it is suggested that the subject conformed to the person in authority because he thought of the experimenter to be an 'expert' and assumed he would be knowing what he is doing and thus did not think twice before obeying his instructions. Another explanation describes the reason behind obeying is that the subject trusted the person in authority and did not think that it would do any harm to another person receiving dangerous shocks.

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