Key Theme: Ethics
KEY THEME: Ethical principles guide psychology research and practice
The key integrative theme for this module applies to the work of all psychologists, including teachers and students of psychology. In Professor Neufeld’s video, he explains the theme with examples. Here, we break it down into “research” and “practice.
Ethical Principles Guide Psychology Research
Ethics in research is an evolving field, and some practices that were accepted or tolerated in the past would be considered unethical today – such as giving elephants large doses of LSD. Although psychological research intends to advance science for public good, unfortunately, both people and animals have been greatly harmed as research subjects in the past. Current-day researchers are expected to adhere to strict ethical guidelines when conducting experiments that involve human or animal participants.
A human example of unethical research occurred in 1932 when poor, rural, Black, male sharecroppers from Tuskegee, Alabama, were recruited to participate in a 40-year study conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service, to study syphilis in Black men (Figure 2). In exchange for free medical care, meals, and burial insurance, 600 men agreed to participate in the study. A little more than half of the men tested positive for syphilis but were never informed that they had the disease. While there was no treatment for syphilis when the study began, by 1947 penicillin was recognized as an effective treatment for the disease. Despite this, no penicillin was administered to the participants in this study, and the participants were not allowed to seek treatment at any other facilities if they wanted to continue in the study (and continue to receive free “medical care,” meals, and burial insurance they were promised).
Over 40 years, many of the participants unknowingly spread syphilis to others and eventually died with the disease. In 1972 the experiment was discovered by the national press (Tuskegee University, n.d.) and soon discontinued… The resulting outrage led to the National Research Act of 1974 and the extensive, strict ethical guidelines for research on humans that exists today. Since psychology research involves humans or animals as “subjects,” it is governed by those guidelines. [2]
Link to Learning
Learn more on Tuskegee here at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website.
More on Animal Research
Researchers who use animals as experimental subjects must design their projects so the animals’ pain and distress are minimized. Legal and regulatory approaches to animal testing vary among nations. Some take the form of strong government regulation and monitoring, while others take a more self-regulated approach and rely on the ethics of the researchers.[3]
For example the United Kingdom has one of the strongest regulations, while Japan employs the self-regulation approach. The U.S. approach is somewhere in the middle, the result of a gradual blending of strict and loose guideli