¶ … Ethical Responsibility
There are several ethical responsibilities that psychologists need to consider when conducting a research with adult human participants. The first is to follow APA (American Psychological Association) ethics standards for rights of the participants (Zechmeister, n.d., p. 53). Second, the researchers must conduct a risk-benefit analysis before carrying out the study. Third, the researchers must take informed consent of the participant, which is the critical ethical responsibility in every exploration. Fourth, maintaining the participant's confidentiality is another major ethical task. Privacy should be maintained in order to gain true data from the respondents. Fifth, deception should be avoided. Last, a quick but comprehensive debriefing should be given to the human adults so that any possible misconceptions could be avoided.
Historical Example of Psychological Research
One historical example of psychological research that raised serious ethical questions is Milgram Obedience Study (Cherry, 2016). It was conducted after World War 2, in 1961. Newspaper ads were published to recruit the volunteering participants for a petty cash amount of $4.50. A shock generator was given to the participants labeled from "slight shock" to "danger: severe shock." The participants were informed...
The persons sitting in the next room were pretending to be shocked with currents as they were deceivingly shrieking at every button pressed by the 'teachers'. Most of the participants asked to discontinue as they heard the learners shouting and pleading to stop, and sometimes only remaining silent. However, the experimenter asked the teachers to carry on. It was concluded that 65% of the participants as 'teachers' obeyed and went on to give shocks. The amount of anxiety experienced by the participants was high since they were not informed completely about the experiment that the persons in the next room are not receiving shocks in real. The ethical concerns involved in this experiment were deception and not disseminating complete information about the experiment. Moreover, it also appeared that APA ethical code of research conduct was not followed, as the researchers did not employ a comprehensive debriefing about the experiment, which ultimately raised misconceptions.
Another historical example is of Zimbardo prison study. According to this study, 24 male participants were selected for role playing of "prisoners" for two-weeks and were paid $15 for this task (Cherry, 2016). The mock prison was set…
