Ethical Issues

Question 1

What is informed consent?

Answer 1

→ Informed consent: is that the participants are asked to agree if they are happy to take part of the study. ppts are made aware of the aims and procedures of the study

Question 2

What is Deception?

Answer 2

→ Deception: when ppts are deceived about the study/procedures. ppts may not be told everything abut the study.

Question 3

What is the right to withdraw?

Answer 3

→ Right to withdraw: ppts are given the option to withdraw themselves from the study.

Question 4

What is protection from harm?

Answer 4

→ Protection from harm: ppts in the study should be protected from physcial and psychological harm.

Question 5

What is confidentiality?

Answer 5

→ Confidentiality: this is keeping ppts information private and not sharing the data.

Question 6

What is a debrief?

Answer 6

→ Debrief: This is done after the study whether ppts are made complete awareness of the studies aims and procedures.

Question 7

What is Respect of the ppt?

Answer 7

→ Respect of the ppt: we should respect ppts regardless of who they are.

Question 8

Identify which guidelines were not broken and why - COGNITIVE

Answer 8

→ Baddeley et al - Informed consent from the 72 volunteers from the ‘Applied Psychology Research Unit’ at Cambridge Uni - Low validity due to being ppts being psychological students and so having knowledge of the type of experiments being carried out and therefore may have led to demand characteristics.
→ Baddeley et al - protection from harm due to nothing psychological distress occurring - High generalisability as less likely ppts will withdraw from the study gaining a high sample.

Question 9

Identify which guidelines were broken and why - COGNITIVE

Answer 9

→ Baddeley et al - Deception → as there was a surpise re-test of the word lists that ppts were not informed about - High validity as it would reflect in real life on how information will be tested on accuracy without the person knowing.

Question 10

Improvements that can be made? - COGNITIVE

Answer 10

→ Baddeley et al - Gain prior consent: by telling ppts they will be informed but not then - therefore any psychological distress that was felt during the surprise re-test will have been minimised due to knowledge that deception was going to occur at some point.

Question 11

Overall Judgement - COGNITIVE

Answer 11

→ There was no cost to ppts. It benefited society with advice to students in that they should revise with mindmaps and revsion cards to make semantic links due to the LTM encoding being semantic instead of reading actually notes which is semantic encoding. → Therefore a lack of ethical guidelines broken in the study justifies its research into memories

Question 12

Identify which guidelines were not broken and why - SOCIAL

Answer 12

→ Sherif et al - presumptive consent - from parents - high validity as the boys were unaware of the study so behaviour was natural.
→ Debrief: with superordinate goals removing prejudice - high credibility as it showed that prejudice can be removed

Question 13

Identify which guidelines were broken and why - SOCIAL

Answer 13

→ Sherif et al: Deception: the 22, 11 year old boys were unaware they were in a study - high validity due to their behavior being real life which means a lack of demand characteristics. → Protection from harm: boys got into verbal and physical fights - low generalisabiltiy as two boys withdrew in the first week

Question 14

Improvements that can be made? - SOCIAL

Answer 14

→ Sherif et al: Reduce harm to ppts: by implementing boundaries such as no physical aggression otherwise they leave the camp - low validity as only, mild verbal aggression won’t truly reflect the severity of prejudice.

→ Gain informed consent from the boys : low validity to their knowledge of the study and its aims and so may show demand characteristics being purposely prejudice or nice.

Question 15

Overall Judgement - SOCIAL

Answer 15

→ The cost to the 22, 11 year old boys was minimal as the verbal aggression did not affect them and the physical fights were stopped as soon as they started. → The two groups were working towards a superodinate goals . → Therefore the ethics of the study was justified due to the little harm caused with large benefits to society.

Question 16

Identify which guidelines were not broken and why - BIOLOGICAL

Answer 16

→ Raine et al - Debriefing occurred for ppts in what the experiment would entail giving them the right to withdraw afterwards
→ High reliability as it would limit the amount of people wanting to withdraw.

Question 17

Identify which guidelines were broken and why - - BIOLOGICAL

Answer 17

→ Raine et al - Presumptive consent was gained for murderer’s who weren’t seen as fit to give it themselves - low validity as the ppts may feel obliged to participate and so their brain activity may not reflect true life if they are nit comfortable.
→ Protection from harm as ppts pleading NGRI were told to stop taking their medication 2 weeks prior to the study - High validity as this ensured their brain activity was not being influenced by foreign chemicals

Question 18

Improvements that can be made? - - BIOLOGICAL

Answer 18

→ Raine et al: protection from harm using fMRI scan instead of a PET scan due to their intrusive nature of an injection that is avoided with the measure of brain activity by blood flow - high reliability as they produce similar objective, quantitative images that can be analysed by multiple research.
→ Presumptive consent should be avoided as the ppts themselves will have not consented which may cause bias in the results if they are not fully willing - low generalisability as the sample size would have decreased.

Question 19

Overall Judgement - - BIOLOGICAL

Answer 19

→ Cost was minimals as no ppts suffered major health problems due to the lack of medication and the injection of a glucose tracker for the PET scans lasts a couple of seconds. → Benefits to society was large due to showing that murderers pleading NGRI have differences which may have caused them to act the way they did leading to reduced sentences due to lack of full accountability. → Therefore the experiment was justified due to no long-term effects on the ppts with larger benefits to society.

Question 20

Identify which guidelines were not broken and why - LEARNING

Answer 20

→ Watson and Rayner: Right to withdraw as Albert’s mother withdrew from the experiment before its end - low validity as this meant that they were unable to see if the phobia could be unconditioned and so lacks credibility
→ Protection from harm due to Albert being chosen as it wasn’t easily frightened - High validity as his lack of fear was conditioned out of him when in the presence of a rat showing the success of the study

Question 21

Identify which guidelines were broken and why- LEARNING

Answer 21

→ Watson and Rayner: Protection from Harm as they caused psychological distress to Albert when he jumped every time a loud noise was heard and crying in response to being shown a rat - High inter-rate reliability as 2 researchers were observing his behaviour and agreed on the cause. → Debrief as they were unable to unconditioned Albert’s fear due to his mother withdrawing him too early due a lack of understanding - low predictive validity as there is no evidence for the researchers to base their fear of being unconditioned.

Question 22

Improvements that can be made? - - LEARNING

Answer 22

→ Detailed information consent due to the assumption that the first consent was not that well informed because Albert’s mother withdrew hum from the study too early - High reliability as there would have been limited distractions to the full procedure of the study.
→ Debriefing could have been achieved if they contacted the mother and explained to need to unconditioned the fear. - High validity as it may have meant that the fear in Albert could have been unconditioned making the assumptions more credible.

Question 23

Overall Judgement - LEARNING

Answer 23

→ Cost to Albert quite big due to the distress caused and the phobia of rats created that was then generalised to other fluffy objects. → The experiment is overall justified due to Albert’s phobia being distinguished a month later and treatments for phobias such as systematic desensitisation being formed.

Question 24

Identify which guidelines were not broken and why - CLINICAL

Answer 24

→ Rosehan → presumptive consent gained from the owners of each of the 12 institutions - High generalisability as it allowed for a wide variety of institutions to be represented.

Question 25

Identify which guidelines were broken and why - CLINICAL

Answer 25

→ Rosehan → Deception: as the staff of the institution were unaware they were being studied. High ecological validity as they were studied in a environment natural to them so that would be reflected by their behaviour.
→ Informed consent from the staff due to their deception - High validity as their lack of knowledge would make their behaviour natural and free from demand characteristics.

Question 26

Improvements that can be made? - CLINICAL

Answer 26

→ Rosehan → Deception removed by gaining informed consent from all staff members so that their right to withdraw is also not compromised - Low validity as if the staff new they were being assessed they would not behave naturally and show DCs of much nicer attitudes towards patients

Question 27

Overall Judgement - CLINICAL

Answer 27

→ Cost to real patients who didn’t receive proper amount of treatment as a result of the pseudo-patients and real patients were unable to be admitted
→ Benefit is large as it highlighted the poor conditions of institutions and the poor treatment of patients by staff with the overuse of medication
→ Therefore it is justified as conditions have massively improved today with revisions of the DSM and ICD in diagnosing mental disorders to avoid misdiagnosis