Ethical Issues Regarding Human Research in Psychology

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Ethical issues with human participants in psychological researchThe term ethics is used to refer to how we should treat humans and animals in Psychology Experiments. The British Psychology Society (BPS) contains a list of all the ethics relating to experiments and responsibilities that psychologists have such as working with humans, animals and psychological practitioners. There are many strengths and weaknesses of the guideline’s. One advantage is that psychologists can work within a given frame work and aware of what they should and shouldn’t do. Another strength of the guidelines is that it is protecting the public which means more people will volunteer for experiments as they know they’re safe and what rights they have. The guidelines also increase the influence of psychology practice as it is looked at in a more positive way as it appears much safer now than it was before the BPSA limitation of the guidelines is that not all psychologists are BPS which is a weakness because they can break all the rules and cause a lot of harm to their participants. Another disadvantage is that it is harder to stick to the rules as ethical rules such as deception and informed consent can be simply broken so there are no demand characteristics in the experiment.The first ethical issue in Milgram’s study in 1963 is the lack of informed consent. Even though the participants did agree to the experiment they were misled to believe if was a study of pain and memory when it was actually to test obedience, therefor they were actively deceived which could psychologically harm them after the experiment as they believed something that wasn’t true. Another ethical guideline broken was being able to withdraw from the experiment, even though the participants were told they could withdraw they were repeatedly told by the authority figure not to. Protection against harm was another rules

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