Key Theme: Ethics

KEY THEME: Ethical principles guide psychology 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]

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 guidelines. In the U.S., any facility using animals and receiving federal funding must have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) to ensure the ethical guidelines are followed. This committee reviews research proposals and performs inspections of laboratories and protocols.^[4]

Animal research benefits humans. For example, before medicine accepted the germ theory of disease, many people died during routine surgeries. Once they understood how infections were spread, precautions were taken and mortality rates from surgery decreased dramatically. This was in large part due to research using animals conducted by Louis Pasteur.^[5],[6] Further, our understanding about emotion and mental disorders is based primarily on research with animals, and our knowledge would be quite limited without them.^[7]

For example, the findings from Dr. Jane Flinn’s animal lab at George Mason University has contributed to our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The research they conduct with mice could not ethically be conducted with humans – they would have to be willing to undergo treatment that induces brain injury!

It is understandable to be concerned about using animals in this way, and learning about it brings up many questions. Why are we willing to cause disease in animals but not in humans? Why is human life more valued? These are important questions. One way to think about it is mutualism. Laboratory animals are bred and raised in the lab, similar to other domesticated animals who cannot survive without connection to humans. When ethical guidelines are followed, they are well cared for and their existence benefits both their own species and humans in various ways.

Human Research

When human participants are involved, researchers must present their research plans to an Institutional Review Board (IRB) before they can begin. The IRB is a committee of other scientists and community members that review research proposals to ensure that they are ethically sound and that they protect the participants from harm. Each study requires that participants give informed consent and that they are debriefed after participation. Debriefing participants becomes especially important if there is any deception within the study.

Why would researchers need to deceive participants in research? One reason for this is the placebo effect. This happens when expectations influence how you feel. Tusko was given a placebo, or non-active substance, so that his reaction to getting a needle injection could be observed – so the researchers could sort out his reaction to the needle from his reaction to the actual drug. Sometimes a whole group of people are given a placebo so they can be compared to a “treatment” group that gets the medicine(or other treatment) being studied – but they don’t know whether they are getting the medicine or the placebo. This is a necessary step so that we can see whether the treatment is responsible for changing the behavior or whether it would have changed anyway. For example, when studying treatment for an anxiety disorder, without a placebo or comparison group, it is difficult to determine whether the anxiety symptoms would improve over time (as often happens) without treatment, or whether the treatment is causing improvement. This is all part of designing a study to be able to answer the research questions being asked.^[8]

Why would researchers need to deceive participants in research? One relatively common way deception is used in studies is when participants receive a placebo,or a non-active substance. In some studies testing the effectiveness of an interventionor a medication, some people are given a placebo so they can be compared to the
treatment group. But researchers use deception to make sure participants do not know if they are getting the treatment or the placebo. Because participants are not told which group they are in, all of the participants think they are getting the real treatment. You may have heard placebo effect, or when people have a reaction to the non-treatment because they believe they are actually getting the treatment. This is a necessary step to whether the treatment is responsible for changing the behavior or whether it would have changed anyway. For example, when studying treatment for an anxiety disorder, without a placebo or comparison group, it is difficult to determine whether the anxiety symptoms would improve over time (as often happens) without treatment, or whether it is the treatment causing improvement.

Ethical principles guide psychology practice.

“Practice” in psychology actually occurs in many settings. When we use the word practice, most people think of mental health, and clinical or counseling psychologists. These health-service psychologists use a variety of methods with varying levels of known effectiveness. Many mental health treatments are not fully tested and cannot be called “empirically validated or proven” but are considered empirically based or evidence-informed. Evidence-based means the treatment has been tested against a control group and demonstrated it decreased the targeted symptoms. Evidence-informed means the treatment has been developed using the results of research about those or similar symptoms and disorders. Though, these treatments and interventions may not be fully tested because it is very difficult to do so ethically (i.e., denying someone a treatment you know works in the name of research can be unethical)

Psychologists also work in many other industries and subfields. Forensic psychologists work in the criminal justice system, industrial-organizational psychologists work in corporations and other workplace settings, human-factors and engineering psychologists work in industries such as aviation or the U.S. government, and climate psychologists^[10] work to understand how human behavior affects the natural world.^[11] Regardless of their industry, each of these psychologists are bound to the same ethical code.^[12] Within the language of this code are sections that apply to various practices, such as informed consent for therapy and testing. The ethics code specifies psychologists should only practice within the bounds of their competence based on their education, training, or experience.

 Many psychologists are also teachers. And as teachers, they must follow a related ethical code. For example, professors should take steps to ensure their syllabi and course materials contain accurate and up-to-date information, and should not require students to disclose personal information in a class. Psychological professors who also have training in providing therapy also must maintain clear boundaries. The professor-student relationship is different from a therapist-client relationship, and professors cannot ethically provide therapy to students (though they can and should assist students in finding the help they need).