What you'll learn

• What ethics means in psychological research and why it matters.
• The role of the British Psychological Society’s code of ethics.
• The main ethical issues: consent, deception, withdrawal, harm, confidentiality and debriefing.
• How researchers can deal with ethical problems while still producing useful evidence.

The basic idea: why ethics matter

Psychology studies real people: their behaviour, thoughts, emotions, relationships and sometimes distressing experiences. This means researchers have a duty to protect participants, not just collect interesting data.

An ethical issue occurs when a study may conflict with participants’ rights or wellbeing. For example, a researcher might need to hide the true aim of a study to avoid changing participants’ behaviour, but that creates a problem with informed consent.

The flowchart below shows how ethical thinking should run through the whole research process, not just appear at the end.

The British Psychological Society code of ethics

The British Psychological Society, often shortened to BPS, is the main professional body for psychologists in the UK. It publishes ethical guidance for psychologists, including the Code of Ethics and Conduct and guidance on human research ethics.

At A-Level, you need to know that the BPS code helps researchers:

• plan studies responsibly
• decide whether a study should be approved by an ethics committee
• protect participants from unnecessary risk
• maintain public trust in psychology
• judge whether classic studies were ethically acceptable

The BPS code is built around four broad principles:

Respect

Researchers should respect people’s dignity, privacy, autonomy and rights. This links strongly to informed consent, confidentiality and the right to withdraw.

Competence

Researchers should have the skills, training and supervision needed to conduct the study safely and appropriately.

Responsibility

Researchers are responsible for managing risks, protecting participants from harm and acting if something goes wrong.

Integrity

Researchers should be honest and accurate. Deception must be justified, carefully managed and followed by a proper debrief.

Key ethical issues in psychological research

Informed consent

In practice, researchers usually provide a participant information sheet and a consent form. For children or people who may not be able to give full consent, researchers may need consent from a parent, guardian or carer, as well as the participant’s own agreement where possible.

The difficulty is that fully explaining the aim can sometimes create demand characteristics — cues that make participants guess the purpose of the study and change their behaviour.

For example, in Loftus and Palmer’s study of eyewitness testimony, participants watched car crash clips and answered questions using different verbs such as “hit” or “smashed”. If participants had been fully told the aim was to test whether wording affects memory, they might have tried to avoid being influenced.

Deception

Deception means deliberately misleading participants or withholding important information. It is not automatically banned, but it must be justified.

Milgram’s obedience study is a classic example. Participants believed they were giving real electric shocks to a learner, who was actually a confederate — someone working with the researcher while pretending to be a participant. This deception helped Milgram study obedience, but it also meant participants could not give fully informed consent.

Right to withdraw

The right to withdraw means participants should be able to leave a study at any point and, where possible, withdraw their data afterwards.

This must be made clear before the study begins. Researchers should avoid pressuring participants to continue. In Milgram’s study, the verbal prods such as “the experiment requires that you continue” made withdrawal difficult, so this is a major ethical criticism.

Protection from harm

Researchers should protect participants from physical and psychological harm. Psychological harm includes stress, embarrassment, anxiety, humiliation or lowered self-esteem.

Zimbardo’s prison study is often criticised here. Participants took on prisoner and guard roles, and some experienced distress as the study escalated. Although the study was stopped early, it raises serious concerns about whether participants were adequately protected from harm.

Confidentiality and privacy

Privacy is a person’s right to control information about themselves. Confidentiality means researchers should not reveal participants’ identities or personal data.

Researchers can protect confidentiality by using ID numbers, pseudonyms, secure storage and reporting group results rather than naming individuals.

Rosenhan’s study of psychiatric hospitals raises ethical issues because hospital staff were deceived and observed without giving consent. However, the hospitals were not named, which helped protect confidentiality.

Debriefing

A debrief happens after the study. The researcher explains the true aims, reveals any deception, checks the participant’s wellbeing, reminds them of their right to withdraw data and provides support if needed.

Debriefing is especially important when deception has been used. However, a debrief does not automatically remove all ethical problems. If a participant has already experienced serious distress, explaining the study afterwards may not fully undo the harm.

Dealing with ethical issues in research

Ethical problems should be considered before, during and after the study.

Before the study

Researchers usually submit their proposal to an ethics committee. This committee reviews the aims, procedure, risks, consent materials, data handling and debrief plan.

Researchers may use:

• a risk assessment
• pilot testing to spot unexpected distress
• screening to exclude vulnerable participants where appropriate
• clear consent forms
• a planned withdrawal procedure
• secure data storage plans

During the study

Researchers should monitor participants for distress and stop the study if necessary. They should avoid coercion, which means pressuring someone to take part or continue.

Payments should not be so large that participants feel unable to refuse. Participants should also know who to contact if they are worried.

After the study

Researchers should debrief participants, offer support, allow data withdrawal where possible, and store data securely. They should also report findings honestly, including limitations and ethical concerns.

When deception is unavoidable

Sometimes deception is used because telling participants the full aim would ruin the study. In these cases, researchers may use:

• prior general consent, where participants agree to take part in a study where some details cannot be revealed until later
• presumptive consent, where a similar group is asked whether they would consider the procedure acceptable
• retrospective consent, where participants are fully informed afterwards and asked whether their data can still be used

Evaluating ethical guidelines

Ethical guidelines are a major strength of modern psychology because they protect participants and improve public confidence. They also make research more professional by giving researchers a clear process to follow.

However, ethics can create a tension with validity. If researchers reveal the full aim, participants may change their behaviour. If researchers avoid all stressful situations, they may be unable to study important topics such as obedience, prejudice, attachment disruption or mental health.

There is also subjectivity in deciding whether a study’s benefits outweigh its costs. Milgram’s findings helped us understand obedience and destructive authority, but many psychologists argue that the distress caused was too high. Zimbardo’s study generated discussion about prisons and social roles, but its ethical weaknesses make it difficult to justify by modern standards.

Ethics also includes ethical implications: the wider effects of research on society. For example, research on mental illness, aggression or group differences must be reported carefully to avoid stigma, discrimination or misuse.