Purpose Of Ethical Code Of Research In Psychology

When carrying out research in psychology, researchers must make sure they stick to the ethical code of practice as they are dealing with human beings and animals sometimes. The word ethics can be defined as “rules of behavior based on ideas about what is morally good and bad”. The purpose of these ethical considerations is to protect participants from harm in any research that is conducted. Examples of these ethical considerations are consent from participants, confidentiality, as well as deception and mental and physical stress. Different methods of research such as experiments and observations are used to investigate different theories at SCLOA. Ethics are important in SCLOA because they help researchers perform morally correct studies that
He wanted to see to what extent participants would go in order to obey and authoritative figure. He has 40 male participants between the age of 20 and 50 and paid them to take part of the study. There were two confederates of Milgram, one of the experimenters played a biology teacher and the other a learner. The teacher was the chosen participant who then had to send (fake) electric shocks to the learner. The shocks started from 15 volts all the way up to fatal shocks of 450 volts. The experimented did not make it clear to the participant (teacher) that he may withdraw, therefore whenever the teacher would stop the experimenter would say ‘please continue’, ‘the experiment requires that you continue’, ‘you have no other choice you must go on’. Milgram found that 65% if the participants went all the way to 450 volts and 35% did not continue. Some of the participants showed signs of nervousness while some physically hurt themselves and even had seizures due to the stress. They were then debriefed and told that no harm was caused to participants. Although Milgram came up with the conclusion that a large amount of participants went to extreme levels to obey the authorities figure (biology teacher), this study was listed down to be extremely unethical due to deception and other ethical considerations. But without the deception Milgram would not
The guards were given the right to do what they wanted but were informed not to physically abuse the prisoners by Zimbardo. One of the participants had started having outbursts and showed deep depression; therefore he had to leave the experiment in 36 hours. The guards found ways to punish the prisoners without physically hurting them by making them clean out toilets with their bare hands, and even cut down their privileges (meals, showers…). These actions caused many of the prisoner’s depression; stress and anxieties meaning they were not protected from mental harm and may have suffered in the long term after the experiment. The fact that Zimbardo gave the guards the right to treat the prisoners however they wanted made the experiment as realistic as possible. The results he received may have been valid due to the fact that he had no control over the participant’s behavior and could then come up a valid conclusion. A limitation of this experiment was that he did not meet the ethical considerations in relation to physical and mental harm, but if he did not give the guards the freedom to act however they wanted the results would have been unreliable as well as unrealistic. There were other ethical considerations that were not met in this experiment such as: deception, but Zimbardo states that deception only took place when the prisoners were ‘arrested’ in the beginning of the