psychology

Stanley Milgram's studies of obedience, in which subjects were led to believe that they were shocking another subject, heightened awareness of the problems of deception in research and of psychological harm to subjects. In psychology, deception usually centers on misleading subjects about the purpose of the study, about whether they are being observed or not, or about the meaning of the tasks that they are asked to perform.

Almost all the ethical issues surrounding deception reflect a conflict between the rights of the individual and the possible benefits of the research to society. Resolving issues is always difficult; psychologists have typically applied a cost vs. benefit analysis. They ask themselves the following question: Does the potential benefit of the study to society outweigh the potential costs to subjects? Some find such an analysis appropriate, while others argue that it reflects little more than "ends justifying the means" thinking. As a result, in recent years psychologists have developed a heightened sensitivity to the rights of those who volunteer as subjects in their experiments. For example, in response to the problem of pain and anxiety, the principle of informed consent requires that subjects be informed of any risks or dangers involved in an experiment before they decide whether to participate in it. In dealing with the problem of embarrassment, subjects must be told from the start that they are free to withdraw at any time without penalty. These precautions were not in place when Milgram did his study on obedience.

Most psychological research studies do not involve anything even remotely controversial. For example, in a study of memory, the researchers may have to mislead their subjects by telling them that their memory of a list of words will be measured once. That way, their memory can be tested again as a surprise to see how much they remember when they weren't trying.

Most researchers are uncomfortable with misleading subjects in even the smallest way as it contributes to the suspicion that people have about psychologists, that they are always trying to trick people into revealing more about themselves than they want to reveal. Deception is used very sparingly, and it is never used to deceive a subject into telling something embarrassing, or into doing something that they would never have agreed to do if they knew what they were getting into. That just isn't ethical.