Ethical Issues of Deception in Psychological Research
Works Cited Not Included
Ethical issues are a major area for concern in psychological studies,
and that in some way or another ethical guidelines are compromised.

Deception is one of the most controversial aspects in psychological
research. The definition of the word deception is not always clear and
is defined differentially by different people. An example of this is
Hey (1998) who pointed out that ‘there is a world of difference
between not telling participants’ things and telling them the wrong
things’. On the other hand Adair, Dushenko and Lindsay (1985) define
deception in psychological research as: the provision of information
that actively misleads participants regarding some aspect of the
study. Christensen (1977) defines deception in psychological research
as an explicit misstatement of fact.

For the purpose of this essay I am going to use the definition of
deception cited in the Oxford English Dictionary. Here it defines
deception as untruthful, misleading and dishonesty.

The first reference to the ethics of deception to have appeared in
psychological research is credited to W.E. Vinacke in his 1954
American psychologist article entitled ‘Deceiving Experimental
Subjects’. In that article he raised the question of the ‘proper
balance between the interests of science and the thoughtful treatment
of research subjects’ (Korn, 1997).

Despite Vinacke’s attempt to stimulate discussion in the field of such
ethical issues, the message was largely ignored. This was until nine
years later when the controversy surrounding Stanley Milgram’s
obedience experiments (1963) came to light. As a result of these
experiments, Diane Baumrind (1985) began a vigorous campaign against
the use of deception in psychological research.

The controversy regarding the use of deception arises because it may
have an effect on participants’ willingness to take part in
psychological research. Indeed this controversy has resulted in much
research on this. However, the findings have been contradictory.

Some research has shown that the use of deception negatively affects
participant’s perception of researchers and psychology consequently
the likelihood that they will take part in psychological research
again, and whether they will complete the study they are participating
in. For example Oliansky (1991) reported that participants who had
been deceived in psychological research reported strong negative
feelings in that they said that they were unlikely to take part again.
Therefore this shows that the use of deception does affect
participant’s willingness to take part in psychological studies.

On the other hand there is evidence that people actually enjoy being
deceived and therefore deception has a positive effect, in that
participants report that the likelihood that they would take part in
another psychological study had increased. For example a study carried
out by Smith and Richardson (1983) found that participants who were
involved in experiments involving deception reported that they
enjoyed, and benefited form the experience, more than what they did in
experiments without deception. They reported that they would be very
likely to take part in such studies in the future.

However, some research into the of deception in psychological research
has shown that participants do not appear to react negatively to being
deceived, and the likelihood of them taking part in future studies is
not affected. For example Bonetti’s (1998) findings led him to
conclude that ‘deception has no effect on participants’ willingness to
take part in future studies in psychology studies, in that it neither
reduces nor increases participants willingness to take part in future
studies whether they involve deception or not.

Consequently, these contradictory findings regarding the use of
deception implies that people have different interpretations of what
deception actually means. All of these studies into the effects of
deception have asked participant’s after they have been deceived
whether or not they objected. Therefore further research is needed to
investigate the possible effects that the use of deception in a
prospective psychological study to see whether it has any impact on
‘potential participants’ decision to take part in research. This could
easily be done by informing some participants that they may be
deceived at some point during a proposed psychological study and not
informing a control group to establish whether the information about
deception has any significant influence on whether or not they decide
to take part.