APA Ethical Guidelines

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The APA ethical guidelines help to ensure that all psychological research maintains the integrity that it does not do harm or conflicts with the majority of the human populations moral ethical codes. However, in some situations the APA ethical guidelines must be viewed as just that: guidelines. If a study has the potential to benefit humanity as a whole and does not result in the permanent or irreparable harm to a human being then some guidelines must be permitted to be stretched or even broken in the interest of human advancement and scientific progression. After all the goal and responsibility of a psychologist is to enhance our understanding of human behavior as well as to find ways to use this information to better society and humanity as a whole. In a circumstance that has the potential to achieve this goal, violation of the APA ethical guidelines is acceptable on the condition that the research maintains the integrity of not inflicting irreparable damage or harm to the subjects being used. This includes psychological harm, physical harm, or social humiliation to any human being regardless of age, size, race, gender, disability or other determining characteristic.

The APA ethical guidelines consist of informed consent, deception, debriefing, withdrawal, confidentiality, and protection from harm. Informed consent means, to inform the subjects of the purpose of the study in advance in order for the subject to be able to give their consent with knowledge of what they are consenting to. This reduces the potential of stress or any damages. However, there are cases where the experimenter does not reveal the entirety of the experiment nor the aim. For example, in Milgram’s study on obedience, the participants were informed that th...

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...asic of the ethic, in which the guidelines demand that no participant can be harmed in any way as result of or during an experiment or study of any kind. This guideline, when manipulated, causes a huge controversial uproar. For example in Milgram’s obedience experiment when the participants were asked to give electric shocks to the helpless victims they suffered from loss of self-esteem.

Conclusively the APA ethical guidelines may, at times be exhorted to comply with benefiting human kind or scientific advancement; however they should never be manipulated lightly, the APA Ethical guidelines are in place for a very specific and concise reason: in order to maintain the moral integrity of psychological research as well as insure the rights and safety of all those who participate in the process of bringing more knowledge into the vast fields of psychological science.

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