PY4 - Psychology: Controversies, Topics and Applications
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ethical costs of conducting research in psychology
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WJEC
Psychology
PY4 - Psychology: Controversies, Topics and Applications
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Q. “Psychologists are aware of the ethical costs of conducting research, so they use risk management
techniques to reduce these costs.” Using your knowledge of psychology, discuss issues of ethical cost
in psychology, including a discussion of risk management techniques. [25]
Ethical costs arise when the interest of researcher conflicts with the right of participants (Ps). To
lower ethical costs, psychologist in the UK adhere to the guidelines set out by the British
Psychological Society (BPS) – Code of Ethics and Conduct to act accordingly. Ethical costs are assessed
by the ethics committees, and only published when certain risk techniques are in place to minimise
ethical cost to participants. As a result, psychologists utilise risk management techniques, such as
role play or video stimulation to minimise risk of harm to participants taking part in their research.
To commence, there are several ethical costs that poses to individual participants in psychology
research. One example of an ethically costly research is Watson and Raynor’s (1920) research on
Little Albert. Watson and Raynor attempted fear conditioning Little Albert by using joint stimulation
of loud noise (made by hitting steel bar with a hammer) paired with a white rat to create a fear
response. Watson and Raynor were aware of the right of confidentiality, thus they used the
pseudonym to protect the identity of Little Albert. This prevents potential issue of Little Albert’s real
identity disclosed, affecting his school life or potential career progression. However, the location of
study was revealed, and Little Albert’s mother was said to be a wet nurse in John Hopkins Hospital.
Hence, risk management techniques can only reduce these ethical costs but not completely
eliminate them. Little Albert was recorded to ‘break into a crying fit’ and ‘startled violently’. More
risk of psychological harm is demonstrated when Raynor pulled Little Albert back when distress was
shown by Albert ‘leaning as far from the animal as possible’ and ‘burying his face in the mattress’.
Albert’s thumb was removed from his mouth which he sucked for comfort. This supports the
statement that Watson and Raynor were “aware” that inducing phobia with unpleasant loud noise
would be a huge ethical cost to Little Albert. But they attempted to justify by claiming that Little
Albert was selected as he was described as ‘stolid’ and ‘unemotional’, believing that the fear
conditioning would do ‘relatively little harm’ to the baby. When distress became significant, Watson
and Raynor did ‘no further tests’ for a week to ‘not disturb the child too seriously’, in addition to
planning a counter conditioning for Little Albert at the end of research. However, serious distress
caused made Little Albert’s mother withdraw Albert from the research. This shows that although
Watson and Raynor were aware of the ethical costs and attempted to eliminate them, they did not
factor in that their P, Little Albert, might be withdrawn before that. Moreover, BPS guideline states
that P should return to the state they are before the study. This is not the case in Watson and
Raynor’s study. However, no code of conducts was broken as there were no ethical guidelines at the
time, so Little Albert is not protected by BPS guidelines. Despite the development of systematic
desensitisation due to this behaviourist study of conditioning, it is believed that Watson and Raynor
used its scientific gains to justify the ethical cost to Little Albert. Powell (2014) psychologists believe
to be Little Albert, has hydrocephalus, water in the brain. This could be the ultimate cause of Little
Albert’s early passing at the age of 6. Slater (2004) stated that ‘nothing can take away from how you
acted’. Whether Watson and Raynor truly understood the extent of harm they induced is
questionable, they planned to use electrocution as a form of counter conditioning Little Albert. This
is like aversion therapy used to treat homosexuals (illegal at the time), which would only cause more
physical harm to Albert. It can be argued that Watson and Raynor attempted to justify harm with
‘risk management techniques’, whereby the ‘ethical costs’ are not reduced. It is concluded that
Watson and Raynor is largely unaware of the huge ethical cost to their participant Little Albert.
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