Sunday, September 16, 2012

the importance of ethic in psychology research

        

           The ethical potential issues is not been taking serious until relatively recent time psychology research did not have ethical and many studies were conducted that had significant problem in past 100 years. After that, there are  different organizations that prevent such unethical   problem happen, such as British psychology council and American psychology association .




there are many unethical experiments  happened in past 100 years and here is 2 examples,

Landi's Facial experiment

        


         In 1924, Carney Landis designed an experiment to study weather emotions evoke universal facial expression facial, for example if people shows a specific expressions used by all to convey shock or disgust?
this intention seems like a normal question,however, Land's methods of testing were extremely abnormal. 


research methodology

   In the research methodology, there are 3 main types of experiments, which are laboratory, field, and natural ( Quasi).
  1.      Laboratory is the most common type experiment in psychology. Laboratory is a test that is in a under controlled condition so it can ensure the validity of the study. The participants need to sign the consents before they start doing the experiment.As the most common using method, it has some great strength.The 2 major strengths in lboratory are that it is usually the have the highest levels of reliablity due to the method, and it allows valid cause- effect conclusion in terms of the variables measured because of the certainty gained by control over extraneous variable. it however,has some limitation as well. Due to the artificiality, the experiment is not in a real life environment, which can cause distress to participants, which can narrow down the range of behaviors the participants give. it is also difficult to avoid the demand characteristics, which people can figure out what is the experiment is about, and give the answer the research wants instead of speak out the truth. the other concerns are base on the unrepresentative sampling, that might not apply to the whole society, and the ethical consideration.

        2. A field experiment is an experiment that is conducted in a more realistic situation. In field experiments the participants are not usually aware that they are participating in an experiment.
Field experiments are usually high validity in environment and may avoid the demand characteristics as the participants are unaware of the experiment. In field experiment, however, shows a difficulty to control confounding variable, and they takes time consuming and hard to conduct. In field experiments, the participants are not usually informed to a consent and it brings trouble on debriefing participant .

        3. A Quasi experiment is where the independent variable is occur by the researcher but happens naturally. Unlike the true experiment participants are through random assignment, the quasi experiment the researcher take the pre-existing conditions like ages, sex. The strength of quasi experiments is that participants are often unaware the participating.
        Due to its ethical and practical experiment, Quasi experiments are very common in psychology.