Psychology 201, spring 2006
Dr. Thomas Pierce
Lab assignment, 1/26/06 Ethics
Each group of students will constitute an Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human
Subjects. You should review each of the following studies in terms of each of the situations listed
below:
A) Describe all ethical issues the committee should consider in determining if the study should
be approved.
B) Note that there may be information you need that is not provided in the brief descriptions
Provided. List any questions you would like to ask the investigators.
C) Decide as a committee if you would approve the study as described.
D) If your committee decides the study cannot be conducted in its present form, describe
the changes that should be made.
Questions
1) A psychiatrist wants to test a new drug to treat depression. She assigns 20 clinically
depressed people to a group that receives the new drug for ten weeks. She assigns 20
clinically depressed people to a group that gets a placebo. She plans to administer the Beck
Depression inventory before the treatment, after four weeks of treatment, and after eight
weeks of treatment.
After four weeks of treatment the investigator notices a dramatic improvement in the group
getting the new drug, but no change in the group getting the placebo. Does this place the
investigator in an ethical dilemma?
2) The correct identification of criminal offenders by an eyewitness is considered to be an
important social issue as well as an important psychological issue. After reviewing several
alternative procedures, a researcher decides that the best procedure is to stage a crime in the
presence of eyewitnesses and then ask them for a description of the perpetrator. The
experiment is conducted in “the field” and the setting is a fast food restaurant. All employees
are carefully rehearsed regarding the staged crime. The “crime” is committed by an actor
who enters the store displaying an unloaded handgun and demands all the money from the
cash registers. He tells the employees not to call the police, and, in making his getaway,
shouts to the customers that the “first one out the door is going to get blown away.”
Immediately after the “thief” leaves, the researcher and his associates enter the store with a
questionnaire which is distributed to the patrons. The questions deal with the physical
appearance of the thief, whether or not he had a weapon, what he said, and a series of
photographs in which identification was sought. Each patron was thoroughly debriefed after
the questionnaire was completed, and the important social and psychological issues were
discussed. An opportunity was provided for further debriefing and counseling.
3) “The proposed research seeks to determine the conditions which lead to unethical and illegal
behavior in businesses and in society. Specifically, this study examines cheating behavior in
a natural setting. Previous research has shown that cheating often is affected by situational
variables such as the absence of witnesses and the ease with which the cheating can be
accomplished. The present research seeks to investigate cheating behavior as a function of
the gender of the cheater and the degree of opportunity to cheat. The situations chosen to
investigate this behavior are those in which an automobile driver is asked to put money in a
machine to gain access to a parking facility or to a highway. Two common situations of this
type are unattended automated parking lots and tollways. The goal of the research is to shed
light on the social conditions leading to unethical and illegal behavior.
The research will be conducted with the cooperation of several parking-lot owners and with
tollway authorities in the community. An opportunity to cheat will be manipulated by
placing a sign next to a barrier (either to a tollway or a parking facility) which declares that
the machine will take money but that the barrier (which is in the open position) is temporarily
inoperable. In addition, in one condition the signs will further state that entering without
paying the appropriate toll is punishable by a fine. No such warning will be present on the
signs in the other condition. Observers will be positioned so that they can identify the gender
of the driver and see whether the driver puts money in the machine. Of interest is whether the
rate of cheating differs between males and females; whether the warning about legal penalties
affects this behavior; and if the warning does have an effect, whether it influences one gender
more than another.” (John J. Shaughnessy and Eugene B. Zechmeister, 1994, Research
Methods in Psychology, p.68.)
4) Psychological conformity occurs when people accept the opinions or judgments of others
in the absence of significant reasons to do so or in the face of evidence to the contrary.
Previous research has investigated the conditions under which conformity is likely to occur
and has shown, for example, that conformity increases when people anticipate unpleasant
events (e.g., shock) and when the pressure to conform comes from individuals with whom the
individuals identify. The proposed research examines psychological conformity in the
context of discussions about alcohol consumption among teenage students. The goal of the
research is to identify factors that contribute to students’ willingness to attend social events
where alcohol is served to minors and to allow obviously intoxicated persons to drive an
automobile. This research seeks to investigate conformity in a natural setting and in
circumstances where unpleasant events (e.g., legal penalties, school suspension, injury, or
even death) can be avoided by not conforming to peer pressure.
The research will involve 36 high school students between the ages of 16 and 18 who have
volunteered to participate in a research project investigating “beliefs and attitudes of today’s
high school students.” Participants will be assigned to four-person discussion groups. Each
person in the group will be given the same 20 questions to answer; however, they will be
asked to discuss each question with members of the group before writing down their answers.
Four of the 20 questions deal with alcohol consumption by teenagers and with possible
actions that might be taken to reduce teenage drinking and driving. One member of the group
will be appointed discussion leader by the principal investigator. Unknown to the
participants, they will be assigned randomly to three different groups. In each group, there
will be either 0, 1, or 2 students who are actually working for the principal investigator. Each
of these “confederates” has received prior instructions from the investigator regarding what to
say during the group discussion of the critical questions about teenage drinking. Specifically,
confederates have been asked to follow a script which presents the argument that the majority
of people who reach the legal driving age (16), and all individuals who are old enough (18) to
vote in national elections and serve in the armed forces, are old enough to make their own
decisions about drinking alcohol; moreover, because it is up to each individual to make this
decision, other individuals do not have the right to intervene if someone under the legal age
chooses to drink alcohol. Each of the confederates “admits” to drinking alcohol on at least
two previous occasions. Thus, the experimental manipulation involves either 0, 1, or 2
persons in the four-person groups suggesting that they do not believe students have a
responsibility to avoid situations where alcohol is served to minors or to intervene when
someone chooses to drink and drive. The effect of this argument on the written answers
given by the actual subjects in this experiment will be evaluated. Moreover, audiotapes of the
sessions will be made without participant’s knowledge, and the contents of these audiotapes
will be analyzed. Following the experiment, the nature of the deception and the reasons for
making audiotapes of the discussions will be explained to the subjects.” (John J. Shaughnessy
and Eugene b. Zechmeister, 1994, Research Methods in Psychology, pp. 67-68)
5) In 1900, the prevalence of yellow fever reached epidemic proportions among US army troops
stationed in Cuba after the Spanish-American war. A commission appointed to study the
disease focused on the likelihood that mosquitoes were passing a microscopic bacterium to
their victims.
Members of the commission volunteered to expose themselves to mosquitoes. Some of these
experiments were carried out in secret because exposures of exactly this kind had been
condemned elsewhere in the world. In fact, some of the scientists died after being bitten by
infected mosquitoes.
Before recruiting more subjects, one of the scientists drew up a form that told participants
what the study was and why it was being conducted. The document mentioned that
volunteers faced the risk of death, although they might die as the result of other risks as well.
It is not known whether the form was required by the military or was initiated by the scientist
himself. It appears that all subjects read and understood this document. Military troops were
not paid for their participation, but nonmilitary volunteers were. The exact amount is
uncertain, but it appears to have been several hundred dollars, perhaps more if subjects
became infected.
The results of this study, confirming the role of the mosquito as an animal host of the
microbe, were of enormous practical benefit. As a result, a large number of mosquitoextermination programs vastly reduced the occurrence of yellow fever.
Pretend that you are reviewing this study before it took place.
6) Dr. Jack Kevorkian has campaigned relentlessly in favor of physician-assisted suicide. He
also advocates a number of views related to research on the dying. He says the law should
permit people about to die the right to donate themselves to medical research as living
subjects for research on their bodies just before their death. He believes this would generate
important research that could not be carried out any other way.
He offers guidelines on how this should be done. Researchers should not be involved in
identifying and soliciting people to enter such studies. Rather, administrative officials in the
presence of a member of both legal and clerical professions should obtain consent. The
request should show no evidence of coercion and should be unwavering, A legal surrogate
decision maker should be able to give consent for incompetent subjects. A firm negative
response should exclude the subject from any further involvement in medical
experimentation. A firm positive response may be reversed at any point up to one week
before the scheduled experiment date. Agreement to participate should entitle the subject to
counseling from physicians, lawyers, clerics, psychologists, sociologists, and penologists.
To the extent required, anesthesia should be used to protect the subject from pain. If the
subject is in distress, anesthesia must be provided immediately, and experimentation may
continue if the subject reaches stage III anesthesia. The experiment should then continue
until it is completed or the subject dies. Stage III general anesthesia should be achieved
before experimentation on all brain-dead, comatose, and mentally incompetent persons as
well as on newborns, infants, children, and fetuses. This applies to individuals condemned to
death by the state, and those who face imminent death by disease or their own choice of
suicide because of disease or disorder. Experiments may be of any kind or complexity.
Results of such studies should be published only in special journals dedicate to this type of
research. If the subject is a prisoner sentenced to death by the state, and publication of the
results must carry a dedication either at the beginning or end of the report citing the full
name(s) of the victim(s) of the capital crime for which the prisoner was put to death.
Instead of answering A – D, answer these questions instead:
Even with all of these guidelines, do things in this description still seem unethical? List some
of the things in the description that stand out.
Can you think of any guidelines that might help this case to someday be acceptable to a
review board?