Ethics In Research

Research is the basis for all psychological studies. Without research, all theories  would stand as wild guesses as to what is really happening within the minds of the population with no evidence or investigation to back the ideas up. Psychology would have no weight as a subject without research, making research a vital area within the subject of psychology. However, research can often make giant leaps into difficult areas such as the well-being of participants both in and around the studies. For example, Zimbardo's prison experiment placed participants within a contrived prison environment. Some were assigned as guards and some as prisoners, and the actions of the guards placed the prisoners under extreme amounts of stress and anxiety. This may have caused them long-term psychological damage. Whilst the study is considered a classic, shaping how psychologists understand group aggression and behaviours, questions should be raised over how the research could have affected the participants. Was it ethical to place the participants under this amount of extreme stress and pressures? On the other hand, perhaps the deception and harm to participants could be justified due to the important, groundbreaking results shown by the research? For this reason, it is important that ethics are considered for each study undertaken by institutions and is why every institution has an ethics commitee to consider the effects on the participants versus the benefits the research would have. Without research there would be no developments within psychology, but care must be taken to ensure that harm is minimised and that research is practiced ethically.