In my point of view, ethics is one of the most important aspects of psychological studies. Not only does it protect participants from physical and psychological harm, but the ethical guidelines introduced in 1973 by APA also ensures that every study has the same guidelines before they even begin, so can be compared to one another effectively.
For me, the first study that pops into my head when I hear the word ‘ethics’ has got to be Milgram’s infamous electric shock obedience study. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, I’ll briefly explain…
Participants were sat down in a room with an apparent experimenter who was dressed in a lab coat standing next to them. This person was in fact a confederate who was in on the whole study. Participants saw another ‘participant’ in the room nextdoor who was hooked up to a machine which they were told gave out electric shocks at different levels of strength. This again was actually a confederate, and the machine didn’t actually give out any shocks at all. When the confederate who was hooked up to the machine was asked a question and answered incorrectly, the participant was told by the confederate in the lab coat to press a button that would give the electric shock which gradually increased in voltage the more questions they got wrong. Despite hearing screams and begs to stop from the person being ‘shocked’ (they remained unseen for the rest of the experiment), it was found that the majority of participants went up to the highest shock possible which was of a clearly fatal amount, simply because they were told to.
The ethics of this study have always been highly debated, as many of the participants became visibly highly distressed during the study. However, it must be considered in context. At the time, Milgram broke no ethical guidelines or bended any laws, as the guidelines which we use today were introduced 10 years later. Milgram was in actual fact given an award for Advancement in Science 2 years after this study, so why would he have recieved this if his study was apparently so unethical?
Another aspect of ethics is that of animal experimentation. The animals act which came into being in 1986 says that animal experimentation is only acceptable if the potential results could be important enough to justify the experimentation on animals. For example, using animals in experiments to possibly find a cure for cancer. It must be considered, however, that animals cannot give consent, which is a big part of ethics. Some humans who are unable to give consent do not take part in studies, so many argue the case of ‘why should animals be any different?’ It’s a much debated topic, which I haven’t got time to go into in one little blog, so this is where I’ll stop!
Ethics is an incredibly important aspect of research. Just think where we would be without it….
suuzblog 
Dec 09, 2011 @ 19:54:46
Personally, i believe the outcome of the research is the most important thing. Of course it is good to keep participants out of harms way, however, if the researcher is too focused on the participants, then they may lose attention from other key areas, like the standardisation. Ethics are fairly important as they do protect people but in recent years there is a school of thought suggesting that it has got too controlling and thus is effecting the advancement of knowledge,
Dec 09, 2011 @ 20:19:05
Carrying on from Mikes comment sorry haha, i agree that the justification of breaking ethics is found in the results.
Milgrams study was conducted after world war 2, the world was very confused why so many people followed instructions to help kill millions of jews. He looked into what variables cause someone to obey such terrible instructions.
http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm
So Milgram may have breached some ethics and they could have serious after effects, but it contributed to our knowledge of obedience and helped explain a massive war that affected everything and everyone.
He found that authority figures increased compliance, the influence of prestigious locations (the study was sponsered by Yale), trust in “experts”. The knowledge of now being able to know what can influence obedience can be applied everywhere, even in advertising. (People are more encouraged to buy a product if experts apparently reccomend it).
But a lot of studies have breached ethics and their results havent really justified it,
Feb 08, 2012 @ 20:42:32
Whenever I try and decide whether or not something is ethical, I first off think of cost/benefit analysis, does the outcome of the study outweigh the issues raised within the study, however, to me, the safety of participants massively outweighs any other concern when it comes to doing research.