Psychological Ethical Standards

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The British Psychological Society (BPS) in 1985 approved a secure set of guidelines in which the Ethics Committee acknowledged a need towards the importance and upkeep on the development of ethical decision making (British Psychological Society, 2009). The BPS aims to maintain the highest standards of professionalism; uphold ethical attitudes, behaviour, and judgements in order to keep the public protected. At the same time encouraging and developing standards of values and principles which will help advance the understanding in the psychological field (British Psychological Society, 2009). This essay will include why we need ethical standards and examples of psychological studies such as: Zimbardo’s (1971) Stanford Prison Experiment and The …show more content…

The BPS came up with a set of guidelines to be used when working with animals, the Guidelines for Psychologists working with Animals (2012). Before carrying out any psychological experiments psychologist must make sure that the participants are protected from any risks. Prior to any research, the researcher must be aware that cultural, ecological, societal background and gender distinctions may affect any investigation (British Psychological Society, 2014.)
These principles have changed a lot from many psychological experiments that now question ethics. An example can be recognised in the Stanford Prison Experiment by Phillip Zimbardo (1971). Zimbardo wanted to show the power of social situations on people’s behaviour. The study used 24 students who were recruited by volunteer samplings, in order to study the roles of individuals in a prison setting. Half of the participants were randomly given the social role of a prisoner whilst the other half were given the guard role (C. Haney, …show more content…

Participants were not informed about the arrest which was carried out and were not given full facts about the experiment. The prisoners were lied to and their consent form was broken, this goes against the BPS code of human research ethics that participants should give informed consent before any experiment. Another unethical issue about the experiment is that participants were psychologically traumatised and were physically beaten. They started to experience mile emotional disturbance and rage (Brady & Logsdon,

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