Deception in Psychological Research
Psychologists Blass (2009), Milgram (1964), Zimbardo (1998), Elms (1982), Wren (1999), Forward, Canter and Kirsh (1976) yield acceptance, credibility and functionality of deception within psychological research. Baumrind (1964), Miller (1972), Greenberg (1967) and Kelman (1967, 1972) on the other hand hold contrasting views. Deception when duplicating life like scenarios removed from artificial representation, harmfulness, risk taking in order to investigate behavior for the betterment of our fellowman far outweigh dispute; therefore, deception as such is an acceptable research method.
Milgram (1963) proved deception to be necessary to gauge responses when he conducted a behavioral study on obedience. He selected 40 males from a newspaper advertisement ranging in skill level, between 20 to 50 years of age. The participants were informed that they were partaking in a study of memory and learning at Yale University however the true nature of the study was to see how far the test subjects would go when obeying instruction that harmed another person. Participants were grouped together in twos to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher’. …show more content…
Reference was also made to deception being required to keep the experiment legitimate by placing the test subjects in the situation rather than simply asking them to hypothesize. Further to this, Forward, Canter and Kirsh (1976) state that deception is an appropriate control for cognitive activities when studying ‘real’ behavior. As sited in Elms (1982), Murray states that the primary justification for deception is that the experimental session should be as life like as possible and that deception is indeed required to ensure laboratory situations are not going to be perceived as
Psychologists Blass (2009), Milgram (1964), Zimbardo (1998), Elms (1982), Wren (1999), Forward, Canter and Kirsh (1976) yield acceptance, credibility and functionality of deception within psychological research. Baumrind (1964), Miller (1972), Greenberg (1967) and Kelman (1967, 1972) on the other hand hold contrasting views. Deception when duplicating life like scenarios removed from artificial representation, harmfulness, risk taking in order to investigate behavior for the betterment of our fellowman far outweigh dispute; therefore, deception as such is an acceptable research method.
Milgram (1963) proved deception to be necessary to gauge responses when he conducted a behavioral study on obedience. He selected 40 males from a newspaper advertisement ranging in skill level, between 20 to 50 years of age. The participants were informed that they were partaking in a study of memory and learning at Yale University however the true nature of the study was to see how far the test subjects would go when obeying instruction that harmed another person. Participants were grouped together in twos to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher’. …show more content…
Reference was also made to deception being required to keep the experiment legitimate by placing the test subjects in the situation rather than simply asking them to hypothesize. Further to this, Forward, Canter and Kirsh (1976) state that deception is an appropriate control for cognitive activities when studying ‘real’ behavior. As sited in Elms (1982), Murray states that the primary justification for deception is that the experimental session should be as life like as possible and that deception is indeed required to ensure laboratory situations are not going to be perceived as