This essay will be looking at whether participants “should ever be deceived concerning the true nature of a psychological experiment in which they are taking part?” The essay will be exploring the effects of deception as well as the measures of advantages and disadvantages that it may implicate. Deception is ‘known to be an action of deliberately deceiving someone’ according to dictionary definitions. Throughout psychological experiments some psychologists have used deception within their studies as they considered it “necessary” in order to come out with their findings. The types of deception that have been known to be used by psychologists are: deception by commission whereby participants are misled deliberately and deception by omission where certain aspects of the study are withheld to participants (Kemmelmeier, Davis, & Follett, 2003).
Deception is highly highlighted in the Milgram study; a study done in the 1960’s that observed obedience. Milgram’s study (Herrera, 2001) was based on a teacher (participants) and learner role in order to test memory. Participants were asked to apply a shock and increase shock voltage to a maximum of 450 volts each time the learner got a question wrong. Although the shocks were not real, the learners made them look convincing. The use of deception on the teachers was used to an advantage in order to see whether …show more content…
Within this experiment deception was more approvable as it didn’t necessarily harm anyone and there was a necessity in the deception used to view publics’ attitudes on helping strangers. This resulted to showing majority of the public being seen as helpful without being told or influenced to do so (Shuttleworth, M. (2015)
Deception is highly highlighted in the Milgram study; a study done in the 1960’s that observed obedience. Milgram’s study (Herrera, 2001) was based on a teacher (participants) and learner role in order to test memory. Participants were asked to apply a shock and increase shock voltage to a maximum of 450 volts each time the learner got a question wrong. Although the shocks were not real, the learners made them look convincing. The use of deception on the teachers was used to an advantage in order to see whether …show more content…
Within this experiment deception was more approvable as it didn’t necessarily harm anyone and there was a necessity in the deception used to view publics’ attitudes on helping strangers. This resulted to showing majority of the public being seen as helpful without being told or influenced to do so (Shuttleworth, M. (2015)