Deception in psychological research: Elms versus Baumrind

¶ … ethics has developed according to which human participants are to be included in research studies. Two basic viewpoints on the matter is that human participants can be deceived under a set of strict guidelines, on the one hand, but on the other that any and all deception is ethically deplorable and should not be allowed under any circumstances. Two authors who have held these viewpoints include Alan C. Elms and Diana Baumrind, with Elms believing that deception should be allowed under certain conditions, while Baumrind holds the opposite view.

According to Elms, deception in social psychology research is not only necessary, but also ethical. He does acknowledge, however, that this is only the case under five major conditions.

The first of these is that deception can take place when there is no other feasible way to obtain the information that is desired. This denotes necessity, since the lack of any other method of obtaining information necessitates deception of participants.

The second condition is that the benefits that are likely to derive from the research should substantially outweigh likely harms that are to derive from the deception involved. This appears to include both necessity and ethics, since benefits within research results are necessarily desirable above any type of harm, whether to research participants or any other element in the research.

The third condition is that participants should be given the option to withdraw from participating in the study without any penalties. This is an ethical condition, since it focuses solely on the well-being of participants, while the research might suffer as a result.

The fourth condition is that any type of harm to subjects, whether physical or psychological, should be temporary. This is also a mixture between ethics and necessity, since no ethical researcher can justify any kind of permanent harm to human participants. This would be to the detriment of research results and create a negative connotation to the research and all involved in it.

Finally, the fifth condition is that research participants should be debriefed regarding all significant deceptions and that all research procedures should be made available for public review. This is mainly an ethics requirement, since the deception would then also be temporary and its necessity would be revealed to the public and to participants.

Diana Baumrind, on the other hand, completely disagrees that any type of deception is acceptable. She provides three categories of harm that could result from deceiving participants in research.

The first category is ethics. According to commonly accepted research ethics today, research participants need to give their informed consent before participating in any type of research. Hence, any type of deception would be morally reprehensible. I agree with this assessment. I have never come upon a study that did not require informed consent from all participants.