The general core principles of respect for persons, concern for welfare, and justice provide a useful starting point for thinking about the ethics of psychological research because essentially everyone agrees on them. As we have seen, however, even people who agree on these general principles can disagree about specific ethical issues that arise in the course of conducting research. This discrepancy is why there also exist more detailed and enforceable ethics codes that provide guidance on important issues that arise frequently. In this section, we begin with a brief historical overview of such ethics codes and then look closely at the one that is most relevant to psychological research in Canada—the Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS).

Historical Overview

One of the earliest ethics codes was the Nuremberg Code—a set of 10 principles written in 1947 in conjunction with the trials of Nazi physicians accused of shockingly cruel research on concentration camp prisoners during World War II. It provided a standard against which to compare the behaviour of the men on trial—many of whom were eventually convicted and either imprisoned or sentenced to death. The Nuremberg Code was particularly clear about the importance of carefully weighing risks against benefits and the need for informed consent. The Declaration of Helsinki is a similar ethics code that was created by the World Medical Council in 1964. Among the standards that it added to the Nuremberg Code was that research with human participants should be based on a written protocol—a detailed description of the research—that is reviewed by an independent committee. The Declaration of Helsinki has been revised several times, most recently in 2013.

In the United States, concerns about the Tuskegee study and others led to the publication in 1978 of a set of federal guidelines called the Belmont Report. The Belmont Report explicitly recognized the principle of seeking justice, including the importance of conducting research in a way that distributes risks and benefits fairly across different groups at the societal level. The Belmont Report was influential in the formation of national ethical guidelines for research in both the US and Canada.

In Canada, researchers and research institutions must follow the code of ethics formally laid out in the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans. The term “Tri-Council” is commonly used to collectively describe the three research granting agencies that are funded by the Canadian federal government: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The first edition of the Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS) was published in 1998, when it replaced all previous guidelines that had been developed by individual agencies and institutions. In 2010 a second edition (TCPS 2) was published that consolidated the core principles, clarified and updated the guidelines, updated terminology, and clarified the scope and responsibilities of institutional research ethics boards (REBs). The guidelines in the TCPS 2 are based on the three core principles already discussed: respect for persons, concern for welfare, and justice.

A detailed online tutorial of the specific guidelines contained within the TCPS 2 is available online.

Successful completion of the tutorial takes up to 3 hours and provides the user with a certificate that is now required by many universities and other research institutions before a research proposal will be evaluated by the institution’s research ethics board (REB) – a committee that is responsible for reviewing research protocols for potential ethical problems. An REB must consist of at least five people with varying backgrounds, including at least two members with expertise in relevant research disciplines, at least one member knowledgeable in ethics, and at least one community member who has no affiliation with the institution. The REB helps to make sure that the risks of the proposed research are minimized, the benefits outweigh the risks, the research is carried out in a fair manner, and the informed consent procedure is adequate.

The TCPS 2 includes provisions for two levels of research ethics review. Full REB review is the default requirement for research involving humans. However, for research in which “the probability and magnitude of possible harms implied by participation in the research is no greater than those encountered by participants in those aspects of their everyday life that relate to the research,” the REB may deem it to be a case of minimal risk research^[1]. In such cases (as is sometimes the case with surveys, questionnaire-based studies, and naturalistic observation studies), the REB may delegate the research ethics review to one or more members of the REB. A further exception is made in the case of student course-based research, in which case the REB may delegate the review to the relevant department or faculty.

Although researchers and research institutions in Canada formally follow the guidelines detailed within the TCPS 2, students of psychology should also be aware of the ethics code of the American Psychological Association (APA), which shares many principles and procedures with the TCPS 2.

The APA’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (also known as the APA Ethics Code) was first published in 1953 and has been revised several times since then, most recently in 2002. It includes about 150 specific ethical standards that psychologists and their students are expected to follow. Much of the APA Ethics Code concerns the clinical practice of psychology—advertising one’s services, setting and collecting fees, having personal relationships with clients, and so on. For our purposes, the most relevant part is Standard 8: Research and Publication. The APA also oversees research on nonhuman animal participants, but the TCPS 2 does not. In Canada, research on animals is overseen by the Canadian Council on Animal Care. We should consider some of the most important aspects that are common to both TCPS 2 and the APA—informed consent, deception, debriefing, and scholarly integrity—in more detail.

Informed Consent

Informed consent means obtaining and documenting people’s agreement to participate in a study, having informed them of everything that might reasonably be expected to affect their decision. Properly informing participants includes details of the procedure, the risks and benefits of the research, the fact that they have the right to decline to participate or to withdraw from the study, the consequences of doing so, and any legal limits to confidentiality. For example, some places require researchers who learn of child abuse or other crimes to report this information to authorities.

Although the process of obtaining informed consent often involves having participants read and sign a consent form, it is important to understand that this written agreement is not all it is. Although having participants read and sign a consent form might be enough when they are competent adults with the necessary ability and motivation, many participants do not actually read consent forms or read them but do not understand them. For example, participants often mistake consent forms for legal documents and mistakenly believe that by signing them they give up their right to sue the researcher (Mann, 1994)^[2]. Even with competent adults, therefore, it is good practice to tell participants about the risks and benefits, demonstrate the procedure, ask them if they have questions, and remind them of their right to withdraw at any time—in addition to having them read and sign a consent form.

Note also that there are situations in which informed consent is not necessary. These include situations in which the research is not expected to cause any harm and the procedure is straightforward or the study is conducted in the context of people’s ordinary activities. For example, if you wanted to sit outside a public building and observe whether people hold the door open for people behind them, you would not need to obtain their informed consent. Similarly, if a professor wanted to compare two legitimate teaching methods across two sections of her research methods course, she would not need to obtain informed consent from her students unless she planned to publish the results in a scientific journal about learning.

Deception

Deception of participants in psychological research can take a variety of forms: misinforming participants about the purpose of a study, using confederates, using phony equipment like Milgram’s shock generator, and presenting participants with false feedback about their performance (e.g., telling them they did poorly on a test when they actually did well). Deception also includes not informing participants of the full design or true purpose of the research even if they are not actively misinformed (Sieber, Iannuzzo, & Rodriguez, 1995)^[3]. For example, a study on incidental learning—learning without conscious effort—might involve having participants read through a list of words in preparation for a “memory test” later. Although participants are likely to assume that the memory test will require them to recall the words, it might instead require them to recall the contents of the room or the appearance of the research assistant.

Some researchers have argued that deception of research participants is rarely if ever ethically justified. Among their arguments are that it prevents participants from giving truly informed consent, fails to respect their dignity as human beings, has the potential to upset them, makes them distrustful and therefore less honest in their responding, and damages the reputation of researchers in the field (Baumrind, 1985)^[4].

Note, however, that the TCPS 2 and the APA Ethics Code takes a more moderate approach—allowing deception when the benefits of the study outweigh the risks, participants cannot reasonably be expected to be harmed, the research question cannot be answered without the use of deception, and participants are informed about the deception as soon as possible. This approach acknowledges that not all forms of deception are equally bad. Compare, for example, Milgram’s study in which he deceived his participants in several significant ways that resulted in their experiencing severe psychological stress with an incidental learning study in which a “memory test” turns out to be slightly different from what participants were expecting. It also acknowledges that some scientifically and socially important research questions can be difficult or impossible to answer without deceiving participants. Knowing that a study concerns the extent to which they obey authority, act aggressively toward a peer, or help a stranger is likely to change the way people behave so that the results no longer generalize to the real world.

Debriefing

Debriefing is the process of informing research participants as soon as possible of the purpose of the study, revealing any deception, and correcting any other misconceptions they might have as a result of participating. Debriefing also involves minimizing harm that might have occurred. For example, an experiment on the effects of being in a sad mood on memory might involve inducing a sad mood in participants by having them think sad thoughts, watch a sad video, or listen to sad music. Debriefing would be the time to return participants’ moods to normal by having them think happy thoughts, watch a happy video, or listen to happy music.

Scholarly Integrity

Scholarly integrity includes the obvious points that researchers must not fabricate data or plagiarize. Plagiarism means using others’ words or ideas without proper acknowledgment. Proper acknowledgment generally means indicating direct quotations with quotation marks and providing a citation to the source of any quotation or idea used.

The remaining standards make some less obvious but equally important points. Researchers should not publish the same data a second time as though it were new, they should share their data with other researchers, and as peer reviewers they should keep the unpublished research they review confidential. Note that the authors’ names on published research—and the order in which those names appear—should reflect the importance of each person’s contribution to the research. It would be unethical, for example, to include as an author someone who had made only minor contributions to the research (e.g., analyzing some of the data) or for a faculty member to make himself or herself the first author on research that was largely conducted by a student.