Examples Of Ethical Violations In Psychology

A Research Experiment Done Wrong
A research psychologist who also teaches psychology courses at a large university conducts an experiment on his students which violates several ethical codes. The ethical codes violated deals with intuitional approval, competence, deception, informed consent, confidentially, and causing harm. The ways in which the professor went about conducting his experiment is questionable and requires some missing steps in order to make this experiment ethically correct. A researcher should not conduct an experiment excluding the ethical dilemmas which may come about to receive a favorable outcome. The study at hand will discuss a professor who conducted an experiment in this particular manner.
Normally, when research

According to codes 4.01/4.04/4.07 confidentiality, privacy and personal information pertaining to participants should be maintained and used for research purposes (American Psychological Association, 2002). There were incidents which took place contributing to the professor violation of the confidentiality codes. One incident was when the professor belittled Johnny about his grade and performance in the class. Another incident is telling students if he or she does not complete the test they will receive an F in the course. This is a violation of code 8.06 because the nature of the experiment was not clarified beforehand the professor waited until after the students begin rebelling to make a bargain for their grade. The students in the course are all familiar with one another in some way, so he or she is aware of whom the professor is referring to with the statement. Once the students rebelled to the experiment according to code 8.04 the professor should have offered an alternative assignment to prevent withdrawing (American Psychological Association, 2002). However, the professor failed to do so and violated the code previously mentioned. Overall, the professor violated several codes and should consider tips on how to fix