Ethics in Psychological Research

Ethics in Psychological Research

This paper will analyze deception in research as a classical issue in ethics and psychological research. Furthermore it will provide a definition and explanation of what ethics is. Also, it will discuss the concepts of risks and benefits ratio. Moreover this paper will describe the issue of using deception when conducting a research. Finally, this paper will provide an evaluation for the impact it has on psychological research to be deceptive when conducting a research.

Ethics

Ethics is also referred to as "Moral Philosophy" which is a subdivision of philosophy which includes systematizing, recommending, and defending notions of wrong and right behaviors. There are four major areas when studying ethics, applied ethics which deals with how people can reach moral outcomes in certain situation. Descriptive ethics, which is also known called "comparative ethics" which is the study of what people belief about morality. Normative ethics, which has to do with how people go about deciding when to act in a moral way. The last area is Meta-ethics, deals with the theoretical significance of moral proposals and how the real values could be determined (Fritz, 2011).

There is a tendency in people to equate ethics with the way they feel. But this is not accurate because being ethical is not about people following their feelings. An individual who follows their feelings could recoil from when doing the right thing (Fritz, 2011). Actually, people's feelings usually diverge from what is ethical. It is also important for people not to identify religion with ethics, even though most religions advocate high standards of ethics. Nonetheless if ethics was narrowed merely in a religious way, consequently ethical aspects could be for spiritual individuals. Nonetheless ethics is applicable to those people who are religious as well as to those people who are not religious (Fritz, 2011).

There is also a distinction between being ethical and being a law abiding citizen. The law usually integrates standards that are considered ethical to which the majority of the citizens contribute. Last, doing what things because it is accepted by society is not necessarily being ethical. In any society, the majority of peoples are accepting of certain standards that are, actually, ethical. But there are certain standards of behavior in any society that could be different from what is considered as ethic(Fritz, 2011). Society in general could convert to corrupt in terms of ethics.

In determining what is ethical one must first understand that ethics refers to well-founded values of what is wrong and right which suggests what people should, typically in terms of specific virtues, fairness, and benefit to society, obligations or rights (Fritz, 2011). Ethics, for example, mentions the standards which enforce the rational responsibilities to abstain from fraud, slander, assault, murder, stealing and rape. Ethical standards likewise embrace those that instruct qualities of loyalty, compassion, and honesty. And, ethical standards consist of values that deal with rights, for example human rights privacy, rights of being free from injuries, as well as the right to life. These values are acceptable values of morals since they are reinforced by constant and created on the right reasons (Fritz, 2011).

Second, ethics denotes the development and study of a person's ethical standards. As mentioned above, social norms, laws, and feelings, can stray from what is considered ethical. Therefore, it is crucial to continually study a person's values in order to make sure that they are rational and well-founded. Ethics also signifies the constant effort to study people's moralistic believes as well as their moral behaviors, and trying to make sure