Psychological research involving human subjects must take into account many ethical considerations. Ethical guidelines that govern the use of human subjects in research are a fairly new but important construct; these ethical policies serve to minimize harm to human participant's mental and physical well being during experimental research.

The Nuremberg Code

An early example of the discussion about ethics in research was the Nuremburg Code. The Nuremberg Trials were a series of 12 trials of men accused of committing war crimes and atrocities during World War II; among those on trial were doctors who had committed crimes against humanity such as involuntary human experimentation, involuntary sterilizations, and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia. One outcome of these trials was the Nuremberg Code, a list of principles for ethical experimentation that included informed consent, absence of coercion, and properly formulated scientific experimentation.

Controversial Experiments

Throughout the 20th century, there were medical and psychological experiments carried out in the U.S. that generated controversy, then outrage, once they were revealed to the general public (often many years after their conclusion).

Tuskegee Experiment

One of the most infamous instances of unethically-performed experiments was the Tuskegee experiment. From 1932 to 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service sought to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in poor, rural black men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government. Out of the 600 men involved in the experiment, 399 had previously contracted syphilis before the study; they were never told they had syphilis, however, and were led to believe they were receiving free general medical care. One of the most unethical aspects of the experiment was that by 1947, penicillin was widely recognized as the standard treatment for syphilis. But the African American men involved in the experiment were not given the treatment that could cure them, and continued to be studied for 25 years after a cure had been found. By the end of the study in 1972, only 74 of the test subjects were still alive.

Milgram's Obedience Experiments

The 1961 Milgram experiments examining obedience to authority figures was a notable series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. The experiments measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Participants were asked by the "authority figure" to act as "teachers" and teach "learners" a particular sequence. The authority figure and learner were both in on the experiment, in which the teacher (the experiment subject) was told that the first time the learner made a mistake in the sequence, the teacher had to administer an electric shock to the learner. The teacher was told to increase the shock for each subsequent mistake the learner made, no matter how much the learner suffered. While the learner never actually received an electrical shock, and faked being in pain, the teacher believed that he or she was actually shocking the learner. The goal of the study was to see how far people would go, how high a shock they would deliver, if encouraged by the authority figure to do so. The experiments were controversial and considered by many to be abusive.

Zimbardo's Prison Experiment

The 1971 Stanford prison experiment was a study regarding the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures, and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected the head researcher himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue until the experiment ended after only six days. Both guards and prisoners stepped beyond the boundaries of predicted behavior, leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations.

Ethics Organizations

As a result of these and other unethical research studies, many organizations have been put in place to help monitor clinical research involving humans. Such organizations include the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, and the Office for Human Research Protections. At most colleges and universities, ethics committees called institutional review boards (IRBs) are formally chosen to approve, review, and monitor bio-medical and behavioral research involving humans. IRBs often conduct some form of risk-benefit analysis in an attempt to determine whether or not research should be done, and must approve any experiments done within the organizations they represent.

Ethical Guidelines

To protect the rights and well-being of research participants, and at the same time discover meaningful results and insights into human behavior, virtually all psychological research must pass an ethical review process. At most colleges and universities, this is conducted by the IRB. This group examines the proposed research to make sure that no harm is done to the participants, and that the benefits of the study outweigh any possible risks or discomforts to people taking part in the study. Minors are more protected than adults in ethical guidelines, because a minor is not considered to be able to give fully informed consent.

Right or wrong decision

Ethical guidelines help researchers make the right decisions, such as getting informed consent from human subjects.

There is a duty to protect the rights of people in the study as well as their privacy and sensitivity. The confidentiality of those involved in the study must be maintained, keeping their anonymity and privacy secure. A process of informed consent is used to make sure that volunteers know what will happen in the experiment and understand that they are allowed to quit the experiment at any time. Also, a debriefing is typically done at the conclusion of the experiment in order to reveal any deceptions used and generally make sure that the participants are unharmed by the procedures. Today, most research in social psychology involves no more risk of harm than can be expected as by routine psychological testing or normal daily activities.