APPLYING THE ETHICAL PRINCIPLES

NOTE: (1) Both IRBs and IACUCs require more information regarding the rationale, procedures, and safeguards to participants than can be given here. (2) As you are aware, ethical decision-making typically rests with a committee of individuals. We suggest, therefore, that you consider doing these exercises with a small group of your peers. Thus, the process will resemble more closely what actually occurs when members of an IRB or IACUC meet to evaluate a research proposal. What also should become apparent is that not everyone is going to view the situation in the same way. Issues may be raised that you had not considered or views may be expressed with which you do not necessarily agree. Such is the nature of ethical decision making.

An investigator wishes to explore variables affecting stress. He proposes to ask college students to participate in an anagram task involving competition for points. Anagrams are made by scrambling the letters of words; participants are shown the scrambled letters and the time to identify the word is measured. Participants will be recruited from the introductory psychology classes at the university and asked to participate in pairs. One member of each pair will be randomly designated to be in the experimental condition; the other participant will serve as a control. Before meeting each other, the experimental and control participants will be given different information about the anagram task. The experimental participant will be told that solving anagrams is an important measure of intelligence (IQ). The control participant is told that the anagram task has nothing to do with intelligence. Both students are told that they are in competition with each other for points and that their task is to solve the anagrams as fast as possible. Participants will perform the task in the same room, turning over a card containing the anagram at the signal of the experimenter. Unknown to the students, the version of the anagram given to the experimental participant will always be more difficult than that given to the control participant. This will ensure that the control participant will win most of the points. The experimenter will measure the blood pressure of both control and experimental participants immediately before and after the anagram competition.

1		What APA principles do you believe are most relevant to this proposal? Focus your review on the following major principles: risk, informed consent, deception, privacy, and the risk/benefit ratio. Make your decision based on the information provided; do not assume that procedures not described are part of the research design.