Discuss ethical issues involving human participants in psychology

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Discuss ethical issues involving human participants in psychology

In most psychological experiments, human participants are used and sometimes this is unethical. This can range from not being allowed basic human rights (e.g. Zimbardo's experiment) to being told they are going to die e.g. an experiment in the 1960s which told people on a plane that the engine was about to fail.

Milgram's experiment on obedience attracted a lot of criticism due to his treatment of the participants. It psychologically harmed many participants and this was evident from their reactions during and after the experiment, with many participants crying and harming themselves e.g. my digging their nails into their hands. Milgram claimed that this was justified because he did a follow up a year later to check that the participants were okay. However, this could be criticised because those participants who were still suffering probably wouldn't want to be associated with Milgram or the experiment anymore and so wouldn't have taken part in the follow up, thus missing their results out. 84% of participants were glad they took part in the experiment, however we are unsure whether this was out of all the participants, or just the ones he