Psychology is the study of the human brain and its functions; it can be on a biological, social or cognitive level. With all subjects that are the study of organisms, there is a need for experimentation. The first gathering of psychologists to make ethical guidelines was in 1956 in the USA and only concerned experiments testing on humans, and this has evolved since.
One example of a study that has ethical issues that are questionable but has contributed to great progress in the field of psychology is the longitudinal study of Henri Molaison. He has received a bilateral temporal lobectomy to be able to cure uncontrollable seizures and was consented to this, which essentially means that an area of his brain which is the hippocampus was extracted. After the surgery, he has received retrograde amnesia, meaning he could not acquire remember semantic (general knowledge) nor episodic (memory for events), but his intelligence and procedural memories were maintained. This was able to discover that the medial temporal lobes are for the formation,organisation, consolidation of memory; meaning the conversion of short term to long term memory. The issues with the ethics is that even if HM was protected from harm, his identity was not kept anonymous. Since he was not able to remember everytime he had participated in a study, he was not in a fit state of mind to make decisions, and he also has donated his brain for science after his death in 2008. That being said, there was minimal damage done to him, the whole situation was not anticipated and this was able to make major breakthrough in the field of psychology.
This study is contrasted by the study conducted by Money in 1974, he believed that gender association is controlled merely by which sex organ an individual has. So with the birth of identical male twins, he took the opportunity to test so during their whole life, and give one of them a female genitalia as it was deformed. He received consent from the parents, but had deceived both teenagers during their entire life as they did not know they were being in a study. Once the twin that underwent the procedure went through puberty, the twin went through complete confusion as she was a girl but was going through male changes. Once both twins had found out it was a study as teenagers both had committed suicide. The researcher has not put the participant's well being into consideration and this has caused huge suffering to the ones being tested and their surroundings.
Measuring out the consequences and implications of both studies, it is safe to say that to be able to make a balance, one must look at the possible consequences of the study and the possible breakthrough and make sure that the casualties are little to none, and if they are of significance, with the variety of research methods being available today, I think they should be avoided at all cost. Surely it is difficult to establish balance but one with the danger is to place oneself above humans and forget ethics as the observation of humans may elevate one's stance, making them forget the humanity in themselves, which is also important to approve the ethics before the research being conducted by ethical boards.
Surely, the ways of knowing when it comes to ethics are not all applicable, or not all used to their full capability. When deciding whether a study is ethical or not, there is reason and sense perception that are involved in that decision making. But there is also a lot of emotion and intuition that play in as well as faith; religions or lack of have different stances of what is ethical and what isn't, and this isn't only in the field of psychology. All these factors make ethics different from culture to culture, as it is being taught differently as well as from individuals and how they perceive things around them.
One example of a study that has ethical issues that are questionable but has contributed to great progress in the field of psychology is the longitudinal study of Henri Molaison. He has received a bilateral temporal lobectomy to be able to cure uncontrollable seizures and was consented to this, which essentially means that an area of his brain which is the hippocampus was extracted. After the surgery, he has received retrograde amnesia, meaning he could not acquire remember semantic (general knowledge) nor episodic (memory for events), but his intelligence and procedural memories were maintained. This was able to discover that the medial temporal lobes are for the formation,organisation, consolidation of memory; meaning the conversion of short term to long term memory. The issues with the ethics is that even if HM was protected from harm, his identity was not kept anonymous. Since he was not able to remember everytime he had participated in a study, he was not in a fit state of mind to make decisions, and he also has donated his brain for science after his death in 2008. That being said, there was minimal damage done to him, the whole situation was not anticipated and this was able to make major breakthrough in the field of psychology.
This study is contrasted by the study conducted by Money in 1974, he believed that gender association is controlled merely by which sex organ an individual has. So with the birth of identical male twins, he took the opportunity to test so during their whole life, and give one of them a female genitalia as it was deformed. He received consent from the parents, but had deceived both teenagers during their entire life as they did not know they were being in a study. Once the twin that underwent the procedure went through puberty, the twin went through complete confusion as she was a girl but was going through male changes. Once both twins had found out it was a study as teenagers both had committed suicide. The researcher has not put the participant's well being into consideration and this has caused huge suffering to the ones being tested and their surroundings.
Measuring out the consequences and implications of both studies, it is safe to say that to be able to make a balance, one must look at the possible consequences of the study and the possible breakthrough and make sure that the casualties are little to none, and if they are of significance, with the variety of research methods being available today, I think they should be avoided at all cost. Surely it is difficult to establish balance but one with the danger is to place oneself above humans and forget ethics as the observation of humans may elevate one's stance, making them forget the humanity in themselves, which is also important to approve the ethics before the research being conducted by ethical boards.
Surely, the ways of knowing when it comes to ethics are not all applicable, or not all used to their full capability. When deciding whether a study is ethical or not, there is reason and sense perception that are involved in that decision making. But there is also a lot of emotion and intuition that play in as well as faith; religions or lack of have different stances of what is ethical and what isn't, and this isn't only in the field of psychology. All these factors make ethics different from culture to culture, as it is being taught differently as well as from individuals and how they perceive things around them.
