As with other sciences, psychology has a history of some dubious and unethical research, which has made the presence of a solidified ethical code for research very important.
IN CONTEXT
One experiment known for using dubious research methods and producing questionable results is the Stanford Prison Experiment, a famous experiment that occurred in 1971. In the experiment, a group of males was split into two smaller groups, completely at random. One group was assigned the role of prisoner, and the other group was assigned the role of guard. They were put on one floor in a Stanford building, and were supposed to stay there for the duration of two weeks, enacting the different roles.
The idea was that they would eventually fall into the role of prisoner or guard, even though they weren't originally those types of people. The experiment actually only went on for about six days before it had to be aborted because it was causing so much psychological damage to the participants, and even to the researchers themselves. One of the researchers, Zimbardo, was acting as the prison manager, and he discussed how stressful it was to fill this role.
Understanding the psychological--as well as the physical--stresses that research participants are being put through is one of the important keys to understanding the role of ethics in psychological research.
When it comes to ethics, the APA Professional Code of Conduct for Psychologists is generally considered to be the set of rules for psychological experimenting and psychotherapy.
The APA Professional Code of Conduct for Psychologists outlines in specific form what researchers and psychotherapists can and can't do.
This need for competence coincides with the licensing requirements for a lot of psychology jobs, as many professions in psychology, even counseling professions, still require a state or national certificate. These could be qualifications such as private licenses, or a masters degree. In fact, a lot of clinical practices require the psychologists to have some form of doctorate degree, either a PhD or a PsyD.
EXAMPLE
In the past, a lot of prisoners have been used in medical experiments, in psychology and other scientific fields, without their explicit consent. Simply the fact that they were prisoners was enough of a reason for some scientists to actually start conducting research on them.Psychologists cannot share this information with other people or with the general public. This is especially important in therapy when trying to establish a therapeutic alliance. If the patient knows the information isn't going anywhere, then he or she is more apt to trust the psychologist who's dealing with it.
The first of these is the importance of voluntary participation in an experiment, meaning that the subjects know beforehand exactly what they're getting into.
This goes along with informed consent, as voluntary participation also means the subjects agree to what they're going to do. They should understand exactly what the task will be, and most importantly, they should be debriefed after they're finished with the experiment and told exactly what was being studied, how it was being studied, and why.
Sometimes deception is used as part of the experiment, meaning that the subjects are told beforehand that something different is being studied. However, this only occurs when it's absolutely necessary for the experiment, specifically when the subjects' knowledge of what is really being studied might affect their reaction, and thus affect the results of the experiment.
Sometimes there might be a need to exert some small stress or physical harm, but it should be minimal (and preferably nonexistent) in any psychological experiment.
Source: This work is adapted from Sophia author Erick Taggart.