Studying and Protecting Humans

 



Studying and Protecting Humans


Are human participants studied different? Well, yes. Rather than the classic white laboratory robe and clipboard, executing various electrical inputs at your expense, most human experiments are a pleasant experience for all.

Occasionally, participants of the experiments are temporarily tricked or deceived, this can be accomplished by the help of confederates: people who act as participants but are there to collect data. This method of research is only used when it is considered essential to the experiment, like seeing how angry one gets at something such as the other team winning a match. A possible difficulty of telling the participants the whole experiment beforehand is an effect called social desirability bias, where people will change their outputs to try and confirm the researchers hypothesis. One example could be if the participant knew they were studying anger expression, they would attempt to hide it after his team lost. 

Previously, many didn't perform ethical studies, some previously conducted studies that could never be performed today due to ethics is when psychologists deprived a baby monkey of contact with its mother and conditioning human babies to burt into tears. 

Today, ethics is stressed by organizations like the APA and Britain's BPS urge researchers to get consent from participants and not force a study on them, to not put them in any harmful situations or as many say “Do No Harm”, to keep all participant information confidential, and fully debrief the participant after the study as to what was tested during the experiment. As these ethical practices as important as oxygen to humans, universities and research organizations have established the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to protect individuals.

Comments

  1. Abdullah Al-AniSeptember 29, 2024 at 11:02 AM

    The way you explained how ethics is as important as oxygen for researchers is a powerful analogy. It really emphasizes the necessity of ethical guidelines (via the IRBs) in conducting studies and projects.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hamza ShaikSeptember 29, 2024 at 1:32 PM

    I really like how you took a passage from another class textbook and used it to make it more informal as well. Introducing a new term unknown to the reader was also a nice way to keep the reader engaged in your blog like when you defined what a confederate was.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Growth Essay

Image
  For me, thinking about my college essay is a daunting task, every time I sit down ready to “lock in” and write my personal statement, I doubt myself. I start second guessing each word that I type because I don't know if I really am saying what the colleges want me to say or even if I am portraying myself as the peron they want me to be.  Recently, in class, we took an assessment that was designed to assess our core values and figure out which values are most important to us. As I was going through the assessment and reading the scenarios to choose between values, I started to discover more about myself, values I never even thought off started to populate and soon I discovered that growth one of my top three values. Going hand in hand with this is a video we watched in class as well, it discussed how to write a good essay and what Admissions Officers are really looking for in a candidate. I learned that Admissions Officers don’t want to hear about your gazillion awards or per...
Read more

Every Syllable Matters

Image
  My whole life I’ve been called different names, “Veom”, “Yome”, Vome”, the list goes on. Peoples names are not only significant due to it being what you refer to people as but because it displays your culture and family history every time someone calls your name. Every single name you hear on daily basis has a deeper meaning that people often overlook when talking to people. Take a common name for example: Peter; I bet you probably haven't thought about what the name means or where it originated from. Well, it actually means rock and signifies strength and resilience, this name originated from a greek word too. All this meaning is packed into one word and it holds much more importance than it is usually given in society. One name isn't just a word, its their identity. Thats why you should strive to say it right. Many can argue this from a biological perspective, arguing that perceptual narrowing , which causes phonemic deafness, is why people struggle pronouncing names. It i...
Read more

Oedipus

Image
  This week in English, we discussed and read Oedipus and a question that came up was the debate between fate and free will. That question—whether we truly control our own lives or if everything is predetermined or destined to happen—has been on my mind ever since. Oedipus’s story explores this idea because, despite all his efforts to avoid his destiny, every choice he made unknowingly led him closer to it and it made me wonder if parts of our lives are already written for us. Still, I find it difficult to believe that everything is decided in for us. If that were really true, it would make hard work, dedication, and ambition feel and also become meaningless. I think that what really happens is fate may give us certain circumstances, but free will determines how we respond to them. For example, I didn’t choose where I was born or who my parents are, that truly is fate. But things I can make choices about is free will, things like how much effort I put into school, how act, and how ...
Read more