Ethics In Psychology: A Psychology Student's and Professional's Guide To Ethical Research: An Introductory Series

By Connor Whiteley

As future or current psychology researchers, ethics guide our behaviour. Ethics protect us, our participants and the psychology discipline. Ethics are absolutely critical to understand as a researcher.

This brilliant, easy-to-understand book brings the amazing topic of Ethics to life with passion, real world examples and plenty of conversational writing readers will love.

If you want to become a psychology researcher, this sensational book is one you don't want to miss!

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• Language: English
• Publisher: CGD Publishing
• Release date: Oct 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215133750

Connor Whiteley

Hello, I'm Connor Whiteley, I am an 18-year-old who loves to write creatively, and I wrote my Brownsea trilogy when I was 14 years old after I went to Brownsea Island on a scout camp. At the camp, I started to think about how all the broken tiles and pottery got there and somehow a trilogy got created.Moreover, I love writing fantasy and sci-fi novels because you’re only limited by your imagination.In addition, I'm was an Explorer Scout and I love camping, sailing and other outdoor activities as well as cooking.Furthermore, I do quite a bit of charity work as well. For example: in early 2018 I was a part of a youth panel which was involved in creating a report with research to try and get government funding for organised youth groups and through this panel. I was invited to Prince Charles’ 70th birthday party and how some of us got in the royal photograph.Finally, I am going to university and I hope to get my doctorate in clinical psychology in a few years.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

As future or current researchers, we thankfully cannot do whatever we do to participants. We cannot harm them, deceive them or outright lie to them.

Or can we?

The world of Ethics In Psychology is a fascinating topic to look at because the vast majority of psychology students and professionals know about the major areas. Like the importance of confidentiality, avoiding harm and more, but there are a lot more grey areas than people think and this is what makes ethics fascinating to explore in more depth.

What Will This Book Cover?

If you thought ethics was just about doing no harm to participants, not lying to them and treating them how you would treat a friend, then this great, really engaging book will open your eyes to the wide range of interesting ethical areas that researchers have to cover.

We’ll investigate some of the horrific past of research with some of the worst studies in history that basically forced the creation of the ethical guidelines, to how we regulate ethics and all the ethical principles that govern psychological research.

Throughout this great, really engaging book, points are applied to the real world to help you understand why the different areas and approaches and even facets of ethics are so critical in our amazing discipline of psychology.

And we certainly poke fun at some infamous studies in psychology along the way.

Therefore, if you want a really engaging, easy-to-understand book to help you have a brilliant foundational understanding of ethics then this is definitely the book for you.

Who Is This Book For?

Like I preluded to in the last section, this book is designed and written for psychology students and professionals that want to deepen their understanding of Ethics In Psychology. Including the different approaches to ethics, the different principles and the grey areas each of them has and a lot of ethical information that lots of psychology researchers don’t think about.

This is a very conversational and engaging book than is nothing like the boring and very dull textbooks that we all studied at university.

This is something that you actually want to read and you can enjoy this book.

Who Am I?

Personally, I always like to know who the author is of any nonfiction I read so I know the information is coming from a good source. Therefore, in case you’re like me, I’m Connor Whiteley, an international bestselling author of over 40 psychology books and I’m the host of The Psychology World Podcast available on all major podcast apps and YouTube.

Also, I am a psychology graduate from the University of Kent, England.

Now that we know more about each other, let’s dive into the great and fascinating world of Ethics In Psychology.

This is going to be great fun!

PART ONE:

WHAT IS ETHICS?

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO LOOK AT AND THE REST OF THE BOOK?

To help us ease into the topic of ethics in psychology, I thought I would start us off easy by introducing why this is critical to focus on, and then I’ll do a quick outline of the book so you know what to expect.

Therefore, whilst I’m going to show you research later on that kicked off the whole Ethical debate within our amazing profession, I want to share some of my own thoughts on the topic as to why this is so important.

I’ll share my thoughts with you now and to be honest, these are thoughts that many lecturers and other professionals have said or agreed with me too.

Firstly, we need ethics to help protect the profession, since you and me, we know that psychology is a truly amazing profession and discipline that has the power to transform lives for the betterment of everyone. We can help people with their psychological distress and help them adopt healthier behaviours unlike any other discipline in the world.

For example, if we take smoking for example, I always like to point out to people who poo-poo psychology that the doctors and biological people can proof the harmful effects of smoking. But then what?

You cannot use any biological mechanism to make someone quit smoking, because smoking isn’t a biological or medical process. It’s a behavioural process, and that’s where psychology comes in and psychology is the only discipline that could help people give up smoking.

I’m not trying to poo-poo the medical or biological sciences in the slightest, I love them and they are amazing fields in their own right, but I want to point out quickly how important psychology is.

However, if we start doing unethical, awful and outrageous experiments on people. Then psychology will lose its reputation and people will start to see it as a dodgy science that must be avoided for the safety of others.

We don’t want that and I’ll share a quote from the social psychology Replication Crisis that highlights this point later on.

As a result, without ethics to guide us and show people that psychology is a safe, reasonable discipline that isn’t dangerous or a law onto itself, we must use ethics or risk becoming a pariah discipline.

Secondly, I fully believe that having ethics helps to establish psychology as a great professional science, and if you have a background like me, then you might have experienced a lot of concern or people just being annoying because they doubted psychology was a science and that you were wasting your time with that career.

And if you