On the ethics of intervention in human psychological research: With special reference to the Stanford prison experiment

Different stress models are employed to enhance our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and explore potential interventions. However, the utility of these models remains a critical concern, as their validities may be limited by the complexity of stress processes. Literature review revealed that both mental and physical stress models possess reasonable construct and criterion validities, respectively reflected in psychometrically assessed stress ratings and in activation of the sympathoadrenal system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. The findings are less robust, though, in the pharmacological perturbations’ domain, including such agents as adenosine or dobutamine. Likewise, stress models’ convergent- and discriminant validity vary depending on the stressors’ nature. Stress models share similarities, but also have important differences regarding their validities. Specific traits defined by the nature of the stressor stimulus should be taken into consideration when selecting stress models. Doing so can personalize prevention and treatment of stress-related antecedents, its acute processing, and chronic sequelae. Further work is warranted to refine stress models’ validity and customize them so they commensurate diverse populations and circumstances.

In order for mental health research to benefit society, science must be trusted. Research ethics are necessary to build trust and promote excellence in science. Ethics are particularly important for research involving vulnerable populations as is often the case in mental health research. In this paper, we provide historical examples of research misconduct, review landmark documents related to research ethics, offer an overview of the responsible conduct of research, distinguish research ethics from risk management, discuss ethical considerations and decision-making within the context of mental health research, and emphasize the importance of teaching research ethics.

The translational research from “bench-to-bedside” poses several critical ethical challenges which have direct implication in the safety and dignity of the human study-subjects. These include presence of voluntary informed consent, therapeutic misconception, and clinical equipoise. Over years, a number of legislations have been created as a result of human atrocities on the pretext of biomedical research including the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki, the Common Rule, and the Belmont Report. Each of these have served as a milestone in the creation of the notion of voluntary informed consent, the core of ethics in translational research. Regulatory bodies like Institutional Review Boards also play a critical role in protecting human participants through prior and intermittent review of the ethical considerations of the research protocol.

Translational research in vulnerable neurologically injured patients adds specific challenges in terms of emergency research and the inability of subjects to comprehend. Waiver of informed consent, surrogate consent, and e-consents from legal representatives are often used in the place of voluntary informed consent. The recently introduced translational genomic research further adds to the complexities of protecting patient’s identity and large-scale data sharing. Finally, effective collaboration must be obtained between the researchers, scientists, review boards, funding agencies as well as the government bodies to ensure ethical conduct of scientifically rigorous translational research.

The impact of watching eyes cues and descriptive social norm messages on fare evasion was studied in two experiments that were conducted in two railway stations in France. In Study 1, a natural field experiment, passengers were exposed for a two-week period to either a control eye-cues poster or to an experimental eye-cues with a social norm messaging campaign. In Study 2, an artefactual experiment in the field, participants in the experimental train station were asked to participate in a lying task before and after they were exposed to the messaging campaign. The results from both studies suggest that although watching eye cues alone are not effective in a crowded train station, exposing passengers to watching eye cues together with a descriptive social norm messaging campaign reduced the fare evasion rates observed by standard inspection operations, and eliminated lying behavior measured by the die-under-cup paradigm. These results strengthen the external validity of laboratory experiments that have documented small scale cheating behavior and highlight the potential benefits of internal enforcement techniques to fight dishonesty in the field. In addition, they stress the advantage of combining visibility cues and social norms when orienting people toward more moral behavior.

Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele were high-ranking Nazis, two among many who were tasked with implementing the Final Solution. Eichmann's eventual trial evidenced a dull ordinariness that was famously defined as the banality of evil by the political theorist Hannah Arendt who covered the proceedings. Star Trek's Deep Space 9 commences with the Cardassian relinquishment of Bajor. One particular episode (“Duet”) focuses on a presumed high-ranking Cardassian labour camp commander who turns out to have been a filing clerk seeking atonement and closure for the deeds he witnessed, on behalf of his race. Yet another episode (“Nothing Human”) in Star Trek Voyager highlights the ethical dilemmas that arise when accessing trials and treatments that were obtained immorally by unethical medical experimentation, and this is reminiscent of callous experimentation by Josef Mengele in the Auschwitz death camp. This paper will explore these subjects and will compare the fictional concentration camp commander and the fictional doctor with Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele respectively. Both episodes serve as reminders, cautionary tales lest we allow history to repeat itself and such atrocities to be relived.

Despite strong professional practice norms experimental economists are increasingly subject to sweeping ethics review processes. A central issue in these processes is the recruitment of students as “overresearched” participants. We critically discuss the potential associated ethical risks typically identified in ethics regulations. We then test the efficacy of potential design countermeasures. We find support for some (informed consent procedures, debriefings, non-differential rewards, opt-in) but not others (research outside class time, educational relevance, non-teacher researchers). The paper intends to inform economists’ (1) design choices to reduce ethical risks without sacrificing scientific integrity, and (2) justification of these choices to ethics review boards.