Ethical Standard in Psychological Research: A Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59388/pm00343Keywords:
algorithmic bias, artificial intelligence, ethical dilemmas, ethical guidelines, ethical researchAbstract
Psychological research is the study of human beings' self-perception of the way they think and behave, and the study of the psychological and behavioral patterns of how they perceive external information and how they internalize it. Integral to the integrity and credibility of this research enterprise is adherence to ethical standards that uphold the rights, well-being and dignity of research participants. As the scientific exploration of the human mind continues to evolve, so does the ethical framework that guides researchers in their quest for knowledge. This article delves into the multifaceted nature of ethical standards in psychological research. By scrutinizing historical precedents, contemporary guidelines and emerging challenges, this exploration aims to illuminate the critical role that ethical considerations play in shaping the methodology, implementation and interpretation of psychological research. The paper first presents the historical trajectory of ethical issues and ethical guidelines in psychological research. Secondly, ethical dilemmas in psychological research are presented, emphasizing the complex interplay between the pursuit of knowledge and the responsibility to protect the rights and well-being of research participants. In addition, the advent of the digital age has created a new set of ethical challenges for psychological research. The convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and psychological research has opened up transformative possibilities for data analysis, pattern recognition and the exploration of complex psychological phenomena, and the issue of algorithmic bias cannot be ignored. A final conclusion is made that ethical standards in psychological research are the ethical backbone of a discipline dedicated to revealing the complexity of the human mind, and that emerging challenges need to be actively addressed.
References
Adley, M., Alderson, H., Jackson, K., McGovern, W., Spencer, L., Addison, M., & O’Donnell, A. (2023). Ethical and practical considerations for including marginalised groups in quantitative survey research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 1-16.
Alessi, E. J., & Kahn, S. (2023). Toward a trauma-informed qualitative research approach: Guidelines for ensuring the safety and promoting the resilience of research participants. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 20(1), 121-154.
Allum, N., Reid, A., Bidoglia, M., Gaskell, G., Aubert-Bonn, N., Buljan, I., Fuglsang, S., Horbach, S., Kavouras, P., & Marušić, A. (2023). Researchers on research integrity: a survey of European and American researchers. F1000Research, 12, 187.
Alshahrani, R., Yenugula, M., Algethami, H., Alharbi, F., Goswami, S. S., Naveed, Q. N., Lasisi, A., Islam, S., Khan, N. A., & Zahmatkesh, S. (2024). Establishing the fuzzy integrated hybrid MCDM framework to identify the key barriers to implementing artificial intelligence-enabled sustainable cloud system in an IT industry. Expert Systems with Applications, 238, Article 121732. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2023.121732
Aluko-Arowolo, S., Lawal, S. A., Adedeji, I. A., & Nwaobilor, S. (2023). Ethical relativism and circumstances of social and cultural contingencies on informed consent in the conduct of research: clinical trials in Nigeria. Asian Bioethics Review, 15(1), 37-52.
Benjamin Jr, L. T. (2023). A brief history of modern psychology. John Wiley & Sons.
Bhaskar, S. M. (2023). An Equity and Justice-Informed Ethical Framework to Guide Incidental Findings in Brain Imaging Research. Clinics and Practice, 13(1), 116-124.
Blanco-Gonzalez, A., Cabezon, A., Seco-Gonzalez, A., Conde-Torres, D., Antelo-Riveiro, P., Pineiro, A., & Garcia-Fandino, R. (2023). The role of ai in drug discovery: challenges, opportunities, and strategies. Pharmaceuticals,16(6), 891.
Casewell, D. (2022). A Study of Character: Simone Weil’s Psychological and Ethical Attention. TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology, 6(1), 107-126.
Castaneda, J., Jover, A., Calvet, L., Yanes, S., Juan, A. A., & Sainz, M. (2022). Dealing with gender bias issues in data-algorithmic processes: a social-statistical perspective. Algorithms, 15(9), 303.
Cikara, M., Martinez, J. E., & Lewis Jr, N. A. (2022). Moving beyond social categories by incorporating context in social psychological theory. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1(9), 537-549.
Daradkeh, M. (2023). Navigating the complexity of entrepreneurial ethics: A systematic review and future research agenda. Sustainability, 15(14), 11099.
De Gagne, J. C., Hwang, H., & Jung, D. (2023). Cyberethics in nursing education: Ethical implications of artificial intelligence. Nursing Ethics, 09697330231201901.
De Sutter, E., Meszaros, J., Borry, P., & Huys, I. (2022). Digitizing the informed consent process: a review of the regulatory landscape in the European Union. Frontiers in Medicine, 9, 1445.
Debbarma, R. (2023). The Changing Landscape of Privacy Laws in the Age of Big Data and Surveillance. Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Analitica Junior, 14(2), 1740-1752.
Donovan, L. (2023). Ethics and review boards. In Translational Sports Medicine (pp. 351-356). Elsevier.
Drolet, M.-J., Rose-Derouin, E., Leblanc, J.-C., Ruest, M., & Williams-Jones, B. (2023). Ethical Issues in research: perceptions of researchers, research ethics board members and research ethics experts. Journal of Academic Ethics, 21(2), 269-292.
Egon, K., & Julia, R. (2023). The Evolution of Audience Research: Interdisciplinary Approaches in Information Sciences.
Ejidike, G. O., Onyemaechi, C., Edoka, A. C., Onyekachi, P., & Unadike, M. (2023). Ethical Issues in the Practice of Psychology in Nigeria and USA: Comparative Study with Special Emphasis on Psychotherapy. International Journal For Psychotherapy In Africa, 8(1).
Fadda, M., Sykora, M., Elayan, S., Puhan, M. A., Naslund, J. A., Mooney, S. J., Albanese, E., Morese, R., & Gruebner, O. (2022). Ethical issues of collecting, storing, and analyzing geo-referenced tweets for mental health research. Digital Health, 8, 20552076221092539.
Farnicka, M. (2022). Ethical Behaviour and Social Responsability from the Perspective of Modern Psychology. In Security and Defence: Ethical and Legal Challenges in the Face of Current Conflicts (pp. 123-137). Springer.
Friesen, P., Gelinas, L., Kirby, A., Strauss, D. H., & Bierer, B. E. (2023). IRBs and the protection-inclusion dilemma: Finding a balance. The American Journal of Bioethics, 23(6), 75-88.
Glannon, W. (2023). Ethical Issues in Neuroscience Research. In Medical Research Ethics: Challenges in the 21st Century (pp. 133-149). Springer.
Goffi, E. R., & Momcilovic, A. (2022). Respecting cultural diversity in ethics applied to AI: a new approach for a multicultural governance. Misión Jurídica: Revista de derecho y ciencias sociales, 15(23), 111-122.
Grant, S., Wendt, K. E., Leadbeater, B. J., Supplee, L. H., Mayo-Wilson, E., Gardner, F., & Bradshaw, C. P. (2022). Transparent, open, and reproducible prevention science. Prevention Science, 23(5), 701-722.
Greeny, K., Rosenberg, N., Fettig, A., & Schwartz, I. (2022). Common struggles of behavior analysts and their relation to the professional and ethical compliance code. Behavior Analysis: Research and Practice, 22(4), 368.
Grzyb, T., & Dolinski, D. (2023). You and I are alike, so I will hold back–The effect of directed empathy on the behavior of participants of Stanley Milgram's obedience paradigm. Acta Psychologica, 234, 103859.
Guzzo, R. A., Schneider, B., & Nalbantian, H. R. (2022). Open science, closed doors: The perils and potential of open science for research in practice. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 15(4), 495-515.
Hai, T., Alhaider, M. M., Ghodratallah, P., Singh, P. K., Alhomayani, F. M., & Rajab, H. (2024). Techno-economic-environmental study and artificial intelligence-assisted optimization of a multigeneration power plant based on a gas turbine cycle along with a hydrogen liquefaction unit. Applied Thermal Engineering, 237, Article 121660. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2023.121660
Hassan, I. (2022). The Absence Of The Role Of United Nation In Middle East Prison And Victimization, How This Affects Prisoners Health. In.
Henry, C., Gohdes, A., & Dorff, C. (2022). Digital footprints and data-security risks for political scientists. PS: Political Science & Politics, 55(4), 804-808.
Hodgetts, D., Hopner, V., Carr, S., Bar-Tal, D., Liu, J. H., Saner, R., Yiu, L., Horgan, J., Searle, R. H., & Massola, G. (2023). Human security psychology: A linking construct for an eclectic discipline. Review of General Psychology,27(2), 177-193.
Hota, P. K., Bhatt, B., & Qureshi, I. (2023). Institutional work to navigate ethical dilemmas: Evidence from a social enterprise. Journal of Business Venturing, 38(1), 106269.
Hou, X.-X. (2018). Seven-layer deep neural network based on sparse autoencoder for voxelwise detection of cerebral microbleed. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 77(9), 10521-10538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4554-8
Huminuik, K. (2023). The five connections: A human rights framework for psychologists. International Journal of Psychology.
Ivey, G. (2023). Interpreting hidden meaning in qualitative research interview data: opportunities and challenges. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 20(1), 21-51.
Jangwan, N. S., Ashraf, G. M., Ram, V., Singh, V., Alghamdi, B. S., Abuzenadah, A. M., & Singh, M. F. (2022). Brain augmentation and neuroscience technologies: current applications, challenges, ethics and future prospects. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 16, 1000495.
Jegan, R., & Dierickx, K. (2023). Ethics without borders: an analysis of national and international guidelines on ethics in basic medical education. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 1-22.
Juntunen, C. L., Crepeau-Hobson, F., Riva, M. T., Baker, J., Wan, S., Davis III, C., & Caballero, A. M. (2023). Centering equity, diversity, and inclusion in ethical decision-making. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 54(1), 17.
Kaneko, M., Magoulianitis, V., Ramacciotti, L. S., Raman, A., Paralkar, D., Chen, A., Chu, T. N., Yang, Y., Xue, J., Yang, J., Liu, J., Jadvar, D. S., Gill, K., Cacciamani, G. E., Nikias, C. L., Duddalwar, V., Jay Kuo, C. C., Gill, I. S., & Abreu, A. L. (2024). The Novel Green Learning Artificial Intelligence for Prostate Cancer Imaging: A Balanced Alternative to Deep Learning and Radiomics. The Urologic clinics of North America, 51(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ucl.2023.08.001
Kekecs, Z., Palfi, B., Szaszi, B., Szecsi, P., Zrubka, M., Kovacs, M., Bakos, B. E., Cousineau, D., Tressoldi, P., & Schmidt, K. (2023). Raising the value of research studies in psychological science by increasing the credibility of research reports: the transparent Psi project. Royal Society Open Science, 10(2), 191375.
Khoa, B. T., Hung, B. P., & Hejsalem-Brahmi, M. (2023). Qualitative research in social sciences: data collection, data analysis and report writing. International Journal of Public Sector Performance Management, 12(1-2), 187-209.
Kipkemboi, J., & Naanyu, V. (2022). Research ethics and scientific innovation nexus: Unpacking the essentials. In Advances in Phytochemistry, Textile and Renewable Energy Research for Industrial Growth (pp. 11-17). CRC Press.
Kordzadeh, N., & Ghasemaghaei, M. (2022). Algorithmic bias: review, synthesis, and future research directions. European Journal of Information Systems, 31(3), 388-409.
Korzh, A. (2023). Research with institutionalized populations: Methodological and ethical dilemmas. Qualitative Research, 14687941231165890.
Laurijssen, S. J., van der Graaf, R., van Dijk, W. B., Schuit, E., Groenwold, R. H., Grobbee, D. E., & de Vries, M. C. (2022). When is it impractical to ask informed consent? A systematic review. Clinical Trials, 19(5), 545-560.
Liu, B., & Wei, L. (2023). Unintended effects of open data policy in online behavioral research: An experimental investigation of participants’ privacy concerns and research validity. Computers in Human Behavior, 139, 107537.
Lomas, T. (2022). Making waves in the great ocean: A historical perspective on the emergence and evolution of wellbeing scholarship. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 17(2), 257-270.
Mascalzoni, D., Melotti, R., Pattaro, C., Pramstaller, P. P., Gögele, M., De Grandi, A., & Biasiotto, R. (2022). Ten years of dynamic consent in the CHRIS study: informed consent as a dynamic process. European Journal of Human Genetics, 30(12), 1391-1397.
Mohammad Amini, M., Jesus, M., Fanaei Sheikholeslami, D., Alves, P., Hassanzadeh Benam, A., & Hariri, F. (2023). Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Challenges in Healthcare Applications: A Comprehensive Review in the Context of the European GDPR Mandate. Machine Learning and Knowledge Extraction, 5(3), 1023-1035.
Nguyen, M.-H., Le, T.-T., & Vuong, Q.-H. (2023). Ecomindsponge: A novel perspective on human psychology and behavior in the ecosystem. Urban Science, 7(1), 31.
Nosek, B. A., Hardwicke, T. E., Moshontz, H., Allard, A., Corker, K. S., Dreber, A., Fidler, F., Hilgard, J., Kline Struhl, M., & Nuijten, M. B. (2022). Replicability, robustness, and reproducibility in psychological science. Annual review of psychology, 73, 719-748.
O'Donohue, W., & Fisher, J. E. (2022). Are illiberal acts unethical? APA’s Ethics Code and the protection of free speech. American Psychologist.
Perez, K. M., Asim, M., Weiss, E. M., Valentine, G. C., Kavi, A., Somannavar, M. S., Iwuh, I., Chiweza, C., Tickell, K. D., & Singa, B. O. (2023). Considering Risks to Researchers and Staff in Low-Resource Settings during Public Health Crises: A Proposed Conceptual Model. Children, 10(3), 463.
Petkov, C. I., Flecknell, P., Murphy, K., Basso, M. A., Mitchell, A. S., Hartig, R., & Thompson-Iritani, S. (2022). Unified ethical principles and an animal research ‘Helsinki’declaration as foundations for international collaboration. Current Research in Neurobiology, 3, 100060.
Pritchett, M., Ala'i-Rosales, S., Cihon, T. M., & Cruz, A. R. (2023). From Fuller to Fawcett: a human rights history of research ethics in behavior analysis. In Research Ethics in Behavior Analysis (pp. 1-34). Elsevier.
Raman, A. G., Fisher, D., Yap, F., Oberai, A., & Duddalwar, V. A. (2024). Radiomics and Artificial Intelligence: Renal Cell Carcinoma. The Urologic clinics of North America, 51(1), 35-45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ucl.2023.06.007
Raposo, H., Melo, S., & Egreja, C. (2022). Data Protection in Sociological Health Research: A Critical Narrative about the Challenges of a New Regulatory Landscape. Sociological Research Online, 27(4), 1060-1076.
Reynolds, K. A., Harikumar, V. B., Poon, E., West, D. P., & Alam, M. (2022). While ethical considerations predominate, scientific merit can impact Institutional Review Board (IRB) determinations: a cross-sectional study. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 150, 12-17.
Rizi, M. H. P., & Seno, S. A. H. (2022). A systematic review of technologies and solutions to improve security and privacy protection of citizens in the smart city. Internet of Things, 20, 100584.
Salah, M., Al Halbusi, H., & Abdelfattah, F. (2023). May the force of text data analysis be with you: Unleashing the power of generative AI for social psychology research. Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans, 100006.
Sangaiah, A. K. (2020). Alcoholism identification via convolutional neural network based on parametric ReLU, dropout, and batch normalization. Neural Computing and Applications, 32, 665-680. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-018-3924-0
Schmidt, U. (2023). From Nuremberg to Helsinki: Historicizing the Codification of Post-War Research Ethics. In Ethical Innovation for Global Health: Pandemic, Democracy and Ethics in Research (pp. 149-174). Springer.
Schütz, M., & Braswell, H. (2023). Ethicizing history. Bioethical representations of Nazi medicine. Bioethics.
Shahbazi, N., Lin, Y., Asudeh, A., & Jagadish, H. (2023). Representation Bias in Data: A Survey on Identification and Resolution Techniques. ACM Computing Surveys.
Shamim, F., & Qureshi, R. (2023). INFORMED CONSENT IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH IN THE SOUTH. Educational Research Practice in Southern Contexts: Recentring, Reframing and Reimagining Methodological Canons.
Silander, N., & Tarescavage, A. (2023). Ideological bias in American Psychological Association communications: Another threat to the credibility of professional psychology. In Ideological and political bias in psychology: Nature, scope, and solutions (pp. 315-342). Springer.
Sinclair, D., Heap, A., Norris, K., Carey, R., Anderson, C., & Lea, E. (2023). End user perspectives on design and conduct of health-related disaster research. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 96, 103919.
Spranger, J., Homberg, A., Sonnberger, M., & Niederberger, M. (2022). Reporting guidelines for Delphi techniques in health sciences: A methodological review. Zeitschrift für Evidenz, Fortbildung und Qualität im Gesundheitswesen,172, 1-11.
Stahl, B. C., & Eke, D. (2024). The ethics of ChatGPT–Exploring the ethical issues of an emerging technology. International Journal of Information Management, 74, 102700.
Tilmes, N. (2022). Disability, fairness, and algorithmic bias in AI recruitment. Ethics and Information Technology, 24(2), 21.
Tritt, M. (2022). Social Work Experiences of Moral Distress Amid COVID-19.
von Winckelmann, S. L. (2023). Predictive algorithms and racial bias: a qualitative descriptive study on the perceptions of algorithm accuracy in higher education. Information and Learning Sciences, 124(9/10), 349-371.
Walker, V. G. (2022). Elder’s life course theory and person‐centered research: A lens for conducting ethical nursing research and mental health nursing practice with older adults aging with the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 29(6), 904-914.
Wang, J. Z., Zhao, S., Wu, C., Adams, R. B., Newman, M. G., Shafir, T., & Tsachor, R. (2023). Unlocking the Emotional World of Visual Media: An Overview of the Science, Research, and Impact of Understanding Emotion Drawing Insights From Psychology, Engineering, and the Arts, This Article Provides a Comprehensive Overview of the Field of Emotion Analysis in Visual Media and Discusses the Latest Research, Systems, Challenges, Ethical Implications, and Potential Impact of Artificial Emotional Intelligence on Society. Proceedings of the IEEE.
Wang, S. (2015). Feed-forward neural network optimized by hybridization of PSO and ABC for abnormal brain detection. International Journal of Imaging Systems and Technology, 25(2), 153-164. https://doi.org/10.1002/ima.22132
Wang, S. (2023). Grad-CAM: understanding AI models. Computers, Materials & Continua, 76(2), 1321-1324.
Wang, S.-H. (2018). Intelligent facial emotion recognition based on stationary wavelet entropy and Jaya algorithm. Neurocomputing, 272, 668-676. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2017.08.015
Wang, S.-H. (2021). Covid-19 classification by FGCNet with deep feature fusion from graph convolutional network and convolutional neural network. Information Fusion, 67, 208-229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2020.10.004
Washington, V., Franklin, J. B., Huang, E. S., Mega, J. L., & Abernethy, A. P. (2023). Diversity, equity, and inclusion in clinical research: a path toward precision health for everyone. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 113(3), 575-584.
Wong, D. C., & Williams, S. (2024). Artificial intelligence analysis of videos to augment clinical assessment: an overview. Neural Regeneration Research, 19(4), 717-718. https://doi.org/10.4103/1673-5374.382249
Young, G., & Kenny, M. C. (2023). Focusing the APA Ethics Code to Include Development: Applications to Abuse. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 16(1), 109-122.
Yousefi, S., Huang, X., Poursoroush, A., Majoor, J., Lemij, H., Vermeer, K., Elze, T., Wang, M., Nouri-Mahdavi, K., Mohammadzadeh, V., Brusini, P., & Johnson, C. (2024). An Artificial Intelligence Enabled System for Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer Thickness Damage Severity Staging. Ophthalmology science, 4(2), 100389. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xops.2023.100389
Yua, E., Raymond-Yakoubian, J., Daniel, R. A., & Behe, C. (2022). A framework for co-production of knowledge in the context of Arctic research.
Zhang, Y. (2012). Classification of Fruits Using Computer Vision and a Multiclass Support Vector Machine. Sensors,12(9), 12489-12505. https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/12/9/12489
Zhang, Y. (2015). Pathological brain detection in MRI scanning by wavelet packet Tsallis entropy and fuzzy support vector machine. SpringerPlus, 4(1), Article 716. http://www.springerplus.com/content/4/1/716
Zhang, Y.-D., & Dong, Z.-C. (2020). Advances in multimodal data fusion in neuroimaging: Overview, challenges, and novel orientation. Information Fusion, 64, 149-187. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2020.07.006
Zhang, Y. D. (2016). Facial Emotion Recognition Based on Biorthogonal Wavelet Entropy, Fuzzy Support Vector Machine, and Stratified Cross Validation. IEEE Access, 4, 8375-8385. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2628407