Ethical issues in human and animal research

• Human research — BPS Code (2009): informed consent, the right to withdraw, confidentiality, protection from harm, avoiding deception and full debriefing. Deception is sometimes justified as necessary (Milgram argued the study was impossible otherwise) — but it must be weighed in a cost-benefit analysis and remedied by a thorough debrief.
• Worked examples: Milgram (1963) — deception, difficulty withdrawing, severe psychological stress. Watson and Rayner (1920) — an infant could not consent, was harmed and was never deconditioned. Rosenhan (1973) — staff were deceived. Sherif — the boys did not know they were in a study.
• Animal research: the Scientific Procedures Act (1986) and Home Office regulation — licences, cost-benefit review and the 3Rs (replacement, reduction, refinement). Olds and Milner (1954) involved invasive brain surgery on rats.

Nuance the argument: a cost-benefit analysis can only be done after the results are known — you cannot weigh a benefit you have not yet found. That is a serious problem for using it to justify a study in advance.

Practical issues in design and implementation

• Self-report: questionnaires and interviews are cheap and scalable, but suffer social desirability — nobody admits to being prejudiced or blindly obedient.
• Experiments: control buys internal validity at the cost of ecological validity. Loftus and Palmer's films produced none of the arousal of a real crash; Yuille and Cutshall's real witnesses were far more accurate.
• Observation: covert observation avoids demand characteristics but cannot obtain consent; overt observation risks changing the behaviour it measures.
• Sampling: volunteer and opportunity samples are quick but unrepresentative — Milgram's 40 male volunteers, Bandura's Stanford nursery children, Sherif's 22 similar boys.

Practical issues

Reductionism and holism

Reductionism explains behaviour by breaking it down to its simplest constituent parts. Holism insists that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

• Biological reductionism: explaining aggression by testosterone and the prefrontal cortex (Raine); explaining schizophrenia by dopamine; explaining addiction by the nucleus accumbens (Olds and Milner).
• Environmental (stimulus-response) reductionism: explaining a phobia purely as a conditioned association (Watson and Rayner) with no reference to thought.
• The case FOR reductionism: it is scientific — simple variables can be operationalised, manipulated and tested, and it has produced real treatments (antipsychotics, systematic desensitisation).
• The case AGAINST: it can be simplistic and can mislead. Dopamine alone does not explain schizophrenia (Carlsson et al., 2000); Brendgen et al. (2005) showed social aggression was largely environmental. An interactionist or levels-of-explanation approach is usually more complete.

Name that debate

Tap a claim, then tap the debate it belongs to.

Psychology as a science

To count as a science, a discipline needs:

• Empiricism — knowledge from observation and measurement, not intuition.
• Objectivity — the researcher's expectations must not shape the data (hence double-blind procedures and standardised instructions).
• Replicability — the same procedure must be repeatable, so findings can be checked (Milgram's variations, Burger's 2009 replication).
• Falsifiability (Popper) — a theory must make predictions that could be shown to be wrong. This is where Freud's psychodynamic explanation of aggression struggles badly, while the dopamine hypothesis makes testable predictions.
• Control and hypothesis testing — manipulate the IV, control the extraneous variables, test against a null.

The counter-argument: much psychological subject matter (meaning, experience, culture) may not be reducible to controlled measurement without destroying what makes it interesting. Qualitative methods — thematic analysis, grounded theory — accept subjectivity openly rather than pretending to eliminate it.

Falsifiability

Culture and gender bias

• Ethnocentrism — judging other cultures by the standards of your own. The Strange Situation is a Western measure; van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) found insecure-avoidant classifications were relatively more common in some Western samples and insecure-resistant in Japan and Israel, but the tool itself is an imposed etic.
• Alpha bias exaggerates differences between groups; beta bias minimises or ignores them.
• Androcentrism: Milgram's original sample was 40 men; Sherif studied 22 boys. Generalising from male samples to everyone is beta bias. (Milgram's later work found no significant gender difference, and nor did Burger in 2009.)
• Diagnosis is not culture-free either — rates of diagnosis differ between ethnic groups in ways that raise questions about clinician bias and culturally inappropriate criteria.

Which bias?

Nature, nurture and interaction

• Nature: genetic and physiological causes — dopamine and genes in schizophrenia; testosterone and evolved aggression; the innate basis of attachment; biological preparedness in phobias.
• Nurture: learning and environment — Little Albert's conditioned phobia; Bandura's imitated aggression; labelling and the self-fulfilling prophecy; the situational power of Milgram's variations.
• Interaction is the honest answer. Twin concordance for schizophrenia is well below 100%, so genes alone cannot be sufficient — a diathesis-stress model is required. Brendgen et al. (2005) found physical aggression showed genetic influence while social aggression was mainly environmental — in the same children.

Exam craft: never just assert 'it's a bit of both'. Say which evidence points which way, and explain how the two interact (diathesis-stress, gene-environment correlation, epigenetics).

Match the debate to its key example

Tap a debate on the left, then the example that illustrates it.

How psychological understanding has developed

• Obedience: Milgram (1963) → Burger (2009), who replicated with a 150V stopping rule and modern safeguards and still found 70% willing to continue — showing both that the finding survives, and that the ethics of psychology have changed radically.
• Memory: the multi-store model (1968) → the working memory model (1974) → the episodic buffer (2000). Each revision was driven by evidence the earlier model could not explain.
• Schizophrenia: the simple dopamine hypothesis → Carlsson et al. (2000), who argue glutamate and network interactions must be included.
• Diagnosis: Rosenhan (1973) exposed the unreliability of psychiatric diagnosis, and contributed directly to the development of far more operationalised DSM criteria.

Development over time

Social control, usefulness and social sensitivity

• Social control — using psychological knowledge to make people behave as authorities want. Antipsychotics can be used to sedate rather than to treat; token economies control prisoners; drug campaigns and day-care advice shape behaviour; obedience research can be exploited by those who want compliance.
• The use of psychological knowledge in society — the positive side. The cognitive interview improves police practice; Loftus and Palmer's findings underpin warnings about eyewitness evidence; systematic desensitisation treats phobias; superordinate goals reduce intergroup conflict.
• Socially sensitive research (Sieber and Stanley) — research with potential consequences for the participants or for the group they represent. Studies of the causes of crime, of ethnic differences in diagnosis, of autism, or of privation, can stigmatise and can be misused in policy — but refusing to study them is itself a choice with consequences (silence leaves prejudice unchallenged).

Social sensitivity

Comparing explanations

How the issues and debates are assessed

Issues and debates are examined synoptically in Paper 3: Psychological skills, and can also be drawn on in the extended responses of Papers 1 and 2.

• You must compare studies from the classic study section across the whole qualification — Sherif, Baddeley, Raine, Watson and Rayner, Rosenhan, and the classic study from your chosen option.
• You will be given unseen material and asked to apply the debates to it, so practise on studies you have never met.
• Every point needs a named study and a specific finding. "Psychology can be reductionist" earns nothing; "the dopamine hypothesis reduces schizophrenia to one transmitter, which is why Carlsson et al. (2000) argue glutamate must be included" earns marks.

Build a grid: six classic studies down the side, eleven debates across the top. Fill one cell a day and by the exam you can argue any debate from any study.

The big ideas to know

These debates are synoptic — bring named studies to every one of them in Paper 3. Press Finish to see your score.