Ethics on Research

Ethical Issues on the Research Topic of Psychology


Landis' Facial Expressions Experiment (1924)
This experiment was to develop an experiment to determine whether different emotions create facial expressions specific to that emotion.  The aim of this experiment was to see if all people have a common expression when feeling disgust, shock, joy, and so on.
The overall consequences of the study were actually more important for their evidence that people are willing to do almost anything when asked in a situation. The study did not prove that humans have a common set of unique facial expressions.
In my opinion, this experiment regarding the fact that it had the permissions and most of the permissions, it does not make sense, and it does not seem ethical enough to prove any theory.
For example, it does not follow the rules of the quantitative nor the qualitative data, by the permission of the participants and perform the experiments. But most of all the design aspect of the psychological experiment was not fully informed for the participants which made them mentally terrified. In worse cases, could go to mentally ill situations.


Little Albert (1920)
John Watson, father of behaviorism, tested the idea of whether fear was innate or a conditioned response. Little Albert was the nine month old infant, which was chosen from a hospital, was tested to be exposed to a white rabbit, a white rat, a monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspaper, and a miscellanea of other things for two months without any sort of conditioning.
However, the experiment is that from the procedure, Little Albert was not desensitized to his fear. He left the hospital before Watson could do so.
Despite the fact of John Watson's crucial experiment on Little Albert, it really is unethical to perform this kind of experiment. For example, the baby has its rights for the experiment but was traumatized with all kinds of horrible situations, and when you are in an orphanage the guardian has all the rights to protect the babies, but John Watson did none of them to take care of the Little Albert, which left the poor baby with mentally retarded situation all throughout his life according to research.