The ethical credibilty of conducting psychological research which involves participants' loss of dignity, self-esteem and trust in rational authority.

Is it ever right to lie to a participant in a psychological experiment? Is it ethical for psychological researchers to use procedures on human participants that involve loss of dignity, self-esteem and trust in rational authority? Research in psychology sometimes involves the deception of participants. This may be to a mild degree but in some cases however, psychologists have used extreme forms of deception. Stanley Milgrams experiment on deception (1964) is a classic example of an …

…ethical at the time it took place. It must be remembered, an experiment such as that of the obedience one, would not be allowed to be done today because of the strict code of ethics. The obedience experiment helped the psychological understanding of obedience in humans, the participants enabled this understanding, and the need to do a similar experiment it would not again be necessary. We conclude that Stanley Milgrams study of obedience was ethical.