Deception in Psychology: Moral Costs and Benefits of Unsought Self-Knowledge

Abstract

Is it ethically permissible to use deception in psychological experiments? We argue that, provided some requirements are satisfied, it is possible to use deceptive methods without producing significant harm to research participants and without any significant violation of their autonomy. We also argue that methodological deception is at least at the moment the only effective means by which one can acquire morally significant information about certain behavioral tendencies. Individuals in general, and research participants in particular, gain self-knowledge which can help them improve their autonomous decision-making. The community gains collective self-knowledge that, once shared, can play a role in shaping education, informing policies and in general creating a more efficient and just society.

Acknowledgments

In the preparation of this article, we acknowledge the stimulus and support of the EURECA project on delimiting the research concept and the research activities, sponsored by the European Commission, DG-Research, as part of the Science and Society Research Program—6^th Framework. We are also grateful to Stephen Clarke and Chris Herrera for many useful suggestions on how to improve the article. The audience of the Research Seminar Series organized by the Centre for the Study of Global Ethics at the University of Birmingham (UK), where an earlier version of this article was presented, provided stimulating discussion.

Notes

¹We say “at the moment” because we do not want to rule out the possibility that information about the behavioral tendencies studied by social psychologists can in the future be obtained without the use of methodological deception. For example, neuroimaging techniques might render deceptive methods unnecessary in certain areas of investigation.

²Some argue that asking research participants for their informed consent is not always a necessary measure to ensure that their autonomy is respected. There is a lively debate in the bioethical literature on the relation between informed consent and the respect for autonomy that we have no time to explore here. It will suffice to say that, even in the context of biomedical research, whether informed consent is necessary for autonomy is an open question (O'Neill, 2003).

³Some may want to argue that people have a right not to be exposed to knowledge about themselves that might be psychologically distressing, unless of course they want and intentionally seek to acquire such knowledge. On this view, research participants have a right not to be deceived by researchers aiming at uncovering discriminatory behavioral tendencies. This view seems implausible. Consider the following analogy. Acquiring the knowledge that humans are the product of a process of biological evolution that was not designed by an intelligent mind and that started 4 billion years ago might be very psychologically distressing for a person who believes that humans were created by a benevolent and omnipotent God a few thousand years ago. But in spite of this, no right of this person is violated by the teaching of evolutionary theory in schools and universities and by the publication of popular books that present evidence in favor of it. To many believers, the only thought that they were not created by God but by a “blind” physical process is disheartening. They might think that, if there is no Creator, their life has no meaning. Therefore, the impact of evolutionary theory on someone's self-esteem can be even more significant than that produced by a psychological experiment which reveals some unconscious dispositions. Of course, one is not “forced” to read books defending evolutionary theory, whereas one has no choice but to be exposed to unsought self-knowledge if one takes part in a psychological experiment involving a certain form of deception. But then again, if evolutionary theory is taught in school, one cannot really avoid being exposed to it either. These issues are very complex, and point at how difficult it is to determine the sphere of application of an alleged “right not to know”.