Deception in Psychological ResearchThe Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

DECEPTION IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH
THE TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS EXPERIMENT

The use of deception in psychological research can be traced back to the 1950’s. It was an effort to establish a scientific basis for social psychology. Deception made it possible for researchers to observe and measure behavior in a controlled environment, and neutralize attempts by subjects to respond in whatever manner they perceived to be correct, thus compromising the results of the experiment.
Deception, according to the American Heritage Dictionary (1991), is “the use of an act or practice causing a person to believe what is not true”. A simpler explanation, as it applies to psychology, would be to either deliberately conceal relevant information from subjects, or give them false or misleading information. The following is a cost-benefit approach to the use of deception in psychological research.
The American Psychological Association integrated guidelines for deceptive research into its 1973 Code of...