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CHAPTER 3: Ethical Issues in the Conduct of Psychological Research 65only minimal risk for college students. When the possibility of injury is judgedto be more than minimal, individuals are considered to be at risk. When a studyplaces participants at risk, the researcher has more serious obligations to protecttheir welfare.Dealing with Risk• Whether “at risk” or “at minimal risk,” research participants must beprotected. More safeguards are needed as risks become greater.• To protect participants from social risks, information they provide shouldbe anonymous, or if that is not possible, the confidentiality of theirinformation should be maintained.Even if the potential risk is small, researchers should try to minimize riskand protect participants. For instance, simply by stating at the beginning ofa memory experiment that the tasks do not measure intelligence or personalityreduces the stress that some participants experience. In situations wherethe possibility of harm is judged to be significantly greater than that occurringin daily life, the researcher’s obligation to protect participants increases correspondingly.For example, when participants are exposed to the possibility of seriousemotional stress in a psychology experiment, an IRB could require that aclinical psychologist be available to counsel individuals about their experiencein the study. As you can imagine, online research poses difficult ethical dilemmasin this regard. Participants can experience emotional distress in the contextof an Internet study just as they do in a laboratory-based study. However, becausethey are absent from the research situation, researchers may be less ableto monitor distress and reduce harm during online studies (Kraut et al., 2004).One approach might be to obtain preliminary data with the goal of identifyingthose who might be at risk and to exclude them from the actual study. It may bethe case, however, that studies with high risk may not be ethically performedon the Internet (Kraut et al., 2004).Research activity involving more than minimal risk to participants shouldnot be carried out unless alternative methods of data collection with lower riskhave been explored. In some cases, descriptive approaches involving observationor questionnaires should be used instead of experimental treatments.Researchers can also take advantage of naturally occurring “treatments” thatdo not involve experimentally inducing stress. For example, Anderson (1976)interviewed owner-managers of small businesses that had been damaged byhurricane floods. He found that there was an optimum level of stress that ledto effective problem solving and coping behaviors by the participants. Aboveor below this optimum stress level, problem-solving performance decreased. Asimilar relationship has been demonstrated in a number of experimental laboratorytasks using experimenter-induced stress.In order to protect research participants from social injury, data collectionshould keep participants’ responses anonymous by asking participants not touse their names or any other identifying information. When this is not possible,researchers should keep participants’ responses confidential by removingany identifying information from their records during the research. When the