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CHAPTER 3: Ethical Issues in the Conduct of Psychological Research 73FIGURE 3.6In the 1960s, participants in Stanley Milgram’s experiments were not told that the purpose of theresearch was to observe people’s obedience to authority, and many followed the researcher’sinstructions to give severe electric shock to another human being. For an update on thisresearch, see Burger (2009).Key ConceptOne of the most controversial ethical issues related to research is the use ofdeception. Deception can occur either through omission, the withholding of information,or commission, intentionally misinforming participants about an aspectof the research. Some people argue that research participants should neverbe deceived because ethical practice requires that the relationship betweenexperimenter and participant be open and honest (e.g., Baumrind, 1995). To some,deception is morally repugnant; it is no different from lying. Deception contradictsthe principle of informed consent. Despite the increased attention givento deception in research over the last several decades, the use of deception inpsychological research has not declined and remains a popular research strategy(Sharpe, Adair, & Roese, 1992). For example, Skitka and Sargis (2005) surveyedsocial psychologists who used the Internet as a data collection tool and found that27 percent of the reported studies involved deception of Internet participants.How is it that deception is still widely used, despite ethical controversies?One reason is that it is impossible to carry out certain kinds of researchwithout withholding information from participants about some aspects ofthe research (see Figure 3.6). In other situations, it is necessary to misinformparticipants in order to have them adopt certain attitudes or behaviors. Forexample, Kassin and Kiechel (1996) investigated factors affecting whetherpeople will falsely confess to having done something they did not do. Theirgoal was to understand factors that lead criminal suspects to falsely confessto a crime. In their experiment, the participants’ task was to type letters thatwere being read aloud. They were told not to hit the Alt key while typing becausethis would crash the computer. The computer was rigged to crash aftera brief time and the experimenter accused the participant of hitting the Altkey. Even though none of the participants had hit the Alt key, nearly 70% ofthe participants signed a written confession that they had done so. If the participantshad known in advance that the procedures were designed to elicit