What the subjects have to say.

It is argued that if professional codes of ethics are to be effective in preventing unethical actions by psychologists, they should be partly based upon empirical research documenting how participants in our research feel about our research procedures. If, for instance, participants do not object to deception and if being deceived does not make them regard psychological research in a negative light, on what grounds would it be regarded as unethical to deceive them? In order to make informed decisions about the likely consequences of our research procedures upon participants, we need to rest such decisions upon research findings rather than upon professional prejudgements. An exploratory experiment is described which examines the effects of deception, physical discomfort (stress), and experimenter considerateness upon subjects' reactions both to the experiment in which they participated and upon their feelings about psychological research in general. Whilst the manipulations did affect subjects' reactions somewhat adversely, on the whole their reactions were positive. In addition, a direct comparison is made between the reactions of subjects in a passive role-playing condition (PRPs) and those who actually took part, to see if the reactions of the PRPs could be a useful guide to those of actual participants. If so, then investigators concerned about the possible adverse effects of their research upon participants could use the reactions of PRPs as one criterion by which to judge the ethicality of their proposed research. It was found that PRPs overestimate the degree of stress involved, but are otherwise reasonably accurate in predicting how actual participants feel. Implications of the results for our ethical codes are discussed.