The document outlines basic ethical principles for experimental research involving human and animal participants. For human participants, researchers must obtain informed consent, avoid deception, respect freedom to withdraw, and protect participants from harm and privacy violations. For animal research, guidelines require humane treatment, proper care and handling, and minimizing pain and distress. The document also discusses key assumptions of experimental psychology including empiricism, testability, determinism, parsimony, and operational definitions to connect unobservable concepts to concrete observations.

1. Basic Ethical Principles in
Experimental Research
Prepared by:
Orlando A. Pistan, MAEd-GC
Psychology Instructor

2. Basic Ethical Principles in
Experimental Research
The American
Psychological
Association have issued
ethical guidelines for
researchers involving
human participants and
animal subjects.

3. Human Participants
Responsibility.
The researcher should be responsible for protecting the rights
of human participants.
Establish objectives.
The researcher must establish the objectives of the research
and reach an agreement with participants prior to their
participation. Both participants and researcher must clarify the
obligations and responsibilities of each.

4. Human Participants
Informed consent.
Full awareness must be given to the participants regarding
the purpose of the experiment and must not use concealment
or deception.
Respect freedom.
The researcher must respect the individual’s freedom to
decline participation or withdraw from the experiment at
anytime.

5. Human Participants
Protection from harm.
Researchers must assist participants from physical and
mental discomfort and any changes that may arise from the
study.
Confidentiality.
Results and findings must be maintained to protect indue
invasion of privacy.

6. Animal Participants
Moral and Legal standard.
Researchers must abide to established laws and ordinances
and guidelines for the care and handling of animals.
Students are encouraged to select animals that are small
and manageable.

7. Animal Participants
The presence of qualified supervisors should be ensured so
that the students are trained in the care and handling of
animals.
The basic daily needs of each animal shall be of prime
concern. There must be special arrangement made during
weekends, holidays and vacation to protect animals from
sources of disturbance or harm.

8. Animal Participants
When the research experiment has been completed, the
supervisor is responsible for proper disposition of the
animals.
No student shall inflict pain, severe deprivation, or high
distress to the animals. All projects must be conducted in
accordance with American Psychological Association (APA)
principles for the care and use of animals.

9. Basic Assumptions of
Experimental Psychology
As a scientific endeavor,
experimental psychology shares
several assumptions with most
other sciences. Among these are
the following:
1. Empiricism
2. Testability
3. Determinism
4. Parsimony
5. Operational definition

10. Empiricism
Perhaps the most basic
assumption of psychological
science is that factual
statements about the world
must ultimately be based on
observations of the world.
This notion
of empiricism requires that
hypotheses and theories be
tested against observations
of the natural world rather
than on a prior reasoning,
intuition, or revelation.

11. Testability
Closely related to empiricism is the
idea that, to be useful, a scientific
law or theory must be testable with
available research methods. If a
theory cannot be tested in any
conceivable way then many
scientists consider the theory to be
meaningless. Testability
implies falsifiability, which is the
idea that some set of observations
could prove the theory to be
incorrect.
Testability has been emphasized in
psychology because influential or
well-known theories like those of
Freud have been difficult to test.

12. Determinism
Experimental psychologists, like
most scientists, accept the notion
of determinism.
This is the assumption that any
state of an object or event is
determined by prior states. In other
words, behavioral or mental
phenomena are typically stated in
terms of cause and effect. If a
phenomenon is sufficiently general
and widely confirmed, it may be
called a "law"; psychological
theories serve to organize and
integrate laws.

13. Parsimony
Another guiding idea of science is
parsimony, the search for simplicity.
For example, most scientists agree
that if two theories handle a set of
empirical observations equally well,
we should prefer the simpler or
more parsimonious of the two.
Occam's razor is a principle from
philosophy. Suppose there exist
two explanations for an occurrence.
In this case the one that requires
the least speculation is usually
correct.

14. Operational Definition
Some well-known behaviorists
such as Edward Tolman and Clark
Hull popularized the idea of
operationism, or operational
definition.
Operational definition implies that a
concept be defined in terms of
concrete, observable procedures.
Experimental psychologists attempt
to define currently unobservable
phenomena, such as mental
events, by connecting them to
observations.

15. Ethical Principles and Basic
Assumptions in Experimental Research
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