Responsible Conduct of Research Training and Trust Between Research Postgraduate Students and Supervisors

The federal regulations of human research were written to permit the use of discretion so that research can fit the circumstances under which it is conducted. For example, the researcher and institutional review board (IRB) could waive or alter some informed consent elements if they deem this the morally and scientifically best way to conduct the research. To do so, however, researchers and IRBs would first have to use mature moral and scientific judgment. They might also have to rely on empirical research to discover the most effective way to act on their moral sense (e.g., to discover how best to approach potential research participants and explain the nature and purpose of the research participation for which they are being recruited, to ensure comprehension and competent decision making). On discovering the most ethical way to proceed, they would then need to look to the federal regulations of human research to discover how to document their decision and justify it within that somewhat flexible regulatory structure. Unfortunately, many IRBs and researchers fail to take these sensible steps to solve ethical problems and proceed immediately to a default requirement of the regulations that places science at odds with the regulations and, ostensibly, with ethics. The following articles in this special issue are about the process of learning to engage in ethical problem solving and using the flexibility permitted by the federal regulations. These articles extricate researchers from the mindset that has gotten them into trouble, and, ideally, provoke them to use mature common sense and moral judgment.     

A Social Psychological Perspective

Ethics is normative; ethics indicates, in broad terms, what researchers should do. For example, researchers should respect human participants. Empirical study tells us what actually happens. Empirical research is often needed to fine-tune the best ways to achieve normative objectives, for example, to discover how best to achieve the dual aims of gaining important knowledge and respecting participants. Ethical decision making by scientists and institutional review boards should not be based on hunches and anecdotes (e.g., about such matters as what information potential research participants would want to know and what they understand, or what they consider to be acceptable risks). These questions should be answered through empirical research. Some of the preceding articles in this special issue illustrate uses of empirical research on research ethics. This article places empirical research on research ethics into broader perspective and challenges investigators to use the tools of their disciplines to proactively solve ethical problems for which there currently exist no empirically proven solutions.     

Empirical research on research ethics

Ethics is normative; ethics indicates, in broad terms, what researchers should do. For example, researchers should respect human participants. Empirical study tells us what actually happens. Empirical research is often needed to fine-tune the best ways to achieve normative objectives, for example, to discover how best to achieve the dual aims of gaining important knowledge and respecting participants. Ethical decision making by scientists and institutional review boards should not be based on hunches and anecdotes (e.g., about such matters as what information potential research participants would want to know and what they understand, or what they consider to be acceptable risks). These questions should be answered through empirical research. Some of the preceding articles in this special issue illustrate uses of empirical research on research ethics. This article places empirical research on research ethics into broader perspective and challenges investigators to use the tools of their disciplines to proactively solve ethical problems for which there currently exist no empirically proven solutions.     

Utilitarianism and the Ethics of Professional Psychologists

Evidence exists that behavioral and social science researchers have been frustrated with regulations and institutional review boards (IRBs) from the 1970s through today. Making matters worse, many human participants protection instruction programs—now mandated by IRBs—offer inadequate reasons why researchers should comply with regulations and IRBs. Promoting compliance either for its own sake or to avoid penalties is contrary to the developmental aims of moral education and may be ineffective in fostering the responsible conduct of research. This article explores the concept of professional virtue and argues that compliance is capable of becoming a professional virtue like scientific honesty. This requires, however, that regulatory and IRB demands contribute to human well-being and to the aims of research as a profession and that researchers, therefore, internalize the norms that underlie regulatory and IRB demands. This, in turn, requires a series of changes in the way society develops, promulgates, and enforces regulatory and IRB rules. The challenge is, simply put, to embed compliance into the world of living morality.     

Judgment Difficulty and the Moral Intensity of Unethical Acts: A Cognitive Response Analysis of Dual Process Ethical Judgment Formation

This study analyzes cognitive responses to explore a dual processing perspective of ethical judgment formation. Specifically, the study investigates how two factors, judgment task difficulty and moral intensity, influence the extent of deontological and teleological processing and their effects on ethical judgments. A single experiment on 110 undergraduate research participants found that judgment task difficulty affected the extent of deontological and teleological processing. Although moral intensity affected ethical judgments, it did not produce effects on either deontological or teleological cognitive responses. Results did not support the hypotheses that deontological and teleological cognitive responses would mediate the relationships between the experimental factors and ethical judgments. Overall, the results support continued research of factors that affect the nature of information processing in ethical decision situations and the use of cognitive response analysis as a tool for conducting this research.     

Deception research involving children: ethical practices and paradoxes

This commentary draws on the thoughtful contemplation and innovative procedures described in the special section articles as well as current professional codes and federal regulations to highlight ethical practices and paradoxes of deception research involving children. The discussion is organized around 4 key decision points for the conduct of responsible deception research involving children: (a) evaluating the scientific validity and social value of deception research within the context of alternative methodologies, (b) avoiding and minimizing experimental risk, (c) the use of child assent procedures as questionable ethical safeguards, and (d) debriefing as both remedy and risk.     

Is compliance a professional virtue of researchers? Reflections on promoting the responsible conduct of research

Evidence exists that behavioral and social science researchers have been frustrated with regulations and institutional review boards (IRBs) from the 1970s through today. Making matters worse, many human participants protection instruction programs--now mandated by IRBs--offer inadequate reasons why researchers should comply with regulations and IRBs. Promoting compliance either for its own sake or to avoid penalties is contrary to the developmental aims of moral education and may be ineffective in fostering the responsible conduct of research. This article explores the concept of professional virtue and argues that compliance is capable of becoming a professional virtue like scientific honesty. This requires, however, that regulatory and IRB demands contribute to human well-being and to the aims of research as a profession and that researchers, therefore, internalize the norms that underlie regulatory and IRB demands. This, in turn, requires a series of changes in the way society develops, promulgates, and enforces regulatory and IRB rules. The challenge is, simply put, to embed compliance into the world of living morality.     

权力感对道德判断的影响及其理论解释:基于CNI模型的视角

权力感指个体对控制他人和自身的能力的感知。现有权力对道德判断的影响研究主要使用传统两难困境范式,围绕权力感影响主体道德判断的功利论倾向与道义论倾向展开,且研究观点尚未达成共识。由于传统两难困境范式的局限性,研究者开发了道德判断CNI模型探究权力感对道德判断的影响,该模型为两者之间的关系提供了新的解释路径。未来研究可关注CNI模型视角下不同类型权力感对道德判断的影响以及探讨特质性权力感与情境性权力感对个体道德判断差异的联合作用。     

Everyday dilemmas: New directions on the judgment and resolution of benevolence–integrity dilemmas

Many everyday dilemmas reflect a conflict between two moral motivations: the desire to adhere to universal principles (integrity) and the desire to improve the welfare of specific individuals in need (benevolence). In this article, we bridge research on moral judgment and trust to introduce a framework that establishes three central distinctions between benevolence and integrity: (1) the degree to which they rely on impartiality, (2) the degree to which they are tied to emotion versus reason, and (3) the degree to which they can be evaluated in isolation. We use this framework to explain existing findings and generate novel predictions about the resolution and judgment of benevolence–integrity dilemmas. Though ethical dilemmas have long been a focus of moral psychology research, recent research has relied on dramatic dilemmas that involve conflicts of utilitarianism and deontology and has failed to represent the ordinary, yet psychologically taxing dilemmas that we frequently face in everyday life. The present article fills this gap, thereby deepening our understanding of moral judgment and decision making and providing practical insights on how decision makers resolve moral conflict.     

移情在道德强度对企业道德决策影响中的作用

摘 要 本研究将一种重要的道德情绪--移情引入问题权变模型中,以探讨移情因素在道德强度对企业道德决策影响中的作用。本研究基于情景研究法,随机选取256名MBA学生为被试,要求被试基于所提供情景中假想参与者的行为,回答随后测量道德决策(道德识别、道德判断和道德意图)、移情反应、主观道德强度及移情特质的问题。结果发现,1）移情反应在道德强度对企业道德决策的影响中具有中介作用;2）移情关怀特质会通过影响主观道德强度和移情反应而作用于企业道德决策;3)结果大小、社会舆论和效应可能性对道德判断和道德意图的影响机制各有特点。     

The Emergence of Clinical Research Ethics Consultation: Insights From a National Collaborative

The increasing complexity of human subjects research and its oversight has prompted researchers, as well as institutional review boards (IRBs), to have a forum in which to discuss challenging or novel ethical issues not fully addressed by regulations. Research ethics consultation (REC) services provide such a forum. In this article, we rely on the experiences of a national Research Ethics Consultation Collaborative that collected more than 350 research ethics consultations in a repository and published 18 challenging cases with accompanying ethical commentaries to highlight four contexts in which REC can be a valuable resource. REC assists: 1) investigators before and after the regulatory review; 2) investigators, IRBs, and other research administrators facing challenging and novel ethical issues; 3) IRBs and investigators with the increasing challenges of informed consent and risk/benefit analysis; and 4) in providing flexible and collaborative assistance to overcome study hurdles, mediate conflicts within a team, or directly engage with research participants. Institutions that have established, or plan to establish, REC services should work to raise the visibility of their service and engage in open communication with existing clinical ethics consult services as well as the IRB. While the IRB system remains the foundation for the ethical review of research, REC can be a valuable service for investigators, regulators, and research participants aligned with the goal of supporting ethical research.     

道德推脱对员工道德决策的影响：德行领导的调节作用

运用问卷调查的方法,以819名员工为研究被试,探讨了德行领导在道德推脱影响道德决策过程中的调节作用。采用层次回归分析的方法研究发现：德行领导对道德推脱与道德识别、道德判断之间的关系具有调节作用;但德行领导不会对道德推脱与道德意图之间的关系产生调节作用,而会对道德意图产生显著的直接影响。     

Dealing with the long-term social implications of research

Biomedical and behavioral research may affect strongly held social values and thereby create significant controversy over whether such research should be permitted in the first place. Institutional review boards (IRBs) responsible for protecting the rights and welfare of participants in research are sometimes faced with review of protocols that have significant implications for social policy and the potential for negative social consequences. Although IRB members often raise concerns about potential long-term social implications in protocol review, federal regulations strongly discourage IRBs from considering them in their decisions. Yet IRBs often do consider the social implications of research protocols and sometimes create significant delays in initiating or even prevent such research. The social implications of research are important topics for public scrutiny and professional discussion. This article examines the reasons that the federal regulations preclude IRBs from assessing the social risks of research, and examines alternative approaches that have been used with varying success by national advisory groups to provide such guidance. The article concludes with recommendations for characteristics of a national advisory group that could successfully fulfill this need, including sustainability, independence, diverse and relevant expertise, and public transparency.     

Contributions of empirical research to medical ethics

Empirical research pertaining to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), clinician behaviors related to do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders and substituted judgment suggests potential contributions to medical ethics. Research quantifying the likelihood of surviving CPR points to the need for further philosophical analysis of the limitations of the patient autonomy in decision making, the nature and definition of medical futility, and the relationship between futility and professional standards. Research on DNR orders has identified barriers to the goal of patient involvement in these life and death discussions. The initial data on surrogate decision making also points to the need for a reexamination of the moral basis for substituted judgment, the moral authority of proxy decision making and the second-order status of the best interests standard. These examples of empirical research suggest that an interplay between empirical research, ethical analysis and policy development may represent a new form of interdisciplinary scholarship to improve clinical medicine.     

Ethical and Regulatory Considerations for Using Social Media Platforms to Locate and Track Research Participants

As social media becomes increasingly popular, human subjects researchers are able to use these platforms to locate, track, and communicate with study participants, thereby increasing participant retention and the generalizability and validity of research. The use of social media; however, raises novel ethical and regulatory issues that have received limited attention in the literature and federal regulations. We review research ethics and regulations and outline the implications for maintaining participant privacy, respecting participant autonomy, and promoting researcher transparency when using social media to locate and track participants. We offer a rubric that can be used in future studies to determine ethical and regulation-consistent use of social media platforms and illustrate the rubric using our study team’s experience with Facebook. We also offer recommendations for both researchers and institutional review boards that emphasize the importance of well-described procedures for social media use as part of informed consent.     

How clinicians make (or avoid) moral judgments of patients: implications of the evidence for relationships and research

Physicians, nurses, and other clinicians readily acknowledge being troubled by encounters with patients who trigger moral judgments. For decades social scientists have noted that moral judgment of patients is pervasive, occurring not only in egregious and criminal cases but also in everyday situations in which appraisals of patients' social worth and culpability are routine. There is scant literature, however, on the actual prevalence and dynamics of moral judgment in healthcare. The indirect evidence available suggests that moral appraisals function via a complex calculus that reflects variation in patient characteristics, clinician characteristics, task, and organizational factors. The full impact of moral judgment on healthcare relationships, patient outcomes, and clinicians' own well-being is yet unknown. The paucity of attention to moral judgment, despite its significance for patient-centered care, communication, empathy, professionalism, healthcare education, stereotyping, and outcome disparities, represents a blind spot that merits explanation and repair. New methodologies in social psychology and neuroscience have yielded models for how moral judgment operates in healthcare and how research in this area should proceed. Clinicians, educators, and researchers would do well to recognize both the legitimate and illegitimate moral appraisals that are apt to occur in healthcare settings.     

Hypothesis Testing as a Moral Choice

Although many researchers may perceive empirical hypothesis testing using inferential statistics to be a value free process, I argue that any conclusion based on inferential statistics contains an important and intractable value judgment. Consequently, I conclude that researchers should use the same rationale for examining the ethical ramifications of committing errors in statistical inference that they use to examine the ethical parameters of a proposed research design.     

时间距离提高伦理判断

本文从识解水平理论角度研究问题表征对伦理判断的影响。本文推断,事件的时间距离使得人们更容易形成高识解表征,能更好地辨别决策困境中的伦理原则;未来结果考虑特征高的管理者更关注决策的长期后果,也倾向于维护伦理原则。研究用两个实验递进验证了假设。139位大学生被试参加了实验1,结果支持了假设;实验2采用92位MBA学生的样本重复检验结论,并进一步验证未来结果考虑如何调节影响时间距离与伦理判断之间的关系。     

The Stories We Tell: Introduction to the Special Issue on Ethical Challenges in Community Psychology Research and Practice

This Special Issue examines ethical challenges in community psychology research and practice. The literature on ethics in community psychology has remained largely abstract and aspirational, with few concrete examples and case studies, so the goal of this Special Issue was to expand our written discourse about ethical dilemmas in our field. In these articles, researchers and practitioners share stories of specific ethical challenges they faced and how they sought to resolve them. These first‐person narratives examine how ethical challenges come about, how community psychology values inform ethical decision making, and how lessons learned from these experiences can inform an ethical framework for community psychology.