Ethical issues surrounding human participants research using the Internet

The Internet appears to offer psychologists doing research unrestricted access to infinite amounts and types of data. However, the ethical issues surrounding the use of data and data collection methods are challenging research review boards at many institutions. This article illuminates some of the obstacles facing researchers who wish to take advantage of the Internet's flexibility. The applications of the APA ethical codes for conducting research on human participants on the Internet are reviewed. The principle of beneficence, as well as privacy and confidentiality, informed consent, deception, and avoiding harm are all illustrated through the use of a hypothetical online study.     

Separate personality traits from states to predict depression

Results have been inconsistent regarding the ability of personality measures to predict future depression severity levels, leading some researchers to question the validity of personality assessment, especially when patients are acutely depressed. Using a combination of regression and factor analytic techniques, we separated the variance of personality measures into stable trait and variable state-affect components. Findings supported the hypotheses that depression severity measured at different time points would correlate with both stable trait and concurrent state-affect components in personality measures, whereas change in depression severity would correlate with state changes but not with stable trait scores. Thus, personality assessments tap both state affect and trait variance, with the state-affect variance masking the trait variance when patients are depressed.     

Implementing ethics in the professions: Examples from environmental epidemiology

The need to integrate ethics into professional life, from the grassroots up, has been recognized, and a comprehensive ethics program has been proposed as a model. The model includes the four dimensions of: consensus building, ethics guidelines development and review, education, and implementation. The activities of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) are presented as examples and compared with the proposed model. Several innovative activities are described and incentives for ethical professional conduct are highlighted. The examples are provided for emulation by other professional organizations in the hope that, thereby, greater protection of the public interest will be achieved.     

Complicity in Thought and Language: Toleration of Wrong

Complicity as “toleration of wrong” is deeply rooted in Western language and narratives. It is based on assumptions about the self, our relationship to the world and personal accountability that differ from the Common Law's and moral theology's standard doctrines. How we blame others for “tolerating wrong” depends upon the moral force of public discourse and upon the meaning of censure as exhortation. Censure as blame is usually retrospective, while censure as exhortation is forward-looking and stresses moral maturity and flourishing.     

Source memory in Parkinson's disease

Three experiments (ns = 14 per group) are reported which investigated the ability of Parkinson patients to remember the characteristics of conditions under which a memory was acquired. In Exp. 1, subjects were required to indicate for each item in a recognition memory test whether it was spoken by Experimenter 1 or by Experimenter 2 (external-external source memory). In Exp. 2, subjects had to indicate for each item whether it was generated by themselves or by the experimenter (internal-external source memory). In Exp. 3, subjects had to judge whether an item was generated by themselves in saying or in thinking (internal-internal source memory). We found that patients with Parkinson's disease were not impaired in the previous two kinds of source memory (Exp. 1 and 2) but were impaired in internal-internal source memory (Exp. 3) relative to the age-matched control groups. In addition, both groups' performance could be improved when given distinctive cues, i.e., perceptual cues in Exp. 1 and different-domain cues in Exp. 2. These results suggest that the availability of cues was critical for Parkinson's disease in source memory. Finally, the result of Exp. 2 also showed generation effects for patients with Parkinson's disease. The generation effect refers to better memory of information by people when they had to produce it, e.g., producing associates to a word, compared with memory of information given to them.     

Toward an Evolutionary Psychology of Religion and Personality

Evolutionary psychology is an emerging paradigm for the social sciences that offers a powerful metatheoretical framework for personality psychology and, as I attempt to demonstrate in this article, for the psychology of religion as well. I argue that religion is not an evolved adaptation; rather, the diverse range of beliefs, behavior, and experience that we collectively refer to as religion emerge as byproducts of numerous, domain-specific psychological mechanisms that evolved to solve other (mundane) adaptive problems. These include mechanisms for reasoning about the natural world (naive physics and biology), about other people' minds (naive psychology), and about specific kinds of interpersonal relationships (attachment, kinship, social exchange, coalitions, status hierarchies).     

“Theobiology”: Attempting to Understand God and Ourselves

Theobiology, describing the interface between theology and biology, is proposed as a means to help us in our attempt to understand God, God's world, and ourselves. This embodiment of theological knowledge includes the relationship of humans to plants and animals, to the environment or God's world of creation, to God. Humans experience through their bodies and bodily functions, their senses and perceptions, all knowledge, including theological, psychological, and sociological knowledge. Gender, perhaps the largest division in any species, is a very important issue in biology and in theobiology. The gender and attributes associated with God and Christ—those of the male—have alienated and disenfranchised female persons. A balance between flesh and spirit, the sacred and the secular, women and men is vital if we are to achieve a healthy life and to live as a loving Creator would want all to live—in love, peace, and harmony, with caring and mutual respect among all that make up life—plant, animal, environment, and God.     

Interchurch Couples: The Issue of Acceptance

Although the literature suggests that couples who belong to two different churches or denominations (interchurch marriages) may face lack of acceptance, there is practically no research on this issue. Based on a recent qualitative study, this article explores the ways in which interchurch couples struggle to gain acceptance. Also discussed are the attitudes or factors that relate to level of acceptance, as well as the strategies that interchurch couples utilize to deal with lack of acceptance.