in a top-secret operation in the 1950s codenamed mk-ultra the cia administered a powerful drug called lsd to u.s citizens without their knowledge and the purpose of the study was to see if lsd could be used as a type of weapon to control people's minds i know this sounds like a movie script or some sort of dystopian novel but it actually happened and to me this is a perfect case study and starting point to examine ethics in psychology research [Music] alright guys welcome to psych explained in this video we're going to discuss ethics and at its core ethics and psychology research is the understanding that participants in the study have certain rights and it's the researchers responsibility to make decisions with the participants rights in mind now these rights are typically laid out as guidelines or principles that were developed by the american psychological association commonly known as the apa and the ones we're going to talk about today include informed consent protection from harm deception freedom from coercion debriefing and confidentiality slash anonymity and as we talk about these principles we're going to refer back to project mkultra and see which ethical principles were violated and which ones were upheld so let's get started so before a study begins there should be some sort of mutual understanding between the researchers and the participants regarding what's about to happen and this essentially lays foundation for what we refer to as informed consent and if we break down these two terms you'll understand what informed consent means inform means to be made aware of right you're informing somebody about what's about to happen and consent means to agree so the participants know what's about to happen and they agree to do it some sort of signed document if we break this down into bullet point form here is kind of the main takeaways first informed consent must occur before the study begins so not during the study not after the study participants should know what the study is about before they actually enter the research study also and most importantly is that participation should be voluntary okay what it should be it should be voluntary right voluntary participation as opposed to the opposite which would be involuntary participation right they should choose and willingly enter the study without being let's say forced to do it and also with voluntary participation is they also should have the opportunity to withdraw or leave the study at any time right so if you're a participant you say i don't want to be here anymore right this makes me uncomfortable i hate being here well the researcher can't say well while you sign the signed document you have to stay if they want to leave they want to withdraw that is part of informed consent also with informed consent knowing this is before the study begins participants should be made aware of the purpose of the study right why are we here right what is we what are we hoping to achieve by me signing up for the study and even things like logistics you know how long am i going to be here what do i have to do am i taking a survey so what are the logistics and purpose as well and lastly participants should be made aware of the risks involved you know will i be harmed in any way will i feel anxious will i feel stressed so informed consent is all about voluntary participation a participant knows what they're about to get into and then the study begins so here's a question how does it connect to our study of project m k ultra now just to recap and this is a true story the cia purposely bought the world supply of lsd to be used as kind of an experimental truth serum kind of a mind controlling drug to see if it can actually work against let's say an enemy okay i know it sounds like dystopian novel but it actually happens now did the participants know they were being given lsd most of them did not so what would that tell you that broke informed consent there was no informed consent there was no voluntary participation so under each one we'll explain how this connects to say project mk ultra which is that people right they weren't participants because they didn't sign up for anything these human subjects people uh were not aware right we're not aware of where they were given they we're given lsd right so it's not just that they were not aware that they were given lsd they also didn't even know they were in a study in the first place a lot of them just went to brothels or a lot of them went to different places and somebody just slipped a drug inside and they didn't even know what was happening okay all right so there's informed consent all right what's next we have protection from harm it's me this is the most important one no matter what research study you're doing you really have one goal right obviously your goal is to you know advance scientific literature but it's to make sure that nobody in your study is harmed now it's impossible to have no harm at all right you know you're going to feel stressed a participant might feel anxious you can't control that so it's not about eliminating you know all harm the idea of this is you really want to minimize harm right minimize harm as much as possible but understand harm comes in many forms right harm can be physical right an electric shock uh blood pressure goes up right there's something physically harmed with the participants another type of harm you want to minimize is probably the most damning in terms of long-term effects which is psychological harm right this would be like emotional distress and all those type of things so we want to minimize the harm now here's the big question how much harm is acceptable if you're doing a really good study right and a lot of this is subjective right yes people participants might have some harm but you can make an argument well it's for the betterment of scientific research right so it's okay to harm a little bit if the benefits away the costs and this is sometimes referred to as cost benefits or risk benefit cost benefit benefit analysis which is essentially saying analysis you know do the pros outweigh the cons right just use your hand right pros i weigh the cons and once again it's quite subjective but you have to make that argument if i use my little drawing here you have to make the argument that the benefits of the study outweigh the risks right the benefits outweigh the risks and if you can argue the benefits outweigh the risks that were advancing scientific knowledge or learning so much and yes people might suffer a little bit well then it might be worth it okay all right so let's go back to our study of project mk ultra were people harmed absolutely now some people take lsd for recreational purposes right because they want to it's fun in their minds and it creates a euphoric experience but imagine me giving this hallucinogenic drug but you didn't know you took it so there's so much harm being inflicted on these participants or people who didn't know they were taking it so in this study there is a lot of harm there was no protection from harm there was tons of distress and we kind of lay out you know a couple of this idea of distress emotional distress there was you know fear right why am i feeling the way i do right they didn't know they were taking lsd and anxiety uh fear anxiety and panic uh and even hallucinations right it's a strong hallucinogenic drug so there was a lot of uh distress and discomfort and fear and anxiety that occurred uh there was absolutely no protection from heart okay what's our third one our third one is deception now this one is a little interesting because deception can be used but only in certain circumstances but let's actually dive into what deception actually means so deception you know a synonym means to mislead okay mislead okay or you might say you know to hide the truth hide the truth okay and it's important to note that sometimes deception is used and it is important right there are a lot of famous studies and we'll talk about these in a moment where you have to kind of hide the truth or or to mislead participants because it's just part of the study and without it you're not going to get the results you need you know just for example some very famous studies in psychology that have used deception are like milgram shock experiments and you're more than welcome to research milgram shock experiment but the participants didn't know that the equipment was fake and they didn't know that they were not really electrocuting the other participants you could of course look that up and another famous study is the ash conformity study right in which participants were led to believe that uh you know everybody around them were part of the study but everybody around them were really part of the research team they were called confederates a confederate is somebody who pretends to be part of a study but they're really part of the research team so generally speaking according to the apa deception is really not allowed okay but it is allowed okay so we'll say you know deception you know is permitted is allowed is allowed if okay if and what is that if once again cost benefit analysis if you can prove that one nobody's really being harmed right you can kind of eliminate that after the study but also that the the benefits away that you're advancing scientific literature that is really important for the scientific and psychological community that deception is is meaningful for the study so in general we don't want to mislead our participants but sometimes you do if the benefits outweigh the costs so was anybody misled or was there hiding the truth in our project mk ultra well there was a lot of it in one big example participants were led to believe that they were taking an experimental drug to treat schizophrenia what they didn't tell them was that it was lsd and they took this drug every single day for a year right so that's an extreme example of deception another example of let's say you know misleading or hiding the truth is that a lot of the studies took place at a brothel and a brothel is where prostitutes and sex workers work and they would lure men in and the men didn't realize is that the prostitutes were working for the cia and they would slip lsd in their drink and then they would be interrogated right what do you know and and how does this lcd make you feel so in our study you know coming back to project mk ultra where is deception is that the prostitutes and the brothels the sex workers workers were actually confederates they were part of the research team helping out the cia veteran right so there are a lot of examples of deception this is not one that would be good all right so what's another apa ethical principle we have coercion now the same way we broke down deception let's break down coercion to coerce right as a verb and coerce essentially means to force or pressure someone pressure someone to do something against their will right they don't want to do it but they're being unwittingly forced involuntarily to do something this is why we often say freedom from coercion right freedom of being forced to do something against your will and this might be in a research study it could be just being in a study you know being a study i don't want to be here but i'm going to make you be here anyways right take this bill or it could be something like just staying in a study right maybe you want to leave but they won't let you leave so there's a lot of coercion it could be also saying or do something that you don't want to do now how would a researcher coerce somebody to do something right how would that actually happen well typically it deals with threats okay some sort of threats now threats do not have to be you know somebody puts a gun to your head it doesn't have to be so obvious a threat could be somebody uses their power right the cia is a pretty powerful agency their power or influence over you or maybe if they threaten you by saying if you don't do x i will do y so there's a lot of coercion that takes place so how would this apply to project mkultra well people were threatened that if they didn't do what the ci wanted them to do there would be consequences so in one big example i'll write this down here people were threatened the rat end [Music] to extend their trip let me explain what this means people did not realize that they were given lsd and when they were being interrogated to see how the drug was affecting them the cia officials might have said something like if you don't follow or listen to our directions we're going to make your psychedelic trip worse we're going to give you more lsd now realize they didn't even know what was happening they didn't know they were taking lsd so somebody tells you you know we're going to threaten you and make this this trip this bad experience worse that would be a form of coercion all right another way you could think about this of coercion is that some of the people who are given uh lsd were mentally ill or drug addicts in other words they weren't in the right state of mind to one give informed consent but they were being pressured to do something because they didn't know otherwise they weren't in the right state of mind and they were pressured by the influence and power of these people all right so what are our last two let's talk about debriefing now we know informed consent occurs before study begins what about debriefing debriefing is the opposite it occurs after the study ends okay and what is the point of debriefing there's a lot of things that happen in a study and debriefing is the opportunity for the researchers to really let it all out right here's what we did here's why we did it do you have any questions participants can ask questions and you know seek advice or seek help this is where all the things happen to make sure that everything is cool everything is calm after the study ends and if we break it down this occurs once after the study participants might explain once again the purpose of the study you know here's what we did and why we did it they might also reveal any deception okay so yes you were deceived but here's why we did it and then lastly you know do you have any questions you know do you have any questions about the study or the data or why we're here uh the questions could also be in the long in the long lines of you know i don't really feel good right i feel anxious why do i feel anxious and it's at this opportunity where's the researcher's responsibility to return people to kind of a normal baseline from before the study began right if his participant is feeling anxious or stressed during the debriefing session is the reason needing to calm them down and making sure that you know if you need any extra help what do you need how can i help you if there is any issues okay now how could this apply to our project mk ultra and by the way please research this this operation it is absolutely fascinating and once again it sounds like a dystopian novel but it actually happened of course there was no debriefing right it wasn't like you know here's why we gave you lsd and have a nice day right there was absolutely no follow-up right not how you doing hey by the way we gave you lsd three months ago how you doing right there was none of that it was just kind of here you go go with dr mary way and we'll see you later okay all right so what's our last ethical principle we have confidentiality and anonymity what both of these have in common is about participants rights participants have certain rights now what are these rights well let's break down what these two terms means confidentiality and anonymity starting with anonymity and you might have heard the word anonymous which is essentially saying the same thing which is we don't know who the participants are right we don't know your name we don't know your address we don't know your social security number you're just a data point you're just a number in our study right in other words if you ever fill out a survey people don't know who you are you just gave information right that's anonymity but if you're in a study and you have to give information you have to make sure that you keep that information private right we don't want the name dr kushner out there in the public if i participate in a research study and there's maybe some controversial or very you know private results so we have keeping information private and not really knowing who we are so participants have rights those rights are they the rights to privacy and to keep information you know if you have to actually do give your name to keep the information in a secure environment in a secure environment okay that might be for example keeping the information in a database and a computer that nobody can get a hold of right it's not going on facebook it's not going on social media no one has access to this information so the whole point of this box is privacy uh security and making sure that we protect our participants so how does confidentiality and anonymity connect to our project mk ultra was there a breach of confidentiality and anonymity well at first they did a really good job because they didn't want the public to know what happened right they did a really good job securing the names of the people who took the drugs but over time as you see this headline from washington post the information eventually got out right this covert operation was made public and the public was horrified that this actually occurred and if you look at this today and you want to go online and look up mk ultra you can actually see the people or at least some of the people who are given the drugs a lot of them are pretty famous some of them are like whitey bulger who is the boston crime boss and mobster uh ken kisi the author of one flew over the cougars nest there are a lot of famous people who are part of these trials so yes there might have been some privacy but unfortunately is there identities identities identities uh we're not kept secure right because we know today who was in the study okay so yeah maybe it was private first but today we do know all right guys thanks for watching i really hope you learned something now it's important to know the apa is not the only organization in the world to protect participants rights or have some sort of code of ethics we also have the institutional review board or the irb and they exist in research labs and they exist on college campuses and universities and when you do a study you submit your proposal to them and this committee will determine if essentially the pros outweigh the cons right is there any risk to participants so there are a lot of things out there that protect the rights of participants don't forget to like the video subscribe and i'll see you next time