I was wondering if you knew of any other historical examples of psychological research done before the requirement of informed consent. I know of one example ("Little Albert", but I would like to know of others. Thank you for your time.

-- Brenna Melvin (bmelvin@uiuc.edu), October 01, 2002

Answers

How about the followup study:

Jones, Mary Cover. (1924). A Laboratory Study of Fear: The Case of Peter. Pedagogical Seminary, 31, 308-315.

It is available on-line at: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jones/

See also Alexandra Rutherford's introduction at http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jones/intro.htm

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), October 01, 2002.

There is a nice essay with some examples, including Milgram's research at http://www- hsc.usc.edu/~mbernste/ethics.IC_insocialscience.html

You might check into some of Diana Baumrind's articles on the issue of deception in social science research, beginning with her 1954 critique of Milgram in the American Psychologist. After her critique of Milgram, Baumrind was repeatedly asked to write about research ethics by granting agencies etc. and much of her work has been on this topic. I include a fairly thorough bibliography of her writing on this topic in

Vande Kemp, H. (1999). Diana Baumrind: Researcher and critical humanist. In D. Moss (Ed.), Humanistic and transpersonal psychology: Historical and biographical sourcebook (pp. 249-259). New York: Greenwood.

There is also an interesting literature on implicit issues of informed consent and deception in treatment, focused primarily on the use of paradoxical prescriptions in family therapy. That debate is summarized fairly well in

William J. Doherty & Pauline G. Boss, Values and Ethics in Family Therapy. In Alas S. Gurman & David P. Kniskern, Handbook of Family Therapy. Vol. II (Brunner/Mazel, 1991), pp. 606-637.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), October 02, 2002.