Best Practices for Ethical Conduct of Misinformation Research

IF 3.9 3区心理学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

European Psychologist Pub Date : 2022-12-13 DOI:10.1027/1016-9040/a000491

C. Greene, Constance de Saint Laurent, G. Murphy, Toby Prike, Karen Hegarty, Ullrich K. H. Ecker

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引用次数: 8

Abstract

Abstract. Misinformation can have noxious impacts on cognition, fostering the formation of false beliefs, retroactively distorting memory for events, and influencing reasoning and decision-making even after it has been credibly corrected. Researchers investigating the impacts of real-world misinformation are therefore faced with an ethical issue: they must consider the immediate and long-term consequences of exposing participants to false claims. In this paper, we first present an overview of the ethical risks associated with real-world misinformation. We then report results from a scoping review of ethical practices in misinformation research. We investigated (1) the extent to which researchers report the details of their ethical practices, including issues of informed consent and debriefing, and (2) the specific steps that researchers report taking to protect participants from the consequences of misinformation exposure. We found that fewer than 30% of misinformation papers report any debriefing, and almost no authors assessed the effectiveness of their debriefing procedure. Building on the findings from this review, we evaluate the balance of risk versus reward currently operating in this field and propose a set of guidelines for best practices. Our ultimate goal is to allow researchers the freedom to investigate questions of considerable scientific and societal impact while meeting their ethical obligations to participants.

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虚假信息研究伦理行为的最佳实践

摘要错误信息会对认知产生有害影响，助长错误信念的形成，追溯性地扭曲对事件的记忆，甚至在可信地纠正后也会影响推理和决策。因此，调查真实世界错误信息影响的研究人员面临着一个道德问题：他们必须考虑让参与者暴露在虚假声明中的直接和长期后果。在本文中，我们首先概述了与现实世界错误信息相关的道德风险。然后，我们报告了错误信息研究中道德实践的范围审查结果。我们调查了（1）研究人员在多大程度上报告了他们的道德实践细节，包括知情同意和汇报问题，以及（2）研究人员报告的保护参与者免受错误信息暴露后果的具体步骤。我们发现，只有不到30%的错误信息论文报告了任何汇报，几乎没有作者评估其汇报程序的有效性。在本次审查结果的基础上，我们评估了该领域目前运作的风险与回报的平衡，并提出了一套最佳实践指南。我们的最终目标是让研究人员能够自由调查具有重大科学和社会影响的问题，同时履行他们对参与者的道德义务。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

European Psychologist PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-

CiteScore

8.40

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The European Psychologist - is a direct source of information regarding both applied and research psychology throughout Europe; - provides both reviews of specific fields and original papers of seminal importance; integrates across subfields and provides easy access to essential state-of-the-art information in all areas within psychology; - provides a European perspective on many dimensions of new work being done elsewhere in psychology; - makes European psychology visible globally; - promotes scientific and professional cooperation among European psychologists; develops the mutual contribution of psychological theory and practice.