What's in a Lie? How Researchers Judge the Justifiability of Deception

Research ethics guidance on deception does not seem to provide extensive support to researchers and ethics reviewers on how to assess the justifiability of specific deceptive studies. One potential explanation for this shortcoming is that guidance does not offer precise and coherent descriptions of the ethically relevant characteristics of deceptive studies. To facilitate the development of improved guidance, we report on the findings of interviews with a diverse group of 24 researchers who use deception. Interviewees discussed how the interests of participants, society, and researchers can be affected by characteristics of the deceptive methods used. These characteristics pertained to the deceptive act (i.e., false, truthlike, or vague information; standardized or flexible deception), participants’ belief formation (i.e., credibility and suspicions), and deception-induced behaviors and experiences (i.e., consent validity, negative value, and duration of induced study behaviors and experiences). In addition, researchers described as ethically relevant the characteristics of the social context in which deceptive studies were embedded. These characteristics related to the deceiver-participant relationship and the participants’ community. Overall, our study contributes to a more coherent and precise, as well as complex and nuanced, understanding of the study characteristics that affect the justifiability of deception.