Sweating at night: Some ethical paradoxes confronting social psychological research

The conflict between social science research and the problem of invasion of privacy was discussed. The following paradoxes were posed: (a) techniques regarded as acceptable by psychologists may be unacceptable when used by others, (b) the methodology of the psychologist and the police may be identical, (c) the psychologist has been in conflict with the roles of being both a deceiver and a truth seeker, (d) research that alters our conceptions concerning the roots of social behaviour seems, by its very nature, to raise ethical controversies, (e) greater legal and ethical problems may arise from the use of nonreactive measures and naturalistic research than from laboratory experimentation, (f) for fear of jeopardizing research strategies, the psychologist may be reluctant to communicate his findings to the general public, (g) the researcher may jeopardize his subjects by the gathering of data which may be of interest to prosecutors, and (h) what social science researchers may consider appropriate problems for study, society may consider obnoxious invasions of privacy.

Social scientists were urged to sensitize themselves to societal concerns over privacy rights.