Ethics of social psychology

"The goal of social psychology is to understand cognition and
behaviour as they naturally occur in a social context, but the
very act of observing people can influence and alter their
behaviour. For this reason, many social psychology experiments
utilize deception to conceal or distort certain aspects of the
study. Deception may include false cover stories, false
participants (known as confederates or stooges), false feedback
given to the participants, and so on."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_psychology_(psychology)

I wonder how many of those employed in this exercise can see
themselves and they part they play in this egotistical pursuit of study.
Judgement based solely on observation, presuming to know all
one needs to know just by observation.

Observation limited to circumstance, with no thought on what
goes on beyond that situation, with no thought for the part played
by experiance. Just occupied on the surface.

On 7 jul, 14:30, "TruthSlave" home.com> wrote:

On Jul 7, 5:30 am, "TruthSlave" home.com> wrote:

The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/

Ethical Problems

Using deception may be the best (and perhaps the only) way to get
useful information about the way people behave in most complex and
important situations, but it does present the experimenter with
serious ethical problems. Basically, there are three problems:

1. It is simply unethical to tell lies to people. This takes on even
greater significance in the post-Watergate era, when it has been
revealed that government agencies have bugged citizens illegally, that
presidents tell outright lies to the people who elected them, and that
all manner of dirty tricks, fake letters, forged documents, and so on
have been used by people directly employed by the president. Can
social scientists justify adding to the pollution of deception that
currently exists?

Part of the problem psychology faces is the unwillingness to challenge
Christian sensibilities. Many of the social problems we have derive from
this misogynistic cosmology and its inherent racism.

After all, The Bible early on reports on what Joshua did to the
Canaanites that we now call genocide. Much of what Jesus and then St.
Paul had to say was based on submission to alpha male tyranny.