The answer is a. Deception is sometimes used in psychological research to provide false or inaccurate information about certain subjects.
EXPLANATION:
A deception is an act of wrongly informing someone regarding the true nature of a situation. It’s typically used to promote scientific validity. Subjects will be provided with false or inaccurate information about the research.
The purpose of deception is to prevent participants from behaving unnaturally so that you can obtain unbiased data. In the deception method, participants must behave the way they normally would when not being observed, which can help to create a realistic situation with genuine reaction.
Types of deception methods
- <em>Passive deception</em>: withholding information or provide incomplete disclosure of information, the aim is to mislead the participants about the research purpose.
- <em>Active deception</em>: providing false or inaccurate information to participants.
Deception and Ethics
Since deception allows you to provide misleading or incomplete information to participants, this method has become a highly debatable ethical issue in psychological research. Some argue that the deception method is dishonest. But others believe that deception is necessary because it can provide you natural reaction from participants.
That’s why as a researcher, you must ensure that intentional deception is used as a last resort to conduct psychological research, not as a first resort. And the use of deception must be justified by its potential scientific value to psychological research.
Learn More
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Keywords
Deception, research, psychological research.
Subject: Social Studies
Class: College
Subchapter: Psychological Research