Question

Dr. Kushner is planning on conducting a study next semester. He is curious as to whether sleep deprivation is associated with poorer cognitive performance. For example, if you sleep poorly the night before a big exam, will you do worse? Dr. Kushner is especially curious about selective sleep deprivation, where people are kept from entering REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Using an electroencephalograph (EEG) to monitor brain waves, he plans to let participants sleep until they enter REM sleep and then wake them. After the participants are awake for one minute, Dr. Kushner plans to let them return to sleep. As they enter REM sleep again, he will wake them again and follow the same procedure. He plans to do this through the entire eight-hour sleep session. The following morning participants will be Dr. Kushner is deciding whether he needs to give participants a reason for waking thend up several times during the night. He knows that he cannot tell them the real reason, but he is unsure whether he should deceive them (give them a false reason why he is waking them up) or provide them with no cover story at all. Which of the following issues should be considered most heavily when deciding whether to use deception?
a. Whether he can create a convincing story that his participants will believe
b. Whether his participants will be angry when they find out he used deception
c. Whether his institutional review board (IRB) will approve the use of deception
d. Whether he can conduct the study just as well without deception

Answer 1

Answer:

d. Whether he can conduct the study just as well without deception

Explanation:

Dr. Kushner must make the greatest possible effort so that the experiment he is conducting has correct and balanced results, where all variables have been tested in the best possible way. He understands this need and is therefore reflecting on whether to deceive the experiment participants (with a false reason for them to wake up) or to follow the experiment without deception. To decide this, he must ask himself if he will be able to conduct the experiment efficiently without the use of deception, as participants may be unmotivated to wake up if they do not have a fair, even if false, reason for doing so.