Ethics and

Memory Introduction
PPP1
 Success criteria
We will have succeeded if:
All of you understand how we are going to work together.
All of you understand the BPS ethical Guidelines
All of you will understand what memory is.

Some of you may be able to relate these to history

Some of you may understand the complexity of ethical
dilemmas for psychologists.
 Ethics and Psychology
What are ethics?
What are the differences between guidelines
and rules?
The British psychological society (BPS) has a set
of ethical guidelines that all psychologists and
students have to work to.
Discuss what you think those guidelines might be?
You have five minutes to complete this.
Some of you may also be able to explain what
happened in the world that made psychologists
realise that psychology needed ethical guidelines?
Privacy
Confidentiality

Deception
Right to withdraw
Informed consent
Protection from harm.
Watch the following DVD and identify any ethical
guidelines that you think would have been breached
(broken)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZwf
Ns1pqG0
Zimbardo 13 minutes.
Start 3 minutes in after Abu Graib
materials

Which of the BPS guidelines do you think may have

been breached (broken)?
One of the ways that psychologists deal with ethical
dilemmas is to ‘debrief’ the participants and the end of
the study
This means that they must
1.Tell the participants the true aim of the study
2.Offer them the right to withdraw their data
3.Return them to their original state
4.Offer them counselling if necessary
5.Offer them a copy of the data

Which of the above may be difficult to do in a study

like Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment?

Does this mean that studies like this should not be

done?
 Memory
Watch this DVD of
‘Ten amazing facts about memory’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eTtzH_4
gP8
1.How many can you remember?
2.Why did you remember some and not others?
3.What made it hard for you to remember them?
 Processes vast
amounts of Essential to understand
information life

Essential to Essential to
know ourselves Memory learn

Essential to plan
Takes in information
Stores information
Retrieves information