Studies Involving Deception

There are three criteria that must be met for the use of deception to be approved, each of which must be explicitly addressed in the application for approval:

1. The risk must be no more than minimal.  Minimal risk means that the probability and magnitude of harm or discomfort anticipated in the research are not greater in and of themselves than those ordinarily encountered in daily life or during the performance of routine physical or psychological examinations or tests.
2. The rights and welfare of the participants will not be adversely affected. 
3. The research could not practicably be carried out without the use of deception. This does not mean that it would be inconvenient to conduct the study without deception; it means that deception is necessary to accomplish the goals of the research.

Debriefing protocols must include procedures for ameliorating possible negative effects of deception. Specifically, the debriefing must include the following:

• a description of the deception and an explanation about why it was necessary. The discussion should be presented in lay language and should be sufficiently detailed that participants will understand how and why they were deceived.  If the study included multiple deceptions, each should be addressed;
• participants must be given the option to have their data deleted and excluded from all analyses;
• if participants were filmed, with or without their knowledge, they must be given the option to ask that the researchers do not use the film;
• emphasis should be placed on correcting any false feedback given to participants about their performance, competency, or other personal characteristics;
• if a study was designed to provoke negative behaviors, participants should be told that most people react the way they reacted and that their behavior was a normal response.

Research involving deception cannot be screened for exemption.

Generally, research using the following deceptions may be reviewed using expedited procedures:

• Confederates: Attributing statements to or providing feedback from non-existent individuals or confederates in another room. Using actors in videos presented to participants.
• Giving people impersonal false information:  Information about the performance of groups that participants will use to measure their own performance, for example, “Most Benedictine College students can solve these anagrams in 3-7 minutes.”
• Priming designed to focus participants’ attention or awareness, but not on a sensitive topic. For example, having participants complete sentence scramble tasks with words affiliated with different goals.
• Presenting false scientific “facts,” articles, or profiles of individuals or companies.
• Experiments in which participants are told that two studies are unrelated when the first study is the manipulation, depending upon population and nature of manipulation.

 Generally, research using the following deceptions will be reviewed by the full IRB:

• Any use of confederates in which the confederate is in the physical presence of research participants.
• Studies in which participants are given false feedback about their own attributes, performance or abilities, for example, a manipulation in which students are told that their performance falls in the lowest quartile of Benedictine College students following the completion of a task.
• Any study in which debriefing cannot be undertaken because to do so would cause more harm than good or when participants cannot be contacted, e.g. some types of Internet research.
• Any study involving subliminal priming.
• Covert observation and/or videotaping.
• Mood manipulations designed to induce negative emotions, such as guilt or sadness.
• Any study in which participants are given false information about themselves in phase one of a study that is not corrected until a later session.
• Any deception of minors.
• Any study in which the researcher assumes a false identity.
• Manipulations designed to elicit behaviors about which participants may feel shame or other strong negative emotions.