Case Study

Based on the text's principles of minimizing deception, diagnose the methodological issue in Dr. Smith's proposed design and justify a specific modification he should make to his instructions to align with ethical practices.

Case context: Dr. Smith is designing a study to investigate whether the perceived age of a professor influences a student's expectation of that professor's strictness. He plans to show students stock photos of models of various ages, but he intends to tell the students that these are photos of recently hired faculty members at their university.

Question: Based on the text's principles of minimizing deception, diagnose the methodological issue in Dr. Smith's proposed design and justify a specific modification he should make to his instructions to align with ethical practices.

Sample answer: The methodological issue in Dr. Smith's design is his reliance on unnecessary active deception, specifically by falsely telling students that stock models are actual newly hired faculty members. According to the principles in the text, this deception can and should be eliminated. Dr. Smith must modify his design by adopting a nondeceptive alternative: he should show the students the stock photos and simply ask them to imagine that the individuals depicted are professors, rating their anticipated strictness as if they were actual faculty.

Key points:

  • Diagnose the methodological issue as the use of active deception by claiming stock models are actual faculty.
  • Explain that this deception is unnecessary to answer the research question.
  • Recommend the nondeceptive alternative of presenting the same photos without making false claims.
  • Justify the modification by stating participants should be instructed to imagine the models are professors and rate them accordingly.

Rubric: Full credit is awarded for correctly diagnosing the unnecessary active deception in the scenario and clearly justifying the use of the nondeceptive alternative (instructing participants to imagine the roles) based on the text's explanation.

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Updated 2026-05-27

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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU

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