ABSTRACT
In little more than a quarter century, a mere heartbeat in the history of modern science, the ethical pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other for behavioral science researchers. Where once ethical considerations played a minor role, if at all, in the research process, today they have a formidable influence on most of the decisions relative to the planning and conduct of a research investigation, from the recruitment of research participants to the subsequent application of the research findings. This shift to ethics in the research environment should be abundantly clear to senior experimenters who-in light of increasingly stricter ethical codes, federal regulations, and institutional review boards-no doubt are finding it more and more difficult to carry out their investigations using the tradi-
tional arsenal of manipulations and controls of their science. Indeed, it is interesting to ponder how different the face of social psychology, for example, might be today if Solomon Asch, Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, and other pioneers of the discipline had to run their (now classic) deception studies past the ethical review boards now in place at the universities where once they were employed.
