benefits to society

• 1

  • Psychological research provides significant benefits to society
  • A ‘benefit’ helps us to understand something we didn’t know before or improve our existing knowledge
  • For example, studies on psychoactive drugs play a crucial role in treating mental health conditions, such as addiction
• 2

  • The McCrone report (2008) estimated that mental health issues cost England approximately £22.5 billion annually
  • It highlighted the economic advantages of drug treatments over psychotherapies due to their wider accessibility and cost-effectiveness
  • Evidence-based research on drug therapies is vital for reducing expenses and aiding individuals in returning to work
• 3

  • Cost benefits are analysed when planning research
  • The argument is that if the benefits to society outweigh the costs to participants then the research can be justified.
  • Rosenhan’s (1971) research into diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric patients impacted on how these processes took place but at the cost of his pseudopatients being institutionalised and medical staff and patients being watched without their consent.
  • This experiement may have been more justifiable if participants were able to give their valid consent
• 4 - counter

  • However, it could be argued that some of the participants may not be in the right frame of mind to give valid consent.
  • Therefore, it is up to ethic commitees or a group of representative people to decide how they would feel participating in the research. 
  • For example, what we know about conditioning and counter-conditioning of phobias is worth it, even though Little Albert suffered significantly at the hands of Watson and Raynors research.