The scientific community fundamentally requires the conduct of research to meet ethical standards. Bureaucracy and regulation may enforce these requirements, but they ultimately reflect the underlying values of science and the social norms that translate these values into practice. In creating knowledge, scientists must protect research participants, and they are also obliged to treat their data and communications in accordance with honesty, transparency, and a commitment to the benefit of society. We review the history and current state of human participant protection; make a case that many of the changes in standards of data handling and publication reporting over the past ten years themselves have ethical dimensions; and briefly list a number of pending ethics issues in research and publishing that do not as yet have a clear, consensual resolution in the field of psychology.

It is our ethical duty to consider the possible consequences of our work and mitigate any risks, such that we avoid harm to the welfare and interests of our study animals, human participants, the environment, and the people we work with and alongside. We must also consider the effects of our research on our discipline and wider society. Reflecting on ethical dilemmas and weighing the positive and negative impacts of a project are essential to make informed decisions when planning a project and throughout a study. This can include the decision not to conduct a particular study, or to terminate it earlier than planned. In this chapter, I cover legal requirements and permits, then address the ethics of working with primates in captivity and the wild, specimen collection and working human participants. I then outline our ethical responsibilities to the natural environment, the people we work with, and the people we work alongside. I then highlight the importance of reflecting on our use of social media and the power of images, and end with our obligations to report and disseminate our findings.