Abstract

The article discusses the issue of the necessity of obtaining informed consent from an individual who is to be a participant in an experiment. Codes of ethics concerning the behaviour of a psychologist fundamentally do not permit conducting experiments without informing their participants in advance that they will be conducted. Meanwhile, the act of obtaining prior consent can have a significant impact on results. The article describes an experiment in the field of social influence psychology during which one group was asked for their informed consent to participate in a study, while the second was simply presented with the main request. The results demonstrate the strong influence of awareness that a study is being conducted on the decisions taken in the course of the experiment.