The exercises in this section on ethics are designed to help you think about the issues that we are discussing and to formulate some opinions. In general, there are no wrong or right answers but you need to give reasons for your answers.

Question 3.74

3.74 Should we allow this personal information to be collected?

In which of the following circumstances would you allow collecting personal information without the subjects’ consent?

  1. A government agency takes a random sample of income tax returns to obtain information on the average income of people in different occupations. Only the incomes and occupations are recorded from the returns, not the names.
  2. A social psychologist attends public meetings of a religious group to study the behavior patterns of members.
  3. A social psychologist pretends to be converted to membership in a religious group and attends private meetings to study the behavior patterns of members.