The emergence of interest in the ethics of psychological research with humans

We describe the growth of interest in the ethics of research with human participants based on articles abstracted in Psychological Abstracts and PsycLIT. Interest was low and variable until 1974, after which there was a marked increase in the number of articles published. We explain this emergence of ethical interest in terms of the social climate of concern for human rights in the 1960s and 1970s, the 1973 revision of the American Psychological Association's ethical principles, and the development of federal regulation of research with human participants.