The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Literature of Liberty a Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought
• Editorial Staff
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• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Henry B. Veatch, Natural Law: Dead Or Alive?
• I: Natural Law
• “nature” and “law” In Natural Law
• The Anatomy of Natural Rights
• Egoism and Rights
• The Is/ought Chimera
• Deriving “ought” From “is”
• Facts Vs. Value-laden Whims
• Is/ought and Probable Reasons
• Does Righteous Anger Imply Rights?
• Why Be Moral?
• Truth As an Objective Value
• Was the Revolution Objectively Necessary?
• Natural Law and State of Nature
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• Dworkin On Rights
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• Rights and the “brain Drain”
• The Natural Law Right to Work
• Grotius: Contract and Natural Law
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• II: Autonomy, Privacy, and Authority
• Bureaucracy and “the Organization Man”
• Autonomy and Anarchism
• Autonomy and Taking Responsibility
• Autonomy, Motivation, and “buck-passing”
• Schooling For Conformity
• The Schoolroom Vs. Autonomy
• Obedience to Authority
• The Meaning of Privacy
• Privacy and Autonomy
• Privacy and Consent
• The Court and Privacy
• III: The Ambiguities of Liberty
• Clarifying Freedom
• Rehabilitating Mill's “harm Principle”
• Experiencing Freedom
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• Freedom, Existentialism, and Innocent Victims
• Does Censorship Harm Freedom?
• IV: Slavery
• Slavery, Ideology, and Subordination
• Slavery and Imperialist Ideology
• Enlightenment Liberalism Vs. Slavery
• The Anatomy of a Slave Revolt
• Colonial American Slave Law
• Jefferson On Slavery
• Slavery and the Poor
• V: Planning
• Regulation and the Warfare State
• Mail, Privacy, and Social Control
• Corporate State Capitalism: Coal
• French War “planification”: Chlorates
• Bureaucracy and British Regulation
• British Foreign Policy and Stagnation
• Political Decisions and the Economy
• Government, Labor, and Multinationals
• Black Markets Vs. Regulation
• Regulation Vs. Academic Autonomy
• Government Schools and Social Control
• The Economics of Charity
• International State Planning and Inflation
• Competition and Individual Knowledge

Privacy and Autonomy

Herbert C. Kelman

• Harvard University

“Privacy and Research with Human Beings.” Journal of Social Issues 33 (1977): 169–195.

Social psychology, because of its focus on personal facts and feelings, has a dangerous potential of invading the privacy of the participants in research studies. Kelman uses a definition of privacy developed by Ruebhausen and Brim: privacy is “the freedom of the individual to pick and choose for himself the time and circumstances under which, and most importantly, the extent to which, his attitudes, beliefs, behavior and opinions are to be shared with or withheld from others.” Research participants are in a vulnerable position regarding invasions of privacy since they are often unable to determine what information about themselves they will reveal. Furthermore, once disclosure occurs, they lack control over how that information will be disseminated. The author discusses the potential abuses that exist in a variety of different research-procedures including participant observation, unobtrusive observation, field experiments, laboratory experiments, laboratory experiments, questionnaires and tests, and interview studies.

One important psychological function of privacy is to preserve our sense of an “autonomous self.” We have a desire to establish and maintain an acknowledged boundary between self and environment, a feeling of physical and psychological space which can be entered only by our invitation. A central part of this is the inviolability of our bodies and of our possessions. This aspect of privacy extends to the exchanges which occur within certain relationships, e.g., interactions with our friends, lover(s), physician, attorney, or priest. Kelman surveys various psychological research studies which involve violations of private space without informed consent. These studies seem “tantamount to spying.” We can minimize invasions of privacy by avoiding deliberate intrusions with prior consent and by the rejection of methods which involve deception, coercion, manipulation, or misrepresentation.