High school students signed up to be subjects in a psychology experiment. When they arrive, they are told that interviews are running late, and they are taken to a waiting room. The experimenters have placed a sign in the waiting room next to a button that says, "Do not push under any circumstances." Some subjects are alone in the room and others are in pairs; these are the treatments being compared. Will the subject push the button? The students agreed to take part in an unspecified experiment, and the true nature of the experiment is explained to them afterward. Does this meet the requirement of informed consent? Explain.

This does not meet the requirements of informed consent.

Explanation:

Informed Consent (IC) is the patient's authorization obtained by the professional to perform a medical procedure of indisputable necessity, or the authorization of an individual to participate in a scientific research. It is a voluntary decision, verbal or written, carried out by an autonomous and capable person, taken after an informative process, to accept a specific treatment aware of its risks, benefits and possible consequences.

Before informed consent is given to the researcher, it is necessary for the individual participating in the research to know all treatments, variables and all that encompasses the nature of the experiment. Based on this, we can state that the experiment reported in the above question is not in accordance with the requirements of informed consent. This is because the experiment is already running and the participants, although they agreed to participate in the research, were not informed about the nature of the experiment.