There are, in any scientific research practice, ethical guidelines to adhere to. For example, the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct by the American Psychological Association (2017), WMA Declaration of Helsinki by the World Medical Association (2018), and Ethics for Researchers by the European Commission (2013), all offer principles on how to conduct research ethically. Although the formulations of guidelines vary, the following aspects are usually included: data protection, privacy, informed consent, deception, and debriefing. However, these aspects are rarely explicitly addressed in publications in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Proper ethical conduct is an integral part of scientific research and ought to be included in this field as well. There might be societal implications if participants in HRI studies are deceived regarding the actual capabilities of social robots.
A literature study is planned in order to investigate and analyse how ethical issues are considered in publications from the HRI 2018 conference, e.g., what ratio of publication dealing with human participants mention ethical aspects explicitly. The aim is to contribute to a methodology in HRI where ethical aspects have a significant bearing.