Ethics for Psychologists _______________________________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION General ethical concepts applicable to all psychologists regard- less of setting include competence, informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, and avoiding harm or exploitation. This course provides specific information regarding each of the areas and how they apply to psychologists in a variety of set- tings with a variety of professional relationships. Psychologists also must be able to understand and differentiate the complex interactions between the American Psychological Associa- tion’s (APA’s) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, the ethical codes of various state psychological associations, regulations of state licensing boards, institutional policies and procedures, state and federal law, and community and local standards of practice. Common ethical issues and complaint procedures are also reviewed. GENERAL CONCEPTS As noted, there are four ethical standards applicable to all psychologists regardless of setting: competence, informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, and avoiding harm or exploitation [1]. Ethical rules and standards provide a frame of reference for guidance in decision making about the most appropriate action to take in a given situation. As experience and circumstances change, the ethical standards for psycholo- gists evolve from a strict set of rules about behavior and conduct to becoming more aspirational in nature. The practice of being ethical changes to being more involved with thinking through the consequences of actions and more cognizant about the day-to-day impact of ethics on practice. Ethics differs slightly from values, morals, and laws. Values are ways to determine what is more or less important in decision making [2; 3]. Morals are specifically about motivations and actions and how those motivations and actions are good and bad. Morals have a social component and pertain to rules that govern life in a social structure. Morals are based in culture, his- tory, and generally religious authority. They are usually agreed upon by the culture and serve to form the basis of the laws in the society. The laws are an external system of constraints on behavior that apply equally to everyone within the society. Ethics are a self-imposed system for constraining behavior based on values and morals [2; 3]. It is also a system of moral values governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession. Ethics form the basis of professional standards that are then codified into laws regulating the members of a profession. Psychology has developed ethics and ethical decision making over several decades with multiple revisions to the APA Ethics Code. The APA Ethics Code has attempted to be scientifically based in principles that will allow for decision making and are generalizable to the profession as a whole. More recently, it has focused more on problem areas that serve as the basis of complaints against psychologists to licensing boards.
A HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY AND ETHICS IN THE UNITED STATES
The APA was founded in July 1892 at Clark University by a group of 26 men, many of whom accepted invitation to the group by mail. The first meeting involved the presentation of 6 research papers [4]. Its first president was G. Stanley Hall, and it began with 31 members [5]. It was the aspiration of the APA that the organization would provide guidance and assistance to members who were obtaining advanced degrees and becoming credentialed in new fields of expertise. There was a progressive movement in politics and a need for more professionals to assist in political demands. Following the Civil War, the United States entered into a rapid growth phase. There was corruption in the building of the Transcontinental Railroad and there were Congressional scandals related to the misuse of governmental funds, bribery, and excess charges. In addition to corruption in the govern- ment, there was a high crime rate, a high poverty rate, concerns about the use of “greenbacks” (or Confederate money), and limitations in the monetary supply based on reliance on the gold standard. G. Stanley Hall had established Clark University as a research institution and founded the American Journal of Psychology . Psychology as a young field was moving into research, which was controversial, and away from work with healthy individuals and anthropology. The field was expanding to include work with animals, children, sick people, and the new practice of hypnosis [4; 5]. Ideas of what was and was not appropriate for the field began to coalesce. After World War II, the APA began to expand and grow quickly. The need for an ethical code and ethical standards came out of the expanding profession and out of situations in which psychologists found themselves without clarity for decision making. The first Committee for Ethical Standards for Psychologists formed in 1947. The Committee worked on developing a description of critical situations in which psychologists made decisions involving ethical considerations. More than 2,000 members contributed to formulating the first Ethics Code in 1953. Consisting of 171 pages, it was a lengthy document, reflecting the post-war concerns of conflicts of the academic freedom movement, McCarthyism, and requests to design tests to support racial segregation [6]. The next edition, published in 1959, consisted of 18 principles and a preamble. Today, the APA has more than 146,000 members and 54 divisions in subfields of psychology [7]. The 2002 edition of the revised Ethics Code consists of an introduction and an applicability section and separates the ethical code and laws regarding the professional practice of psychology. The APA’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct was amended in 2010 to deal with conflicts of psychologists provid- ing services to the military and potentially violating human rights and again in 2016 to ensure that psychologists take reasonable steps to avoid harming those with whom they work
32
EliteLearning.com/Psychology
Powered by FlippingBook