Ethical Decision Making and Research Deception in the Behavioral Sciences: An Application of Social Contract Theory

Despite significant ethical advances in recent years, including professional developments in ethical review and codification, research deception continues to be a pervasive practice and contentious focus of debate in the behavioral sciences. Given the disciplines' generally stated ethical standards regarding the use of deceptive procedures, researchers have little practical guidance as to their ethical acceptability in specific research contexts. We use social contract theory to identify the conditions under which deception may or may not be morally permissible and formulate practical recommendations to guide researchers on the ethical employment of deception in behavioral science research.     

Understanding the unique impact of dimensions of ethical leadership on employee attitudes

This study extends earlier findings on ethical leadership by testing the relationship of the seven dimensions of ethical leadership with job satisfaction, organization commitment, job embeddedness, and cynicism. It uses time-lagged data from 585 employees in Pakistan. Using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling, the study supports the concept of multidimensional ethical leadership in the Eastern setting and indicates that the dimensions of people orientation, fairness, power sharing, ethical guidance, and role clarification are associated with the majority of outcomes, as suggested by social exchange theory. However, the concern for sustainability and integrity dimensions had a limited effect.     

Forecasting and Ethical Decision Making: What Matters?

This study examined how the number and types of consequences considered are related to forecasting and ethical decision making. Undergraduate participants took on the role of the key actor in several ethical problems and were asked to forecast potential outcomes and make a decision about each problem. Performance pressure was manipulated by ostensibly making rewards contingent on good problem-solving performance. The results indicated that forecast quality was associated with decision ethicality, and the identification of the critical consequences of the problem and consequences for others were associated with both higher quality forecasts and more ethical decisions. In addition, the identification of a larger number of consequences was negatively associated with ethical decision making. Performance pressure did not impact forecast quality or ethicality of decisions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The moral of the story: The importance of applying an ethics lens to the teaching of positive psychology

In a short-time positive psychology has progressed into a scientific and multidisciplinary field of enquiry. It is now necessary for positive psychology to develop clear practice standards which will be collectively endorsed and upheld by members and those undergoing training in positive psychology. Teachers of positive psychology are in a prime position to disseminate ethical knowledge. Moreover, the objectives of ethics and positive psychology are closely aligned in their focus on achieving optimal outcomes; hence, the pairing of the two is ideal. Consequently, it would be ironic if positive psychology did not explicitly embrace ethical standards in guiding those training for a future in positive psychology. As a professional entity, positive psychology needs to provide more direction and encouragement for teachers, students, scholars and practitioners of positive psychology, and in time, this should be codified and discussed in positive psychology university degrees to promote consistency among its future members.     

The enigmatic “nature of the subject”

Freud once placed psychoanalysis in a “middle position between medicine and philosophy”. Yet, the meaning of that position has never been sufficiently clarified. The author suggests that the essence of the psychoanalytic experience is defined by the fact that its clinical practice operates within a basically relational or intersubjective frame containing the analysand's self-interpreting reflection, which here is identified as ethical in nature. It is further argued that late modernity is experiencing a crisis in the art of reflection, accompanied by a flight from this ethical dimension. A common social response is to fall back on the authority of neo-positivistic science, making psychoanalysis increasingly redundant. To meaningfully connect with the consequences of this state of affairs, psychoanalysis needs to deepen the understanding of its unique essence. To that end, a model for collaboration with philosophy is briefly sketched.     

The Use of Touch in Counseling: An Ethical Decision‐Making Model

Although some counselors have advocated for the limited use of touch in counseling, others have argued that touch has no place within the counseling relationship. Despite the controversy, the use of touch has been shown to have a number of therapeutic benefits; however, there are few ethical decision‐making models that are appropriate for considering the use of touch in counseling. The authors discuss the controversy surrounding the use of touch and the benefits/contraindications of touch. The 5 ethical principles of counseling are also examined; a new ordering of the principles is presented as a useful ethical decision‐making model when considering the use of touch in counseling.     

Moral Orientation as a Component of Ethical Decision Making

Morals are foundational to professional and ethical counseling practice. Moral orientation may play an integral role in ethical decision making. The authors review the literature regarding moral orientation and discuss the connection to ethical decision making. Implications for counselor preparation and practice are addressed.     

“Some more” notes,toward a “third” sophistic

Historians of rhetoric refer to two Sophistics, one in the 5th century B.C. and another c. 2nd century A.D. Besides these two, there is a 3rd Sophistic, but it is not necessarily sequential. (The 3rd is counter to counting sequentially.) Whereas the representative Sophists of the 1st Sophistic is Protagoras, and the second, Aeschines, the representative sophists of the 3rd are Gorgias (as proto-Third) and Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Paul de Man.To distinguish between and among Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and then Protagoras, Gorgias, and Lacan, the author determines how far each of these personages can count. The model of counting, used semiotically across the topoi of possible/impossible, is that of the people of New Guinea: one thing, two things, many things. It is determined (generally) that the philosophers, including Aristotle, count to one; the Sophists to two; and Gorgias, Lacan, and Lyotard, et al. count to many things, thereby breaking up a monism or binarism. The ancient philosophers employ a substratum of probability to hold together the contraries of possible/impossible; the Sophists employ anti/logic, which keeps the contraries/antitheses separate and therefore without synthesis, but which eventually threatens the integrity of the substratum, or the law of non-contradiction; and Gorgias, Lacan, Lyotard et al. theorize about the impossibility/Resistance of the Logos (reason, logic, law, argumentation, history) to Theory/Totalization, because of the Gorgian Kairos and the Lacanian Real — both of which enter the Logos and break up the cycle of the antitheses and create something new, irrational (Untersteiner).This breaking up has a negative/positive influence on Protagoras's man-measure doctrine, which in turn has a similar influence on the problem of the ethical subject. The subject/agent not only no longer knows (by way of Logos) but also no longer acts (as independent agent); the subject becomes a function of Logos as determined by Kairos/Real; it moves from a hypotaxis/syntaxis of one and two to a radical parataxis/paralogy of some more.From the Impossibility/tragedy of knowledge, however, comes the Possible, or Possibilisms, which allows for the new (though divided) ethical subject to reclaim its position as individual. Such a reclamation of the subject, however, has a profound effect on argumentation, and especially the notion of consensus. What is wanted, then, in a Third Sophistic ethical — as opposed to a political — rhetoric is dissensus through radical parataxes and paralogies.     

人类基因组计划带给不同文化传统的伦理挑战

分析了人类基因组计划带给四种不同文化传统中的人们的伦理挑战,即南美、印度、西方传统和儒家传统。西方传统又分为天主教道德传统、英美传统和欧洲大陆传统三方面阐述,并指出不同的文化背景对HGP研究的不同导向。最后强调此领域中的跨文化研究有待进一步深入。     

Before the rules are written: navigating moral ambiguity in performance enhancement

In 1984, a number of US cyclists used blood transfusions to boost their performance at the Los Angeles Olympic Games. The cyclists broke no rules and dominated the Games, yet were later maligned as cheaters and dopers—they had, it seemed, violated some important norm, albeit one which was neither an official rule nor otherwise easily identifiable. Their case illustrates the moral ambiguity that arises when a performance enhancement is employed in a sport that has not addressed it. This article takes up the crucial question posed by such moral ambiguity: is it ethical to enhance performance through a substance or technology when no rules exist to prohibit it? We first examine ordinary ethical obligations that athletes carry based on their status as moral agents. We conclude that such obligations provide some guidance, but cannot resolve the issue. We then examine arguments that take sport as a unique social practice that presents its own moral obligation not to use performance enhancers. We argue that these ‘spirit of sport’ arguments, developed by McNamee and Loland and Hoppeler cannot resolve the issue either. We conclude that when the rules governing sport are silent on the issue of performance enhancement the constraints on its ethical use are limited at best.