Social contextual and social justice perspectives on North American psychologists' conceptions of ethical ideals and prescribed practices show that interpersonal, organizational-institutional, and sociopolitical systems are dimly represented on our moral landscape. In this critical review I first examine conceptions of ethical decision-making from cognitive and interpersonal angles, noting the operation of nonrational phenomena and conversational processes and promoting a communicative conception of ethical decision-making. Next, I consider how the discourse on the concepts and practice of ethics addresses both the social conditions of our employment and the challenges of maintaining professional-personal boundaries on ethical conduct. Lastly, I assess the ways in which psychologists discuss ethical issues that arise from our espoused commitments to enhancing human welfare, responsibility to society, and social justice. I argue that certain historical trends in psychology's culture reduce our moral vision of practicing the principle of justice to social reforms that sustain the status quo. I conclude by questioning how we can shift the transit of our ethical discourse and practice toward communicative ethics and social justice.
From an anticapitalist perspective we examine the personal and political economy of the desires for social justice expressed by psychologists associated with either the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) or Behaviorists for Social Responsibility (BSR). First, we consider terms and concepts related to social justice and acknowledge our conceptual debts to critical theory, poststructuralism, feminist epistemology, and liberation psychology. To provide context, we briefly review North American psychologists' historical relationship to the state. Then, after discussing the implications of different accounts of SPSSI's past expressions of interest in social justice, we assess three collections of articles in the last decade of SPSSI's house organ, the Journal of Social Issues. Next, we examine the interests in social justice shown by B. F. Skinner and subsequent generations of operant behaviorists, known as behavior analysts. Overall, our review of these two bodies of literature indicates that authors tended to use the language of social justice loosely and to present liberal political visions, abstracted from direct political involvement and aimed at reforming social conditions. Furthermore, we infer that the privileged socioeconomic status of academic psychologists compromises aspirations to contribute to social action that challenges the status quo. Accordingly, we propose abandoning attempts as psychologists to practice social justice. Instead, we advocate joining emancipatory struggles in solidarity with other citizens, while striving to overcome socioeconomic and intellectual hierarchies in academic psychology.
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