Beyond the Boundaries: Ethical Issues in the Practice of Indirect Personality Assessment in Non-Health-Service Psychology

Abstract

This article focuses on ethical quandaries in the practice of indirect personality assessment in non-health-service psychology. Indirect personality assessment methods do not involve face-to-face interaction. Personality assessment at a distance is a methodological development of personality and social psychology, psychobiography, and psychohistory. Indirect personality methods are used in clinical, forensic, law enforcement, public safety, and national security settings. Psychology practice in non-health-service settings creates tensions between principles of beneficence and duty to society. This article defines methods of indirect personality assessment and some ethical ramifications. Their application in non-health-service settings occurs in the context of intense controversy over the ethics of psychologists’ participation in work settings where there are third-party loyalties, absence of voluntary informed consent, presence of nonstipulated harms, and absence of legal and ethical accountability. A hypothetical case example illustrates typical quandaries encountered in a national security assessment. This article provides a framework for critically examining ethical quandaries, a contemporary conceptual and process model for integrative moral cognition, and parameters for ethical reasoning by the individual practitioner under the exigencies of real-world practice.

Notes

1 The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and later the CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior have a long history of profiling political leaders (Post, 2003).

2 The American Psychological Association Model Act for Licensure for Psychologists distinguishes between two types of applied psychologists. “Health service providers” (HSP) are certified as such if they are duly trained and experienced in the delivery of preventive, assessment, diagnostic, therapeutic intervention, and management services relative to the psychological and physical health of consumers. General applied psychologists provide psychological services outside of the physical health and mental health field (American Psychological Association, 2010b).

3 “The principle of deontology states that the morality of an action depends on the intrinsic nature of the action (e.g., harming others is wrong regardless of its consequences); the principle of utilitarianism implies that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences (e.g., “harming others is acceptable if it increases the well-being of a greater number of people”; Conway & Gawronski, 2013, p. 216).

4 “Prima facie obligation indicates an obligation that must be fulfilled unless it conflicts on a particular occasion with an equal or stronger obligation. A prima facie obligation is binding unless overridden or outweighed by competing moral obligations” (Beauchamp & Childress, 1994, p. 33).