Abstract
The usual prescription for conflict of interest, including financial gain, is disclosure, and certainly transparency is a necessary foundation for ethical processes. But psychology suggests disclosure will not suffice. Actors who have a personal conflict of interest, being human, will discount the extent to which they are influenced by personal gain. Observers, even knowing about the conflict of interest, will not necessarily be impartial judges of the effects on the actors. The best goal is no conflict of interest, but we do not live in a perfect world. So reflection and discussion will have to serve. A question one might ask upon reading the essays in this book is why, at least for some people, ethical behavior is so challenging. Drawing in part on Latané-Darley’s (1970) model of bystander intervention, I have constructed a model of ethical behavior that would seem to apply to a variety of ethical problems. The model specifies the specific skills students need to reason and then behave ethically.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | Ethical Challenges in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 217-218 |
Number of pages | 2 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781139626491 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781107039735 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2015 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General Psychology