On this day of reflection I have been thinking about whom we as a culture and society consider to be heros and how we interpret who they are and what they have done. Although this might have relevance to the event of 9/11/01 I am actually thinking about psychologists who are held in high esteem and presented as a type of "hero" for other psychologists to be proud of and as an example to be emulated. One can think of many examples, old and recent, of people who are seen as having made a significant contribution in some form, for example, William James is often spoken as a "founding father" of American psychology but this is usually done with a selective presentation of his activities and beliefs, that is, those activities of James that psychologists might be proud of are promoted and emphasized that those activities and beliefs that they may be embarassd by, such as his belief in spiritualism and his promotion of it, not so much. In the case of Sir Ronald Fisher, Stephen Jay Gould tried to reconcile the apparent genius of his contribution to statistics and genetics with his sincere beliefs in and promotion of eugenics as a solution of society's problems (i.e., promoting scientific racism). Are they comparable cases involving psychologists?
The question then arise: Why to psychologists, especially teachers, seem to engage in a form of the confirmation bias in presenting psychologists whom someone or group has considered "significant"? (for some backgorund on the confirmation bias see the wikipedia entry but there is large literature on this; I would also suggest looking at Ray Nickerson's 1998 article in the Review of General Psychology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias ) If we start from the assumption that all people are imperfect, that they cannot consistently engage in good and/or ethical behavior, then why instructors emphasize only one side (the good or the bad) while they should be attempting to apply their own critical thinking abilities to both the work of a psychologists and that person's character. I wonder, for example, if a psychologist, say dates undergraduates and even goes on to marry them, is this an ethical breach and if so is it a minor or major offense? How does engaging in such behavior affect that psychologist's ability to serve as a source of ethical guidance? I see one case like this that seems to popping up in a number of contexts and been concerned with how to interpert this. Anyone have any thoughts on this? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
