Ethics Committee FAQ:
Maintaining Our Ethics in a Shifting National Landscape
July 2025
This Ethics FAQ focuses on how psychologists can maintain a commitment to core ethical principles while adapting to societal shifts, evolving legal policies, and technological advancements. As an example, the American Psychological Association (APA) has long supported equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). However, recent government policies may conflict with these values—especially around issues like transgender rights and addressing disparities. This creates tension between professional ethics and political directives.
Psychologists can navigate these challenges by committing themselves to their shared professional principles of Justice and Respect for People’s Rights and Dignity. The principle of Justice advises psychologists to ensure equitable access to psychological services and address disparities that may arise due to changing laws, social structures, or technology. As new administrative policies emerge that may limit access to care, psychologists have a duty to remain vigilant in advocating for fair treatment and preventing biases in mental health care.
Simultaneously, Respect for People’s Rights and Dignity emphasizes respecting individuals’ autonomy, privacy, and cultural values. For example, safeguarding confidentiality, promoting informed consent in novel therapeutic settings, and acknowledging the human rights and lived experiences of our clients/patients support this principle. Psychologists can ethically navigate change while ensuring their work remains just, respectful, and responsive to the needs of society by staying informed, engaging in continuous ethical reflection, and integrating fair practices.
The APA Ethics Code standards guide psychologists to navigate ethical challenges while maintaining professional Integrity. As society evolves and legal protections change, psychologists actively avoid unfair discrimination based on specific characteristics, identities, or ideological differences (Unfair Discrimination; Standard 3.01). Psychologists ensure their practices do not perpetuate biases or exclude marginalized groups from receiving fair treatment and access to care. In February 2025, the Council of Representatives passed the APA Policy Statement on Reaffirming APA’s Commitment to Justice, Human Rights, Fairness and Dignity.
Clinical practice and research should be grounded in established scientific evidence and sound professional judgment, particularly as political agendas may undermine current practices (Bases for Scientific and Professional Judgment; Standard 2.04). Relying on outdated or unsupported methodologies risks harm to clients and undermines public trust in the profession.
Psychologists can navigate complex ethical challenges in a structured, values-driven manner by using an ethical decision-making model. There are several models available for tackling ethical dilemmas (e.g., Pope, Fisher, Knapp), including a socially responsive model that emphasizes contextual awareness, social responsibility, and ethical reflexivity, making it particularly useful for dilemmas involving sociopolitical shifts, institutional changes, or other circumstances (Juntunen et al., 2023). Psychologists can systematically analyze ethical concerns through multiple lenses to ensure we uphold ethical integrity and protect human rights while adapting to evolving societal contexts.
1. How do we stay informed on legal and policy developments?
The best way for psychologists to stay informed on professionally relevant issues is to visit the APA/APASI Response Center website. APA is closely monitoring new developments and providing resources. This includes clarification of executive orders and the potential impact of new policies in areas such as health care, marginalized populations, federal funding, and scientific research.
Additional ways to stay informed include:
- Subscribing to APA Action Alerts
- Contacting congressional representatives
- Joining professional organizations and state psychological associations
- These groups provide essential updates tailored to your field of specialization and local laws. Given the fast-changing landscape, staying engaged and informed is more
2. How do we manage the impact of social and political changes on ourselves, our clients, and our colleagues?
- Be Aware of Burnout, Moral Distress and Moral Injury: Practicing self-care is an ethical imperative and can be reframed as an act of resistance. Peer consultation can enhance resilience, and continuing education supports ongoing competence.
- Limit Technology: Set boundaries for social media use to protect mental health and reduce anxiety, depression, and negative affect.
- Well-being Monitoring and Self-Care in Training and Supervision: Psychologists who play a role in training are encouraged to model self-care practices and emphasize the importance of well-being to their trainees in order to promote resilience and positive functioning. For instance, supervisors can:
- Model how trainees can monitor their own well-being, seek consultation, and maintain professional and personal boundaries. For example, they can measure and track their own stress levels, sleep quality, and emotional symptoms using validated instruments or health tracking apps.
- Allow space in group supervision for discussions about self-care as preventive practices and intentional actions to maintain emotional stability, physical health and life satisfaction.
- Encourage trainees to seek consultation and peer support around navigating thorny topics in therapy such as politics and religion.
- Seek the Positives: Maintaining our own mental health is equally as important as our work with others. This includes seeking out positive influences in our environment, finding humor, and engaging in other fulfilling activities (e.g., going outdoors or being in nature, connecting with loved ones or engaging in hobbies).
3. How do we promote humility in our work and avoid bias?
Respect for different perspectives is fundamental to the APA Code of Ethics and is particularly important in the context of controversial topics and uncertainty. Psychologists can help others to recognize the importance of different ways of knowing and the influence of context on moral and ethical decision-making. Inherent in this approach is the importance of fallibility and humility. Fallibility is the recognition of the potential to be wrong, and humility is openness to correction and learning.
Psychologists can promote humility by modeling critical self-reflection, requesting feedback, seeking contrary opinions, and acknowledging underlying assumptions. Fostering dialogues in which dissenting voices are encouraged leads to better outcomes, including better ethical decision-making.
Practical strategies might include:
- Arguing the opposite view or critiquing the prevailing opinion (i.e., devil’s advocate) to counter groupthink and confirmation bias
- Acknowledging blind spots and weaknesses before acting
- Reflecting on our assumptions by asking questions such as “What could I have missed?”, “What evidence might contradict my conclusion?”
- Inviting alternative perspectives from people with different backgrounds or expertise, especially those likely to disagree
- Allowing anonymous feedback
- Checking for motivated reasoning, where we try to prove why we are right rather than seeking the truth
- Promoting adaptability by incorporating new evidence as it emerges into established approaches or fixed positions
- Obtaining training in cognitive biases and decision-making fallacies
By following these action-guiding points, psychologists can maintain ethical integrity while adapting to sociopolitical changes and ensuring their work remains just, respectful, and responsive to the needs of our clients/patients.