Introduction to Ethics in Psychology: Historical and Philosophical Grounding

I introduce 4 diverse position papers on ethics in psychology in which the individual authors present critical reflections on the standard ethical discourse in North American psychology and 3 commenters offer individual commentaries on these papers. After defining key terms in ethics in psychology I give a historical overview of the Codes of Ethics and their subsequent editions that have been adopted by the American Psychological Association and the Canadian Psychological Association respectively. Then I summarize 5 approaches to moral philosophy that have been applied to ethics in psychology generally and the Codes in particular. Although the 2 Codes differ in some respects historically and philosophically, they are quite similar in other respects. I conclude with a brief preview of the position papers and the commentaries.