Abstract

Within the past fifteen years, empirical research dealing with professional ethics, the efficacy of ethics training, and the characteristics of psychologists who engage in ethical and unethical behaviors has increased. However, the literature in these areas does not include substantial research on the degree to which counseling psychology graduate students follow the American Psychological Association's specific guidelines requiring psychologists to address unethical behavior of colleagues and to recognize when personal problems interfere with their own professional effectiveness. ;Ethical decision-making has been conceptualized as a synthesis of moral development and ethical justification according to Kitchener's model, which proposes that sensitivity to and the ability to reason about ethical issues combines with the moral responsibility and ego strength to take action, while concomitantly tolerating the ambiguity which ethical decision-making may entail. The components of this model as well as other variables suggested in the literature were incorporated into a Person-situation Interactionist model adapted from Trevino's work with ethical behavior in organizations. ;Thus, it was hypothesized that variables such as level of ego development, amount of ethics training, year in training, and gender of respondents would significantly predict counseling psychology graduate students' willingness to endorse action-taking steps addressing unethical conduct by other professionals or by themselves. It was also predicted that respondents would differ in their willingness to address unethical conduct as a function of the visibility of the ethical issues inherent in the vignettes and of the identity of the vignette actor . The use of codified versus non-codified reasons for respondents' action choice was considered. Finally, how students' willingness to address unethical behavior might vary with their ethical ideology as measured by Forsyth's Ethical Ideology Questionnaire was explored. ;The Person-situation Interactionist Model was partially supported when predictor variables were found to account for small portions of the variance in various vignettes . Identity of the vignette actor revealed significant differences , while use of codified criteria and visibility of ethical issues did not. Main effects were found with the Ethical Ideology categories of Idealism and Relativism