Psychology under fire: Adversarial operational psychology and psychological ethics (original) (raw)
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The American Psychological Association (APA) has long maintained a close, even symbiotic, relationship with the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Veterans Administration (VA). Herein we highlight these close ties and describe psychologists' participation in interrogations by U.S. military and intelligence entities. We then review the APA's statements about the permissibility of psychologist participation in the interrogation and torture of suspected terrorists. These issues are significant in and of themselves and because the VA and DOD have been described as "growth careers" for psychologists of the future (1). Additionally, the Health Care Personnel Delivery System allows the drafting of civilian clinical psychologists into military service even in the absence of a general draft. In light of psychologists' extensive involvement in the interrogation process of suspected terrorists, and the possibility that psychologists without prior military experience may ...
Adversarial operational psychology: Returning to the foundational issues
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 2015
We appreciate the participation of Drs. Staal and Greene in this dialogue, and we respond to four representative issues raised in their preceding rebuttal. We conclude with a call to all stakeholders to grapple with foundational issues that they evaded. Accountability Staal and Greene (2015) present an unrealistic and misleading view of operational psychology as a realm in which psychological ethics accords with military ethics, individual ethics accords with organizational ethics, and organizational role players have moral autonomy. In complex organizations, the search for the "locus of accountability" they posit is often futile because of the "problem of many hands": ultimate moral responsibility for events can rarely be fully traced (Bovens, 1998, p. 8). Indeed the national security system epitomizes complexity, with its multilevel organization, multicomponent causal interactions, plasticity, and evolving contingencies (Mitchell, 2009, p. 21). The prospect of capturing the prevailing ethics of both professional psychology and adversarial national security operations with a "unified moral theory" is remote, even as a joint endeavor by ethicists and operatives (Arrigo, 2001). In contrast to our original proposal (Arrigo, Eidelson, & Bennett, 2012), Staal and Greene (2015) offer no coherent ethical framework for operational psychology in the intersection of psychological ethics and military ethics. Their ad hoc beliefs-such as "we assert that [operational psychologists'] primary responsibility is to their client organization" (p. 279) and "we believe the APA's definition of 'reasonable' oversight is sufficient" (p. 279)-accommodate abuses characteristic of the Bush Administration's "war on terror" operations (U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, 2008) or even Soviet psychiatry (Reich, 1983). Platitudes To uphold psychological ethics in the security sector, Staal and Greene (2015) appeal to the virtue of individual psychologists, the availability of procedures for reporting and prosecut-JEAN MARIA ARRIGO holds a PhD and has been a social psychologist since 1995. She's given voice to military intelligence professionals of conscience through oral histories, documentation, speaking engagements, and joint activities with scholars.
An Examination of "Adversarial" Operational Psychology
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 2015
Operational psychology has remained under pressure from its critics. Arrigo, Eidelson, and Bennett (2012) proposed a split of operational psychology activities into 2 categories: "collaborative" and "adversarial," on the basis of their concerns that certain professional activities are unethical and inappropriate for psychology practitioners. Arguments to separate these activities are examined along with the authors' recommendations to bar psychologists from practicing in areas deemed "adversarial" by the Arrigo et al. criteria. Implications for military, government, public safety, and industrial psychologists are discussed. The applicability of the American Psychological Association's (2010) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct is also addressed.
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IMPLEMENTING OPERATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IN NATIONAL SECURITY SYSTEM: INTRODUCTION TO ETHICAL ISSUES
International Scientific Conference, SECURITY SYSTEM REFORMS AS PRECONDITION FOR EURO-ATLANTIC INTEGRATIONS, 2018
Operational psychology is a complex applied profession in the national security system, including diverse duties and roles. Psychology, by itself, differs from other professions by having its ethical code oriented to ―do not harm‖ principles, while the ethical principles and roles inherent for the police, military or intelligence community usually collide with them. On the other hand, there is a lack of guidance in the operational security professions. Given the complexity of the context or work specifics and the decision-making process of all operational professions, the whole picture and the decision-making process become even more complicated. Operational psychology, as an in-between role of psychology and operational society, has specific content and implementation, which requires additional guidance for the psychological ethical code and specific training and monitoring mechanisms, as well as consultations with other psychologists. Ethical dilemmas are mostly found in the mixed/dual agencies, competences, multiple/dual relationships and roles, confidentiality, informed consent, unlawful orders, personal problems and etc. Dialogue workshops and round tables with all relevant experts are necessary, to clarify the relevant ethical principles for these fields and give the operational psychologists a ―team role‖ in their working duties. It is important to consider these issues in order to facilitate the process of operational psychology implementation in the system in its true sense, contributing to the improvement of the ethics and trust in the psychology profession. This paper will be oriented to the psychological ethical obligations overview, in order to identify, introduce and discuss specific ethical challenges and risks of the professional ethical compromise within practicing the field of operational psychology. The aim is to protect the operational psychology profession within the national security context, by minimizing the space for eventual abuses, misconducts or inappropriate treatment by the security or other psychology professionals.
Interrogating the ethics of operational psychology
Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 2017
Commissioned amidst allegations of collusion between American Psychological Association officials and Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense officials involved in the enhanced interrogation programme, the July 2015 Hoffman Report documented a decade of collusion between American Psychological Association and Department of Defense officials in unethical national security interrogations. However, interrogation support is but one of numerous areas where psychologists are directly aiding military and intelligence operations, an area known as operational psychology. The ethical issues posed by the larger field of operational psychology have received little public discussion apart from apologia by operational psychologists themselves. To stimulate public review of operational psychology, leaders of the movement to remove psychologists from national security interrogations convened, in September 2015, a group of experts to work towards a consensus set of principles to guide future discussion. Participants included psychologists, physicians, and social scientists; military and intelligence professionals; and attorneys, ethicists, and human rights advocates. The discussion also drew upon years of dialogue between participants and military health and intelligence professionals. The workshop produced "The Brookline Principles on the Ethical Practice of Operational Psychology," with implications for the profession of psychology and for civil society.
Operational Psychology Post-9/11: A Decade of Evolution
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Operational psychology continues to expand at a rapid rate. Over the course of the last decade, it has emerged from relative obscurity and developed into an exciting, and somewhat controversial, professional subdiscipline within psychology. As the community of operational psychologists has increased and matured, it has reached a tipping point, creating the need for practice guidelines, training programs, and a greater emphasis on operationally relevant empirical research. The starting point for these developments is an integrative definition of operational psychology. In this article, we revisit previous definitions, relevant research literature, and recent developments in this specialty. We propose a definition that emphasizes consultation to an operational decision maker concerning issues of national security and defense.
Applied Psychology Under Attack: A Response to the Brookline Principles
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Following the American Psychological Association (APA)'s release of the Independent Review (Hoffman Report), a small group of psychologists, analysts, and human rights activists convened in order to discuss and draft practice guidelines for operational psychology. Motived by concerns about irreconcilable ethical issues, this group produced a document entitled, "The Brookline Principles," and published it under the banner of the Coalition for Ethical Psychology. Despite the absence of military or operational psychologists, the working group proposed ethics-related practice guidelines for operational practitioners. Their report, focused its attention on military and national security psychologists; however, more global implications are present for the practice of applied professional psychology across public safety, law enforcement, and other organizational consulting domains. The following response provides a review of their report and its recommendations. Public Significance Statement Operational psychologists, performing their duties from within the military, intelligence community, law enforcement or public safety arena, provide an invaluable service to the public and national security. Their work, while challenging, is both ethical and in keeping with the highest standards of our profession.
This brief report, excerpted from a longer paper, is an examination of psychologists' involvement in developing, teaching and implementing of interrogation techniques that violate the Geneva Convention. With the understanding that the Geneva Convention does not protect Enemy Combatants, these interrogation methods were within the law, though perhaps not within the ethical code. The question to be considered is why did the APA choose to collaborate with the government to violate psycholol0gist's ethical code of conduct and the Geneva Convention.
Military Psychology: Time to embrace a front-line diplomatic role
Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies, 2022
The weapon systems created for the purpose of fighting the enemy in World War I caused terrible losses of human life on all sides of the conflict. However, World War I was also the event that gave birth to what became the field of Military Psychology. This position article, briefly tracing the development of the field, encourages the development of an expanded scope for this sub-discipline of Psychology. In its infancy, the role of Military Psychology was the selection and placement of soldiers based on a series of cognitive tests. After World War II, the scope of Military Psychology quickly expanded exponentially into areas such as leadership development, psychological warfare, and the enhancement of morale, motivation, resilience, and human factors, as military psychology with its sub-disciplines became integrated into national military forces to enhance the capabilities of the modern fighting soldier psychologically, physically and technologically. As the discipline matured, its present role can be described as to create soldiers whose skills sets greatly surpass those of their predecessors in meeting the ever-increasing complex demands of the modern battlefield. In recent years, Afghanistan and Iraq illustrated that conventional warfare tactics are rendered all but obsolete by small numbers of militia fighters with improvised devices and even outdated weapons in a demonstration of human ingenuity trumping advanced technology and well-equipped, superior military forces that inevitably failed dismally to subdue insurgent opposition forces. Even the destruction of the Islamic State in Libya (ISIL) and the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) forces serves to emphasise that the world can no longer afford to continue armed conflict as a means to settle territorial and international disagreements because these eventually become the rationalisation for ongoing, unnecessary conflict. In its contribution to the defence role, alternatives to engagement in ill-advised military options must involve the strategic deployment of Military Psychology in a front-line capacity to research, comprehend and then, through diplomatic means, counter the psychological and ideological factors at play in creating the world's current conflict areas. If not, an even greater catastrophe will arise from ongoing ill-informed, ideologydriven international military interventions around the world.