The meaning of being ethical psychologist : second year’s psychology students’ perspective

Abstract

Professional ethics is a science highly related to the personal experience not only to theoretical knowledge of profession. If we want to reach higher quality of teaching students professional ethics we need to take into account the experience they already have. The aim of this study was to explore the patterns of being ethical psychologist of the psychology students. 64 full-time second year psychology students at Vytautas Magnus University participated in this study. In the beginning of the second year of their studies they wrote an essay “What does it mean to be an ethical psychologist for me?”. Content analysis was used as a method of data analysis. The results confirmed the findings of the quantitative studies about the hierarchy of important factors related to the ethical behaviour of psychologist. It was revealed that “confidentiality” is the main feature of being ethical psychologist. “Moral values” including honour, tolerance, care of others, etc. was the second pattern of being ethical professionally. The third theme of the ethical behaviour of psychologist included “serving to others”. The last pattern was concerning the legislation of this profession (“working ethically means working according to the laws”). To sum up, our results showed that experiential patterns of the students reflect 4 general principles of the professional ethics of psychologists (respect, competence, responsibility and integrity).