Social Lives
Author: Rachel Brown is a PhD candidate at the Department of Psychology, Maynooth University and a Research Assistant with the ALL Institute’s SHAPES project
Like many of you, I recently watched Christopher Nolan’s biographic film documenting theoretical psychist Robert Oppenheimer’s involvement in the Manhattan Project and the creation of the first nuclear weapons. Although I enjoyed the film, I was left with a strange sense of unease about scientific knowledge and the power that knowledge has to change the world, and not always for the better. As I drove home, I considered my own responsibilities regarding the knowledge my research will produce. Needless to say, the 20-minute car journey home from the cinema felt very long that day.
Shortly after seeing the film, I came across Oppenheimer’s 1956 address to the American Psychological Association (APA) entitled Analogy in Science. It was an engaging and eloquently written speech and I assure you it is well worth the read. Intriguingly, he gives a stern warning to the field of psychology, while given at the height of behaviourism with widespread fear of mind control over individuals and society, 68 years on Oppenheimer’s warning seems just as relevant now as it did then.
“We have spoken of our responsibilities and of our obligations to society in terms that sound very provincial, because the psychologist can hardly do anything without realising that for him the acquisition of knowledge opens up the most terrifying prospects of controlling what people do and how they think and how they behave and how they feel. This is true for all of you who engage in practice, and as the corpus of psychology gains in certitude and subtlety and skill, I can see that the physicist’s pleas that what he discovers be used with humility and be used wisely will seem rather trivial compared to those pleas which you will have to make and for which you will have to be responsible”. (p.128).
Admittedly, it is slightly controversial for the “father of the atomic bomb” to give advice on moral responsibility, but nonetheless, as humans many of our best lessons are learned from our mistakes. Importantly, within Oppenheimer’s speech lies a very relevant question. Should psychologists be held responsible for the knowledge they produce and how that knowledge is used? According to the APA’s 2021 Task Force of Human Rights, psychologists have a special ethical responsibility due to their “particular body of knowledge regarding the science of human behaviour and their unique societal role, have a specific obligation to promote and protect human rights”. As such, the responsibilities of psychologists to promote and protect human rights applies not only to their conduct in clinical practice and with research participants, but a also to a responsibility for the “application of knowledge derived from psychology”.
While psychologists often have few direct powers over people’s lives, they hold substantial soft power to influence how we understand ourselves and others, thus guiding our thoughts and behaviours. Psychological research, more than any other scientific discipline, is integrated into the daily lives of the public. Psychological knowledge plays a role in our social institutions such as legal systems, education, medicine, and human resources to name a few. The very language of psychology is often a feature of daily discourses with terms like anxiety, trigger and bipolar being used as slang terms outside their original meaning. A quick scroll through social media and you will find both qualified psychologists and lay people advising you on the “five signs of a psychopath”, “the psychology of evil people”, “psychology facts you need to know!” and “most powerful psychology tricks to make anyone addicted to you”. Credibility and validity are often implied with the simple term “according to psychological research” or with the psychologist’s position of expert power.
Clearly, psychological research is a very powerful force in shaping society, and while psychologists conduct their activities with the best intentions and follow ethical guidelines, we only need to look at the history of psychology to see how the use of knowledge hasn’t always been ethical, specifically in terms of human rights. Examples include psychologist’s involvement in the interrogation and torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, conducting conversion therapy and the pathologizing of homosexuality, “mother blaming” as the cause of mental health conditions, as well as suggesting a psychological justification for racism. Historically, psychology’s human rights record hasn’t been unsoiled and even current psychological codes of conduct can be viewed as questionable.
So how can psychologists do better and take responsibility as individuals, and as members of a discipline, to maintain ethical standards that specifically protect, if not promote, human rights? The International Journal of Psychology recently published the article titled ‘The five connections: A human rights framework for psychologists’, by Dr Kirby Huminuik, which outlines a human rights framework that can be applied in practice as well as research, and can be implemented when forming or revising ethical codes of conduct. It outlines five ways which psychologists can implement a human rights-based approach. “(a) Psychologists possess rights by virtue of being human, as well as specific rights essential to their profession and discipline; (b) Psychologists apply their knowledge and methods to the greater realisation of human rights; (c) Psychologists respect human rights and oppose the misuse of psychological science; (d) Psychologists ensure access to the benefits of psychological science and practice; and (e) Psychologists advocate for human rights.” (p.1).
Psychology then has a responsibility to advocate for human rights due to its expert knowledge on the human condition just as physicists do with their knowledge of the powers of the material world. Oppenheimer draws many parallels and commonalities in the scientific endeavours and responsibilities of psychologists and physicists. Both disciplines conduct their work with good intentions with an aim of scientific discovery of “what material bodies are and how they behave, on the one hand, and how people and people-like animals behave and feel and think and learn. These are the curiosities of common life, and they will never be abated” (p.128).
However, because of the “curiosities for common life” and their potential for influence, Oppenheimer argues that scientists have a responsibility to ensure that the knowledge they produce is understood, yet he stops short in suggesting that scientists have a responsibility for deciding how their knowledge is used. He suggests that “The point, of course, is that as the relevance of what we find to human welfare and human destiny becomes sharper and more manifest, our responsibilities for explanation, for communication, for teaching grows. These are rather our responsibilities for being sure that we are understood than responsibilities for making decisions; they are responsibilities for laying the basis in understanding for those decisions.” (p.128).
This is a fair point that Oppenheimer makes and seems very relevant today with the proliferation of psychological theory in the media when the public has little information regarding the context, methods and application of the research. He stresses that scientists have a responsibility to ensure that the knowledge produced is understood in its fullest context to enable decision making that is grounded in the knowledge’s purpose. Yet to protect the use of our knowledge in a way that not only prevents human rights abuses but promotes human rights, psychologists and indeed all scientists, need to have some say and some responsibility as to what our knowledge is used for.
In this way, psychologists can be human rights defenders by adopting codes of ethical conduct that promote human rights as outlined in the Universal declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). While many ethical codes of professional conduct incorporate elements of the UDHR, such as the Universal Declarations of Ethical Principles for Psychologist (UDEPP), many regional ethics codes lack clarity and are open to interpretation. As such these ethical codes act more as documents for guidance than legislation which can be acted upon. Nor do these ethical codes protect psychologists who do act as human right defenders when calling out human right abuses. For psychologists to adopt the responsibility to promote and protect human rights in practice, in research, and in the management of their knowledge, amendments to ethical codes are needed and they must be backed by legislation.
One criticism for psychologists not taking responsibility to protect and promote human rights can be the subjective and contextual nature of the rights themselves. Giving special responsibility to psychologists to promote and protect human rights may be contested on the grounds of maintaining the disciplinary empiricism and objectivity, and therefore the scientific groundings of psychology. Yet, psychologist Jerome Bruner (Acts of Meaning, 1990), who was also a close associate and friend of Robert Oppenheimer argues that “the study of the mind is so difficult, so caught in the dilemma of being both the object and the agents of its own study, that it cannot limit its inquiries to ways of thinking that grew out of yesterday’s psychics”. Thus, the development of the discipline of psychology that is open to the responsibilities that reflect the impact of the knowledge it produces will not harm its responsibility to scientific inquiry, but can enhance it.
Many psychologists who already adopt a human rights-based approach to their practice and research with a focus not only on conducting their activities ethically, are also actively addressing human rights abuses on an individual and societal scale. Examples include the work of LGBT researchers, those who work with victims of war, torture and with asylum seekers, and research that highlights human rights offenses occurring in the subtleties of everyday activities such as sexism. These psychologists not only work with victims of human rights abuses but strive to create knowledge that fosters systematic change to prevent further human rights abuses.
As I am in the final year of my PhD and my research is in the area of critical psychology, a human rights-based approach is essential in my motivations and how I conduct myself as a researcher. However, after watching the film and reading the Oppenheimer address to the APA, I am now considering what my responsibility will be for the knowledge I produce once it leaves my hands. Will it be used responsibly? Will it promote human rights and equality as intended? Will I be left feeling responsible for wrong doings fostered by the knowledge I produced? Of course, I’m aware that my responsibilities pale in comparison to those which Oppenheimer had to face because of his scientific endeavours. Yet the lessons he learned and his message that ‘with great knowledge comes great power but with that power comes great responsibility’, feels very relevant.
The SHAPES project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 857159.