Respect and courtesy in psychological practice: An ethical examination
Abstract
Like other people, psychologists sometimes behave discourteously by being ill-mannered, impolite, inconsiderate, insulting, offensive, or rude. There is ample psychological research that discourteous behaviour can have an impact on persons’ functioning. Researchers report that targets of discourteous behaviour show greater psychological distress (Cortina, Magley, Williams, & Langhout, 2001), shame responses (Felblinger, 2008), poorer well-being (Taylor, 2010) and impaired performance on routine and creative tasks (Porath & Erez, 2009). Witnesses of such behaviour make negative generalizations about discourteous people and become angry with them. Such anger often leads to ruminations about the incident (Porath, MacInnis, & Folkes, 2010) which can lead to retaliatory behaviour that spirals into increasingly aggressive behaviour (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Even if this does not happen, targets and bystanders of discourteous behaviour report a loss of trust, increased feelings of injustice, a tendency to avoid others (Taylor, 2010), and being uncooperative and unwilling to engage in citizenship behaviours (Porath & Erez, 2007; Porath et al., 2010). As can be expected, problem solving is impaired in groups within which there is discourteous behaviour (Chiu & Khoo, 2003) and such behaviour is often associated with a more pervasive pattern of antisocial behaviour such as sexual harassment (Lim & Cortina, 2005).
Document Type
Book Chapter
Date of Publication
2015
Location of the Work
Victoria, Australia
Faculty
Faculty of Education and Arts
Publisher
Cengage Learning Australia
School
School of Arts and Humanities
RAS ID
20376
Copyright
metadata only record
Comments
Allan, A., & Davidson, G. (2015). Respect and courtesy in psychological practice: An ethical examination. In Ethics and professional practice for psychologists (2nd ed., pp. 25-39). Victoria: Cengage Learning Australia.