A powerful opportunity. Psychologists have the opportunity to contribute to knowledge, provide clinical services, teach or advance social policy. Thus, they have the power to foster change in their clients, and at least in some small measure, make the world a better place (e.g., Pope & Vasquez, 2007).
Opportunity can provide strength and build resilience. If a paper is well received, a client improves, a student does well or a policy is adopted, the psychologist is reinforced by success and may then take on even greater challenges.
Psychologists generally appreciate their opportunity and guard it carefully. But opportunity also can entail vulnerability because of the power psychologists have over those who are entrusted to their care. Unfortunately, power can be abused and trust violated and psychologists are vulnerable to abusing their powerful opportunities.
We propose that a central underlying mechanism of vulnerability to abusing one’s opportunity is self-deception (e.g., Saradjian & Nobus, 2003) or self-serving bias (Shepperd, Malone, & Sweeny, 2008). When opportunities are exploited and power and trust abused, it may not be because offenders failed to understand intellectually that they had done something wrong. Rather, misbehavior may more often be a function of personal feelings and intuitions that obscure good judgment. These processes interfere with sound decision-making because they are not primarily intellectual but emotional (Kahneman, 2003). Given the opportunity to help, and the sincere desire to do so, we may wish to help a student for whom we feel sympathy by giving a grade he or she did not deserve and fail to see the exception as harmful to academic honesty and fairness. Doing so may also negatively affect the student and others if the higher grade leads them to assume that the student possesses knowledge or skills that he or she lacks. When such professional boundaries are crossed, it is because we have the opportunity to do so.
Remembering that harm can come from an abuse of opportunity may be difficult at times, but it is vital because psychologists can harm clients, themselves, their profession and society.