The Role of a Psychologist

Individuals participate in multiple roles on a daily basis. Mothers have fulltime careers while fathers are often coaches of their child’s soccer team. For the most part, multiple roles can be held without issue; however, there are cases of parents who are also teachers or nurses who might be married to the manager of a medical records division. In the field of psychology, however, multiple role relationships are frowned upon. Even moreso, they are highly discouraged and even considered to be unethical in most cases. They present conflicts of interest in a majority of cases, although many of these roles are only innocent in nature.

According to the guidelines presented by the American Psychological Association in 2002, there is a very descriptive list of the duties, requirements, ethical considerations, and much more information. Upon graduation and degree completion, a psychologist is expected to be committed to both the scientific and professional knowledge of behavior and the understanding of themselves. They are also expected to use this knowledge in order to improve the condition of individuals, organizations, and the overall society (2002).

The general goal in being a psychologist is to help the public with the development of personalized, yet informed judgements and choices of their own human behavior. Psychologists perform many roles including researchers, educators, therapists, supervisors, consultants, administrators, interventionists, and expert witnesses in court testimonies (APA, 2002). In order to uphold these standards in which the psychologist agreed to upon completion of their academic studies, the individual agrees to abide by a personal commitment and effort for their entire lifetime to act ethically, to encourage ethical actions from any students they may teach, and to consult with others when ethical problems arise (2002).

Pros Involving Multiple Role Relationships

There are potentially good things which can come out of a relationship between a psychologist, or practitioner, and a group of employees, students, or athletes. Although this is considered “unethical” by the American Psychological Association, real world evidence shows there are multiple relationships which exist. The relationships may be on a level of professionalism between the two parties or it might actually span beyond a professional and even a friendly level into a more intimate and romantic relationship which would be considered highly unethical in the eyes of the psychological community and the American Psychological Association as well.

One example of a relationship involving a practitioner and a group of individuals which would be considered as multiple roles would be in the athletic department. Buceta (1993) believes the combining of the practitioner and the coaching role would successfully blend the two groups and show a level of optimal harmonization between both the athletic and psychological worlds. This is believed to benefit the team in such a way that they might be successful. Smith (1992) wrote about this particular topic in the Journal of Applied Psychology, stating if there was an individual playing the coach-practitioner role in athletics for a team, it would essentially be an overall success because the team would trust and respect both sides of the relationship with more respect than if they were separated. Also, Smith (1992) goes on to state that if the case was to arise where the team had issues with the coaching or others in the department, the coach could use his psychology skills quite easily in order to solve the problem from the inside, rather than having to let more people be aware of issues and cause increased disharmony within the entire team.

Cons of the Multiple Role Relationship

In the same case of the athletic relationship stated above, there are drawbacks, as with any relationship. The first drawback mentioned by Smith (1992) was the time factor. It is believed if a psychologist is playing a dual role of both coach and practitioner, there will not be time to adequately do both to the degree one might expect.

Buceta (1993) also believes a psychologist playing a dual role in any field, whether it is athletics or otherwise, is setting himself up for failure because eventually the person will become too emotionally involved with the players, students, or whatever the group may be. This will cause a problem if there is an issue in which the psychologist is to be totally reserved and noninfluenced by anything, especially a relationship with one of the individuals in question. Buceta(1993) feels a dual role relationship is eventually going to always lead to disaster.