Seeking and Finding Our Clients on the Internet: Boundary Considerations in Cyberspace

Kolmes, K. & Taube. D. O. (2012). Seeking and Finding Our Clients on the Internet: Boundary 

Considerations in Cyberspace. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 

Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0029958 

Abstract 

As psychologists and clients increasingly use the Internet for personal and professional activities, they run the risk of having more incidental contacts online. This survey examined the experiences of 227 mental health professionals of various disciplines and training levels about both accidental and intentional experiences encountering client information on the Internet. One hundred and nine participants intentionally sought information about current clients in noncrisis situations, and 63 participants accidentally discovered client information on the Internet. This paper explores how clinicians responded to these encounters and clinicians’ beliefs about how they influenced treatment. Recommendations are made for how mental health professionals may begin to address such issues in the clinical relationship. 

The entire article is here.

Yes, business ethics can be measured

By Leanne Hoagland Smith
The Chicago Sun-Times
Originally posted March 22, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

There is documented research from organizations, such as Ethics Resource Center, Gallup and various universities measuring the impact of business ethics or lack thereof on everything from employee morale to the negative impact on workplace productivity. So the reluctance to avoid business ethics as a key metric or key performance indicator (KPI) is illogical.

This begs the question of, “How does one measure ethical behavior within the workplace without being viewed as judgmental or worse yet getting sued?”

The entire article is here.

Stress undermines empathic abilities in men but increases them in women

By Sissa Medialab
Science Daily
Originally published March 17, 2014

Stressed males tend to become more self-centered and less able to distinguish their own emotions and intentions from those of other people.  For women the exact opposite is true.  Stress, this problem that haunts us every day, could be undermining not only our health but also our relationships with other people, especially for men. Stressed women, however, become more “prosocial,” according to new research.

The entire review is here.

The original article is:

L. Tomova, B. von Dawans, M. Heinrichs, G. Silani, C. Lamm. Is stress affecting our ability to tune into others? Evidence for gender differences in the effects of stress on self-other distinction. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2014; 43: 95 DOI: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2014.02.006

Editor's Note: These findings may have importance in terms of ethical decision-making while under duress.

Behavioural economics and public policy

By Tim Harford
The Financial Times
Originally published March 17, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

Behavioural economics is one of the hottest ideas in public policy. The UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) uses the discipline to craft better policies, and in February was part-privatised with a mission to advise governments around the world. The White House announced its own behavioural insights team last summer.

So popular is the field that behavioural economics is now often misapplied as a catch-all term to refer to almost anything that’s cool in popular social science, from the storycraft of Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point (2000), to the empirical investigations of Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics (2005).

Yet, as with any success story, the backlash has begun. Critics argue that the field is overhyped, trivial, unreliable, a smokescreen for bad policy, an intellectual dead-end – or possibly all of the above.

The entire article is here.

Experimental Moral Philosophy

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
First Published March 19, 2014

Experimental moral philosophy began to emerge as a methodology in the last decade of the twentieth century, a branch of the larger experimental philosophy (X-Phi, XΦ) approach. From the beginning, it has been embroiled in controversy on a number of fronts. Some doubt that it is philosophy at all. Others acknowledge that it is philosophy but think that it has produced modest results at best and confusion at worst. Still others think it represents an important advance.

The entire post is here.

Dark thoughts: why mental illness is on the rise in academia

By Claire Shaw and Lucy Ward
The Guardian
Originally published March 6, 2014

Mental health problems are on the rise among UK academics amid the pressures of greater job insecurity, constant demand for results and an increasingly marketised higher education system.

University counselling staff and workplace health experts have seen a steady increase in numbers seeking help for mental health problems over the past decade, with research indicating nearly half of academics show symptoms of psychological distress.

The entire story is here.

Nearly half of identity thefts involve medical data

By Adam Levin
Credit.com
Posted on Market Watch March 18, 2014

Here are two excerpts:

“Despite concerns about employee negligence and the use of insecure mobile devices, 88 percent of organizations permit employees and medical staff to use their own mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets to connect to their organization’s networks or enterprise systems such as email. Similar to last year more than half of (these) organizations are not confident that the personally-owned mobile devices or BYOD are secure.”

According to the report, very few organizations require their employees to install anti-virus/anti-malware software on their smartphones or tablets, scan them for viruses and malware, or scan and remove all mobile apps that present a security threat before allowing them to be connected their networks or systems.

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Medical identity theft is on the rise, just as the rise in criminal breaches of health care providers is spiking. Medical identity theft accounted for 43% of all identity theft reported in 2013, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that somewhere between 27.8 and 67.7 million people’s medical records have been breached since 2009 (and that’s before the flawed rollout of the Affordable Care Act).

The entire article is here.

Be employable, study philosophy

The discipline teaches you how to think clearly, a gift that can be applied to just about any line of work

By Shannon Rupp
Salon
Originally published July 1, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

The phrase caveat emptor is never more useful to remember than when paying tuition fees. Which reminds me: At what point does the minister of advanced education ask if it’s prudent to spend taxpayers’ money subsidizing trade school programs training people for dead trades? Just wondering.

Which is why I also recall a philosophy teaching assistant, who took a sabbatical from his fat-salaried job in the computer industry to do a company-funded PhD. He had benefited from that wave of computer development that hired logical thinkers to be trained in the new-fangled gizmos. For a brief, shining moment, BAs in philosophy had been hot commodities at places like IBM. One of his pals even wrote patents for companies that developed innovative tools and techniques. It turns out you need to define that new chair-like thing that isn’t quite a chair before you can patent it.

The entire article is here.

Editor's Note: Comedian Steve Martin has a degree in philosophy.

Dennett Willing to Abandon the term "Free Will"?

By Greg Caruso
Flickers of Freedom Blog
Originally posted March 19, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

But recently I have learned from discussions with a variety of scientists and other non-philosophers (e.g., the scientists participating with me in the Sean Carroll workshop on the future of naturalism) that they lean the other way: free will, in their view, is obviously incompatible with naturalism, with determinism, and very likely incoherent against any background, so they cheerfully insist that of course they don’t have free will, couldn’t have free will, but so what? It has nothing to do with morality or the meaning of life. Their advice to me at the symposium was simple: recast my pressing question as whether naturalism (materialism, determinism, science...) has any implications for what we may call moral competence. For instance, does neuroscience show that we cannot be responsible for our choices, cannot justifiably be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished? Abandon the term “free will” to the libertarians and other incompatibilists, who can pursue their fantasies untroubled. - See more at:

The entire blog post is here.