Article archive / February 1, 2015
Originally published: . Volume 6, No. 2. Source pages: 2.
The psychology board wants to expand its control from regulating psychologists’ practice of psychology, to regulating their free speech and “professionalism.” They need this because someone apparently cursed at the Executive Director, and because “You wouldn’t believe the things we are seeing,” and because a psychologist spouting off could somehow hurt the public by hurting the profession.
This rather confusing logic was part of what board members put forth at the long-range meeting last November for their desire to make yet another change in the licensing law. (The board members’ duties don’t include making new laws, but that seems to make little difference to anyone.)
So now they want to expand their control to govern free speech. There are three issues here: 1) faulty group process; 2) a possible power struggle; and 3) the strange notion of psychologists restricting individual expression.
First, whether the board is deciding about free speech or what type of sandwich to order, they seem unaware of their group process. In this case, they have fallen into a confirmation bias– looking for reasons to do what they already want to do.
They’ve exhibited the human frailty of jumping to a conclusion. The inductive reasoning seems to be: some psychologists are rude and inappropriate; the board regulates psychologists; therefore the board should regulate rude and inappropriate behavior of psychologists. Even if they’d identified the right problem––they haven’t––it’s the wrong solution. It is the “I have a hammer so this must be a nail,” decision error. One reader said, “Someone cussed out the Executive Director? Why not just send her to a customer service workshop?”
The board also seems to be neglecting their own base rate. The board voted five times over the last four years for a discipline action. This is 1.25 per year for about 680 psychologists. The base rate is .0018 for discipline. The more likely problem might be the validity of those five cases, that they could be false positives. Or, we could worry about wasting taxpayers’ money trying harder to control something that hardly ever happens. The board might even say, “Yes, but you see how well it all works to control unruly psychologists.” And it works to keep all the elephants away too.
Decisions like this have an invisible cost on human productivity that never figures in for those coming up with regulations. This is the error Daniel Kahneman calls WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is) or Henry Hazlitt calls the only lesson for economics––overlooking the impact of a policy on everybody else.
In this case, “everybody else” is the 678.75 psychologists who don’t have a disciplinary problem that year. They will adjust by taking (even) fewer risks, the heart of innovation. Fear of a board complaint can and does cause more caution, timidity, and inhibition. They’ll do more record keeping, covering of behind, and produce less innovation, or public statements, or less working in high conflict custody cases, or whatever.
If we put all of this on a scale, from negative 10 to positive 10, with our base rate we can think about the impact. Let’s say the problem case is a negative 10 and the overly cautious psychologist adjusts downward by 2, in “productivity” units. Then, while more regulation might “save” 50 productivity points, it will “cost” the community over 6,000 points by its impact on everybody else.
I wish the board would address its own group process. Are they using psychology to do their work? Are they thinking like psychologists?
The second problem? I’m not saying so, but some have said to me (and imagined that I think it) that the board is “doubling- down” on free speech because of the Psychology Times. If true, this is normal and to be expected. Conflict between town hall and the community newspaper is part of the age-old, time- honored struggle for freedom in democratic societies. But, I would sure hate for everyone to be regulated more just because the board is fed up with the Times.
Finally, it seems absurd for the board to take up arms against freedom of expression. Good grief––this is the psychology board!
The board has declared no media interviews, they won’t release attorney’s memos that they use for rationale, their minutes are cryptic. Now they’ve decided they need to control psychologists’ personal behavior and free speech.
Psychology and psychologists embrace free expression and speech, we don’t restrict it. In Plato’s terms, psychology might be one of the “fair and immortal children of the mind,” while not always reaching, but always striving for, the truth, in all its convoluted and challenging forms.
It’s not easy, but it is noble, to give structure and substance to the thoughts of the individual, to provide the emotional space for the views of a spouse or child, to validate experiences of an employee, or expose scientific facts. Psychologists discover the general truths of the human experience and send them out like messages in bottles.
We don’t restrict free speech––we promote it and protect it.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.