¶ … socio-cultural issues that have the greatest influence on the administration of psychological testing. One social and legal issue that arisen in the recent literature is the use of psychological testing in conjuncture with genetic testing. Indeed, the article notes that there are ethical challenges and training implications for current and future psychologists in the field. The article notes that modern advances in the field of genome sequencing and genetic testing have created issues and ethical challenges relating to the general field of psychology. The reason there is an issue is that, more and more, patients will know their family's genetic history and will present with a disorder in mind rather than allowing for diagnosis to run its course. Further, this knowledge of the family history can lead to undue stress and problems with the patients themselves. There are further concerns that can rise from that overall paradigm including values conflicts an value system disparity, confidentiality/privilege/record keeping issues, informed consent concerns and competence/training concerns (Richmond-Rakerd, 2013).
At a broader level, there are both merits and implications (good and bad) of genetic testing but they have generated a lot of debate and in a lot of directions. When it comes to psychological testing and care in general, there is a fear of discrimination and a form of "eugenics" that can be used to clean...
Richmond-Rakerd notes that psychologists have an ethical responsibility to act in a conscientious of their potential to possess bias against the individuals who differ from them in any number of ways and forms. Further muddying the waters is the fact that overall therapist and psychologist perceptions about genetic testing are largely unknown. This leads to a lot of ambiguity regarding just how pervasive a problem these biases and influences relating to genetic testing really are (Richmond-Rakerd, 2013). Another identified issue that is much more specific to psychological testing than anything else is the ethics behind how much the testing is used in general. Indeed, some say that there is overuse and misuse of psychological testing. Some go further and suggest that "less is more" and that testing should not be used too commonly or too generally as there are many situations where it is not effective or simply not needed. For example, attorneys and judges can over-rely on the results of psychological tests when it comes to the deciding of legal cases, the deciding of competency and so forth. The use of testing has also become very computerized and automated in nature. The lack of personal observation and a personal touch can lead to a loss of efficacy. However, the overall controversy regarding psychological testing is not remotely new (Sander & Katz, 2013). To answer the "why," there are…
