Privacy and ethics: discussing celebrities’ private lives

Over on Chronicles of Dissent, I’ve been blogging about privacy issues and the ethics of psychologists discussing celebrities’ personal lives. Part 1 of the discussion uses the Tiger Woods scandal and Brittany Murphy death to illustrate some ethical concerns and it includes statements from the ethics codes of the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association. Part 2 of the discussion quotes U.K. social psychologist Dr. Gary Wood, who shares my view that it is unethical for psychologists to discuss or speculate about the mental health of celebrities.