Discussion: When Does Personal Empathy-Bias Occur in Professional Settings and What are Effective Ways to Manage it?

 You have been invited throughout this course to explore personal empathy-bias about the legal topics and issues that we have explored and analyzed. Being aware of one’s empathy-bias and setting these aside at work is an important part of abiding by ethical guidelines in our field. When serving the legal system or while in other professional settings, ethical guidelines require that forensic psychology professionals be fair, objective, and unbiased. To do so, being aware of one’s empathy-bias can be an important first step in setting aside personal opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints in order to be faithful to these ethical requirements. 

To prepare:

• Review the Learning Resources, especially content related to empathy-bias and ethical guidelines.
• Reflect on:
  • Topics throughout the course and those in which you had the most trouble managing your empathy-bias
  • Other topics or work tasks that are most likely to elicit empathy-bias that might be challenging to manage
  • Ethical guidelines that might be at risk if your empathy-bias is not managed
  • How management of your empathy-bias could empower you to contribute more effectively to social change
  • Strategies to manage your empathy-bias, noting that different strategies might work better for different topics