Effects of Pressure and Legal Guideline Clarity on Counselor Decision Making in Legal and Ethical Conflict Situations

Seventy-two randomly selected American Mental Health Counselor Association members completed a mailed questionnaire containing four ethical conflict vignettes in written analogue form. Two levels of pressure (high and low) and legal guideline clarity (clear and unclear) were incorporated into the descriptions of the conflict situations. Participants indicated the likelihood of each of five Likert-scaled response options designed specifically for the conflict situation in question. These options corresponded to five decision styles postulated by Janis and Mann (1977) (unconflicted adherence, unconflicted change, defensive avoidance, hypervigilance, and vigilance). The 2 × 2 analyses of variance with repeated measures of these likelihood responses revealed significant main effects for pressure and for legal guideline clarity for responses to conflict and significant interaction effects (pressure × clarity). In general, pressure tended to increase unconflicted change and hypervigilance and to decrease unconflicted adherence. Clarity of legal guidelines had few effects on decision responses. Consistent with Janis and Mann's theory, results showed that decision making was affected negatively by pressure but that participants relied little on legal guidelines in making responses to ethical conflict dilemmas.