EPPP Prep

Podcast

Listen and learn

Two hosts, Ryan and Sohee, talk through each topic in depth: real-life scenarios, the reasons behind the rules, and the traps the exam sets. Good for a walk, a drive or a tired evening. Turn on Read along to follow the words.

1. Biological Bases of Behavior

  1. 1. The synapse: where neurons talk and drugs join in13 min · How a neuron fires, what happens at the synapse, what the major neurotransmitters do, and how agonists, antagonists and reuptake inhibitors change the signal.
  2. 2. Mapping the brain: lobes, lesions and the cases that taught us12 min · A tour of the lobes, the language areas, the limbic system, the midbrain and hindbrain, told through the cases the exam loves: Theona's stroke, Broca's area, Phineas Gage, H.M. and the split-brain patients.
  3. 3. The biology of mood, anxiety, psychosis and ADHD13 min · The stress response, hormones, and the brain regions and neurotransmitters linked to depression, panic, OCD, schizophrenia and ADHD, plus why most of these findings show association, not cause.
  4. 4. Psychotropic medications: the classes and how they work13 min · Antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, stimulants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers: what each class treats, how it works, how long it takes, and the side effects you're expected to know.
  5. 5. When medication turns dangerous: lithium toxicity and other emergencies13 min · Why lithium toxicity usually comes from the kidneys rather than an overdose, and how to tell apart neuroleptic malignant syndrome, serotonin syndrome, tardive dyskinesia, MAOI hypertensive crisis, clozapine neutropenia and the antidepressant suicidality warning.
  6. 6. Drugs of abuse, addiction medicines and herbal remedies13 min · Depressants, stimulants, opioids and hallucinogens sorted by the neurotransmitter systems they act on; tolerance, dependence and withdrawal; how methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone differ; and why St. John's wort is not a harmless add-on.
  7. 7. Landmark depression trials: STAR*D and TADS12 min · What the STAR*D trial found when adults tried up to four treatment steps for depression, what TADS found about fluoxetine, CBT and their combination in teens, and where ECT and rTMS fit when medication hasn't worked.
  8. 8. CATIE, STEP-BD and MTA: what big trials taught us13 min · Three NIMH trials the exam returns to: CATIE on older versus newer antipsychotics, STEP-BD on antidepressants and intensive psychotherapy in bipolar depression, and MTA on medication, behavior therapy and their combination for ADHD, plus the general case for combined treatment.
  9. 9. Genes and inheritance: from cleft chins to Huntington's disease12 min · Genotype and phenotype, dominant and recessive transmission, X-linked and mitochondrial patterns, Huntington's disease and anticipation, fragile X, Down syndrome, imprinting, penetrance, and how epigenetics changes gene expression without changing DNA.
  10. 10. Twins, adoptees and heritability: what behavioral genetics can and can't tell us12 min · How twin, family and adoption studies work, the concordance figures for major disorders, what heritability really means and its common misreadings, gene-environment interaction from Tienari to the serotonin transporter gene, and the diathesis-stress model.
  11. 11. Watching the brain work: imaging, EEG and the sleeping brain13 min · What CT, MRI, PET, fMRI, EEG and event-related potentials each measure, their trade-offs in detail and timing, how EEG maps the stages of sleep, and what the evidence says about using these tools in mental health care.
  12. 12. Drug monitoring and genetic testing: what the evidence supports13 min · Therapeutic drug monitoring and lithium levels, clozapine blood monitoring, what pharmacogenetic tests can and can't tell you according to the FDA, and genetic screening from newborn PKU tests to predictive testing, plus its limits and the GINA protections.

2. Cognitive-Affective Bases of Behavior

  1. 1. Classical conditioning: when a signal starts to matter14 min · Pavlov's four terms, acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization and discrimination, taste aversion and prediction, and how Watson, Jones and Wolpe carried conditioning into fear and its treatment.
  2. 2. Operant conditioning: reinforcement, punishment and shaping11 min · The law of effect, the four kinds of consequences with negative reinforcement as the classic trap, shaping, primary and secondary reinforcers, token economies, time-out, the drawbacks of punishment, and negative reinforcement in compulsions.
  3. 3. Schedules of reinforcement and resistance to extinction11 min · Continuous versus partial reinforcement, the four ratio and interval schedules and the response patterns they produce, why variable ratio is the most persistent, and what research says about gambling.
  4. 4. Learning by thinking and watching: Tolman and Bandura11 min · How Tolman's latent learning and cognitive maps challenged strict behaviorism, and how Bandura's observational learning works: kinds of models, the four steps, vicarious reinforcement and punishment, and the Bobo doll research.
  5. 5. How memory works: encoding, storage and retrieval13 min · Encoding and levels of processing, the Atkinson-Shiffrin stages, Baddeley and Hitch's working memory, explicit versus implicit memory, the three kinds of retrieval, and the brain areas and amnesias behind them.
  6. 6. Forgetting and false memory12 min · Why we forget and how memories get distorted: Ebbinghaus, decay and interference, encoding failure, Schacter's seven sins, flashbulb memories, the misinformation effect and eyewitness error, plus study methods drawn from memory research.
  7. 7. Theories of intelligence12 min · One ability or many? Spearman's g, Cattell's fluid and crystallized intelligence, the Cattell-Horn-Carroll hierarchy, Sternberg's triarchic theory, Gardner's multiple intelligences, emotional intelligence, culture, and creativity.
  8. 8. Measuring intelligence: tests, norms and nature-nurture12 min · From Binet to the WISC-V: standardization and norms, the bell curve and its numbers, the Flynn effect, Terman's gifted study, twin research and range of reaction, test bias and the court cases that shaped testing, and how learning disabilities differ from intellectual disabilities.
  9. 9. Motivation: from drives to self-actualization12 min · Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and the overjustification effect, instinct and drive theories, optimal arousal and the Yerkes-Dodson law, self-efficacy, social motives, Maslow's hierarchy, and how hunger is regulated.
  10. 10. Theories of emotion12 min · Which comes first, the pounding heart or the fear? James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, the Schachter-Singer two-factor theory and its epinephrine experiment, appraisal theories from Arnold and Lazarus, Zajonc and LeDoux, facial feedback, and constructed emotion.
  11. 11. Emotion in the brain, the face and everyday life12 min · Emotion versus mood, the limbic system and the amygdala's subnuclei, early experience and the amygdala, the hippocampus in trauma, Ekman's universal expressions and cultural display rules, why polygraphs are questionable, and how people regulate emotion.
  12. 12. Sensation, perception and attention12 min · Transduction, absolute and difference thresholds, Weber's law and signal detection, sensory adaptation, bottom-up and top-down processing, inattentional blindness, color and pitch theories, depth cues, and the Gestalt principles of organization.
  13. 13. Language, problem solving and executive function12 min · The building blocks of language, how children acquire it and the critical period, whether language shapes thought, Broca's and Wernicke's areas, algorithms, heuristics and the traps of mental set and functional fixedness, and the three core executive functions with the tasks that measure them.
  14. 14. Thoughts, feelings and actions13 min · How beliefs, mood, temperament and behavior shape one another: Beck's cognitive model and cognitive therapy, learned helplessness and attributional style, primary and secondary appraisal, self-efficacy, locus of control and reciprocal determinism, temperament, positive and negative affect, and cognitive dissonance.
  15. 15. How culture and other people shape what we think12 min · Psychosocial influences on beliefs and behavior: conformity and its two kinds of social influence, groupthink, culture's effects on perception and attribution, self-fulfilling prophecies and confirmation bias, stereotypes in perception and memory, and how poverty and stress affect thinking.

3. Social and Cultural Bases of Behavior

  1. 1. Why did they do that? Attributions and their biases12 min · How we explain behavior: the fundamental attribution error and the quizmaster study, actor-observer and self-serving biases, the just-world hypothesis, Kelley's three cues, and how culture changes the picture.
  2. 2. Stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination, and what reduces them12 min · The difference between a stereotype, a prejudice and an act of discrimination, implicit attitudes, self-fulfilling prophecies and confirmation bias, in-group bias and scapegoating, and the research on superordinate goals, the jigsaw classroom and intergroup contact.
  3. 3. Changing minds: attitudes, cognitive dissonance and persuasion12 min · What attitudes are made of, how cognitive dissonance pushes us to change our own minds, justification of effort, and how others change our minds: the Yale approach, primacy and recency, the elaboration likelihood model and the foot-in-the-door technique.
  4. 4. Going along: conformity, obedience and the power of roles11 min · Asch's line studies and the factors that raise or lower conformity, normative versus informational influence, compliance, Milgram's obedience studies and their variations, and how roles, norms and scripts shape behavior, including the Stanford prison experiment and its criticisms.
  5. 5. Inside groups and teams12 min · Groupthink's causes, symptoms and remedies, group polarization, social traps, social loafing and when it shrinks, deindividuation, and how teams develop through Tuckman's stages and why some teams struggle.
  6. 6. Systems around a person: work, family and school11 min · What predicts job satisfaction, equity theory and organizational justice, management and leadership styles, work-family conflict, Bronfenbrenner's nested ecological systems, and the systems view of the family in family therapy.
  7. 7. Aggression, bullying, life online and the bystander effect12 min · Hostile versus instrumental aggression, evolutionary and frustration-aggression explanations, what makes something bullying, cyberbullying and toxic online disinhibition, and the bystander effect and diffusion of responsibility, including what the Kitty Genovese story got wrong.
  8. 8. Helping, attraction and love13 min · Prosocial behavior and altruism, empathy and the egoism debate, what draws people together (proximity, similarity, reciprocity, self-disclosure, attractiveness and the matching hypothesis), Sternberg's triangle of love, social exchange theory, and nonverbal communication and display rules.
  9. 9. Personality from the inside: Freud and the neo-Freudians12 min · Freud's iceberg model, the id, ego and superego, defense mechanisms and psychosexual stages, then how Adler, Erikson, Jung and Horney each broke from Freud, and what research says about these ideas.
  10. 10. Personality through learning, growth, biology and traits13 min · Skinner's behavioral view, Bandura's reciprocal determinism and self-efficacy, Rotter's locus of control, Mischel and the person-situation debate, Maslow and Rogers, temperament and twin research, and trait models from Allport and Cattell to Eysenck, the Big Five and HEXACO.
  11. 11. Culture, acculturation, religion and politics13 min · Individualistic and collectivistic cultures, three ways to study personality across cultures, the problem of WEIRD samples, Berry's four acculturation categories, acculturative stress and the immigrant paradox, what research says about religion, spirituality and health, and political differences and polarization.
  12. 12. Identity and intersectionality12 min · How identity forms, from Erikson and Marcia's four statuses to models of Black, Asian American, biracial and sexual minority identity, Sellers' salience, centrality and regard, racial socialization in families, code-switching, and the core tenets of intersectionality.
  13. 13. Oppression and privilege: causes, forms and effects13 min · How power defines a minority group, the levels at which racism operates, privilege as an institutional condition, microaggressions and their three types, minority stress and its distal and proximal processes, stereotype threat, vigilance and historical trauma, and the coping and resilience that research also documents.

4. Growth and Lifespan Development

  1. 1. Nature, nurture and the shape of change13 min · The big questions behind every development item: the three domains, continuous versus stage-like change, one course or many, how genes and environment work together, and the difference between critical and sensitive periods.
  2. 2. Milestones: what typical development looks like in the early years11 min · Newborn reflexes, the head-to-toe and center-outward pattern of motor growth, brain blooming and pruning, language from cooing to telegraphic speech, and how CDC milestones, monitoring and screening help families act early.
  3. 3. Piaget, part one: the baby scientist and the preschool mind13 min · Schemas, assimilation and accommodation, the sensorimotor substages, object permanence and the A-not-B error, what newer looking-time studies found, and the preoperational child: symbols, egocentrism, animism, theory of mind, centration and conservation.
  4. 4. Piaget, part two, and how moral reasoning grows12 min · Concrete operations (conservation, reversibility, classification, seriation), formal operations and the pendulum problem, adolescent egocentrism, postformal thought, and moral reasoning from Piaget to Kohlberg's three levels and Gilligan's critique.
  5. 5. Vygotsky, information processing and the learning theories11 min · Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, the zone of proximal development, scaffolding, private speech and social referencing; Rogoff's learning by pitching in; the information processing view; and classical conditioning, operant conditioning and observational learning as explanations of development.
  6. 6. Erikson's eight stages and the search for identity12 min · Erikson's psychosocial crises from trust versus mistrust to integrity versus despair, Marcia's four identity statuses built on exploration and commitment, and Arnett's emerging adulthood.
  7. 7. Attachment and temperament12 min · Harlow's cloth mother, Bowlby's secure base and attachment stages, Ainsworth's Strange Situation and the four attachment patterns, cultural differences, temperament and goodness of fit, and why attachment can change across the lifespan.
  8. 8. Bronfenbrenner's circles: development in context11 min · How the person and their environments shape each other: Bronfenbrenner's microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem, cohort effects, socioeconomic status, the word-gap research and its critique, and the WEIRD sampling problem.
  9. 9. Identity in context: gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality12 min · How diverse identities shape development: sex, gender and gender identity, the gender milestones of early childhood, ethnic-racial identity and constancy, racial-ethnic socialization, PVEST, support for transgender youth, and sexual identity development.
  10. 10. Families: parenting styles, structures and the family life cycle12 min · Baumrind's parenting styles on the dimensions of warmth and structure, how culture and children's temperaments shape parenting, siblings and only children, what helps children through divorce, parent-teen conflict, and the sandwich generation, grandparents and kinkeepers.
  11. 11. Adulthood and the life events that redirect it11 min · The social clock and being on or off time, the midlife crisis myth, fluid and crystallized intelligence, socioemotional selectivity and selection-optimization-compensation, retirement, widowhood, and grief: Kübler-Ross's themes, their limits, and the dual-process model.
  12. 12. Risk, protection and resilience12 min · What risk and protective factors are, teratogens and the timing and dose of exposure, prenatal care, folic acid, alcohol and lead, adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress, risk and protective factors for abuse and neglect, and resilience and developmental assets.
  13. 13. When development takes a different course12 min · Developmental disabilities as the CDC describes them: what they are and what causes them, early signs of autism, ADHD, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy and Down syndrome, why early intervention matters, and why dementia is not a normal part of aging.

5. Assessment and Diagnosis

  1. 1. Reliability and validity: consistent is not the same as correct11 min · Why a test can give the same answer every time and still be wrong. The kinds of reliability and validity, how they relate, and how practice questions separate them.
  2. 2. Inside the test: item analysis, item response theory and testing by computer11 min · How test builders judge a single question, what item response theory adds, how computerized adaptive testing reaches precise scores with fewer items, and what telehealth changes about assessment.
  3. 3. Sensitivity and specificity: what a screening result can and cannot tell you12 min · Sensitivity, specificity and predictive values in plain words, the four kinds of results, the snout and spin mnemonics, and why moving a cutoff trades one kind of error for another.
  4. 4. Base rates: incidence, prevalence and the surprising positive screen11 min · Incidence versus point, past-year and lifetime prevalence, real base rates for anxiety disorders, and a worked example showing why a good test used for a rare condition produces mostly false alarms.
  5. 5. Mental shortcuts in clinical judgment11 min · Why careful clinicians still lean on mental shortcuts, how the availability, confirmation, anchoring, hindsight and representative biases distort assessment, and the habits that protect against them.
  6. 6. Fair testing across groups, cultures and languages11 min · Differential item functioning and what it does and doesn't prove, norms that don't travel, education and literacy effects, forward and back translation, and how to work with an interpreter during testing.
  7. 7. Assessment models: behavioral, developmental, ecological and neuropsychological lenses11 min · Four ways of framing an assessment question: functional behavioral assessment, developmental monitoring versus screening versus evaluation, the ecological view of a person in context, and the neuropsychological view across cognitive domains.
  8. 8. Assessment methods: interviews, self-report, informants, observation and physiology12 min · The strengths and limits of each way of gathering assessment data: structured and semi-structured interviews, self-report, multiple informants and 360-degree ratings, direct observation, work samples and assessment centers, and the polygraph.
  9. 9. Personality instruments: the MMPI and projective tests12 min · Self-report inventories and the MMPI family, the L scale and faking good, the projective tests (Rorschach, TAT, sentence completion), their standardization and validity, and culturally specific storytelling tests such as TEMAS and the C-TCB.
  10. 10. Intelligence and developmental instruments: standardization, norms and the right test for the age11 min · Where IQ tests came from, what standardization and norming mean, how to read the IQ scale, which Wechsler scale fits which age, abbreviated versus comprehensive testing, and the adaptive behavior and autism instruments that round out an evaluation.
  11. 11. Differential diagnosis, part one: when the body or a substance is the cause11 min · Integrating non-psychological information into assessment: checking for medical illnesses, injuries and medications behind psychological symptoms, recognizing when substance use may be producing the symptoms, and why co-occurring problems both need treatment.
  12. 12. Differential diagnosis, part two: timing, history and course11 min · How duration and past history separate conditions that look alike today: the more-than-a-month rule for PTSD, the two-week and two-year time frames in depression, seasonal patterns, and why one past manic episode changes everything.
  13. 13. Classification systems: categories, dimensions and their limits12 min · Why we classify, how the American diagnostic manual and the World Health Organization's ICD differ in use, the costs of yes-or-no categories (heterogeneity, comorbidity, arbitrary cutoffs), and the dimensional alternatives RDoC and HiTOP.
  14. 14. Models of psychopathology: diathesis-stress and the cognitive theories of depression12 min · How psychologists have explained where disorders come from: supernatural, biological and psychosocial perspectives, the diathesis-stress model and the adoption study that supports it, and Beck's theory, hopelessness theory, rumination and conditioning accounts.
  15. 15. Measuring outcomes: needs assessment, program evaluation and reliable change11 min · Assessing groups and organizations: needs assessment before training, the types of program evaluation and what each can and can't show, performance appraisal, and the reliable change index for judging whether one client really changed.

6. Treatment, Intervention, Prevention and Supervision

  1. 1. Choosing a treatment12 min · How psychologists decide what to offer: the three parts of evidence-based practice, matching treatment to the problem, the client's preferences and the relationship, allied services, and cost.
  2. 2. Readiness to change12 min · The transtheoretical stages of change, why the right tool depends on the stage, what motivational interviewing is and what the evidence says, and how screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment puts it to work.
  3. 3. Learning and thinking: behavioral and cognitive therapies13 min · From Mary Cover Jones and Peter's rabbit to Beck and Ellis: counterconditioning, exposure, systematic desensitization, token economies, the ABC model, and what a large review of meta-analyses says about CBT.
  4. 4. Insight, acceptance and the relationship13 min · Psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy, Rogers' client-centered therapy, play therapy, interpersonal therapy and dialectical behavior therapy: what each does, how to tell them apart, and what the evidence says.
  5. 5. Prevention models12 min · Two ways to classify prevention, primary-secondary-tertiary and universal-selective-indicated, plus CDC's social-ecological model and real prevention programs, and what meta-analyses say about universal versus targeted programs.
  6. 6. Efficacy, effectiveness and the Dodo bird13 min · How to read treatment research: efficacy versus effectiveness trials, the Dodo bird verdict, Wampold's contextual model, and the evidence on the alliance, empathy, expectations, therapist effects, dismantling and adherence.
  7. 7. Head to head: therapy, medication, or both13 min · What direct comparisons show about psychotherapy versus antidepressants, combined treatment, CBT versus other therapies for depression, and where brain stimulation fits, with every finding reported alongside its qualifiers.
  8. 8. Diverse and special populations12 min · Cultural competence and the evidence for culturally adapted treatment, why many people don't use services, trauma-informed care, children and older adults, and rehabilitation for serious mental illness, from coordinated specialty care to supported employment.
  9. 9. Growth for couples, families, groups and organizations12 min · Interventions that build growth beyond one person: family systems, structural and strategic family therapy, couples and group work, positive psychology interventions, and what organizational psychology says about leadership, strengths, mentoring, teams and work-family conflict.
  10. 10. Consultation models12 min · Caplan's definition of mental health consultation, how it differs from supervision, the four types from client-centered case consultation to consultee-centered administrative consultation, and the evidence for consultation as an implementation and prevention strategy.
  11. 11. Career development12 min · The major research-based career theories: Holland's RIASEC types, the hexagon and congruence; Super's life-span, life-space theory and Savickas' career construction; Gottfredson's circumscription and compromise; social cognitive career theory; and Krumboltz's social learning theory.
  12. 12. Telepsychology12 min · What telepsychology is, the APA guidelines and the core practice domains drawn from five sets of guidelines (identity and location, licensure, consent, security, emergencies, assessment, boundaries), mental health apps, and the evidence comparing video therapy with in-person therapy.
  13. 13. Health care systems and economics12 min · How the structure and money of health care shape treatment choices: mental health parity, managed care tools, fee-for-service, capitation and value-based payment, shortage areas, integrated and collaborative care, and stepped care.
  14. 14. Health promotion, resilience and wellness13 min · Approaches to health promotion and risk reduction: the health belief model, coping and perceived control, social support and mortality, exercise, the relaxation response and biofeedback, positive affect and optimism, resilience, and workplace well-being.
  15. 15. Supervision models13 min · Bernard's discrimination model, the integrated developmental model, competency-based supervision, the supervisory relationship and parallel process, what a 2025 meta-analysis found about supervision's effects, and the Ethics Code standards every supervisor needs.

7. Research Methods and Statistics

  1. 1. Samples, populations and gathering the data12 min · Probability and nonprobability sampling, the difference between sampling error and sampling bias, and what surveys, naturalistic observation and archival records each give and cost you.
  2. 2. Case studies, correlations and studying change over time12 min · What case studies and correlational designs can and cannot tell us, how to read a correlation coefficient, why a relationship is not proof of cause, and the trade-offs between longitudinal and cross-sectional studies.
  3. 3. Experiments and quasi-experiments11 min · Why random assignment is the engine of causal claims, how placebo and blinding protect an experiment, what quasi-experiments can and cannot show, and how factorial designs reveal interactions.
  4. 4. Single-case designs12 min · How AB, reversal, multiple baseline and alternating treatment designs let each person serve as their own control, when each design fits, and how they differ from a case report.
  5. 5. Describing data: center, spread and the normal curve11 min · Descriptive versus inferential statistics, levels of measurement, mean, median and mode in skewed data, standard deviation, z-scores, percentiles, the empirical rule and the core ideas of probability.
  6. 6. Hypothesis testing and the two kinds of error10 min · The null and alternative hypotheses, what a p-value means, how alpha sets the bar, and a reliable way to tell a Type I error from a Type II error in any scenario.
  7. 7. Choosing the right statistical test12 min · How the research question, the kind of data and whether observations are paired point you to a t-test, ANOVA, chi-square, correlation or regression, and when a nonparametric alternative fits better.
  8. 8. Power, effect size and clinical significance11 min · Why a tiny p-value can describe a tiny effect, how effect size and Cohen's benchmarks work, what raises statistical power, how to read a confidence interval, and how clinical significance differs from statistical significance.
  9. 9. Factor analysis and causal modeling12 min · How exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis find the dimensions behind a questionnaire, what loadings, eigenvalues and communalities mean, how path analysis and structural equation modeling test causal models, and mediation versus moderation.
  10. 10. Qualitative analysis and meta-analysis12 min · How thematic analysis turns interviews into codes and themes, how phenomenology studies lived experience, and how meta-analysis pools many studies, including fixed versus random effects and the funnel plot check for publication bias.
  11. 11. Critical appraisal: validity threats and levels of evidence12 min · Internal versus external validity, the classic threats to internal validity including regression to the mean and the Hawthorne effect, limits on generalizing, and how levels of evidence rank study designs without guaranteeing quality.
  12. 12. Program evaluation, community partnership and sharing results13 min · Needs assessment and the main types of program evaluation, cost-benefit versus cost-effectiveness analysis, the principles of community-based participatory research, and the ethics of reporting and sharing findings.

8. Ethical/Legal/Professional Issues

  1. 1. Confidentiality and its limits11 min · What psychologists keep private, when the law or the Ethics Code lets them share, the Tarasoff duty to protect, and how HIPAA treats psychotherapy notes and record requests.
  2. 2. How the ethics codes are built: APA and CPA12 min · The architecture behind every ethics question: the APA Code's aspirational General Principles versus its enforceable Standards, what the Code covers, and the Canadian Code's four principles and their order of weight.
  3. 3. Multiple relationships, conflicts of interest and barter12 min · When a second role, a competing interest or a trade of services becomes unethical: the real test in Standards 3.05 and 3.06, third-party requests, family roles, exploitation, and the only two conditions for barter.
  4. 4. The bright lines: sexual intimacies and harassment11 min · The few absolute rules in the Ethics Code: no sexual intimacies with current clients or their close relatives, no therapy with former sexual partners, the two-year rule and the most-unusual-circumstances test for former clients, and how the Code defines sexual harassment.
  5. 5. Competence: its boundaries, emergencies and lifelong upkeep12 min · Where competence starts and stops under Standards 2.01 to 2.06, how the underserved-area rule differs from the emergency rule, what to do when personal problems interfere, and how psychologists keep their competence current through self-assessment, continuing education and self-care.
  6. 6. Informed consent and client rights12 min · What clients must be told and when: Standards 3.10 and 10.01 on informed consent, assent and permission for people who can't legally consent, mandated services, couples, families and groups, recording, and the federal privacy rule's rights to amend a record and to get an accounting of disclosures.
  7. 7. When a colleague slips, and when ethics and law collide12 min · Standards 1.01 to 1.08: talking to a colleague first, the two-part test for a formal report, fair complaint handling, and what to do when the Code conflicts with a law or an employer.
  8. 8. Thinking it through: models of ethical decision-making12 min · How to reason through a hard ethical problem: the Canadian Code's ten-step process, consultation, public scrutiny and personal conscience, the APA Code's guidance on deciding, and principle-based reasoning, walked through one real-feeling dilemma.
  9. 9. Testing ethics and the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing12 min · What validity really means under the Testing Standards, the five sources of validity evidence, and the Ethics Code's assessment standards on consent, interpretation, test data versus test materials, and explaining results.
  10. 10. Courtroom landmarks: Jaffee, Daubert and Griggs11 min · Three U.S. Supreme Court decisions that shape practice: the federal psychotherapist privilege in Jaffee v. Redmond, the judge as gatekeeper for expert testimony in Daubert, and disparate impact in employment testing in Griggs, plus the federal four-fifths rule.
  11. 11. Records, fees and ending therapy well12 min · The business side of ethics: why psychologists keep records and how they protect them, fee agreements and collections, planning for interruptions, and when and how therapy should end.
  12. 12. Research ethics: review boards, consent and deception14 min · From the Tuskegee study to today's review boards: what institutional review boards require, what participants are told, when consent can be skipped, how deception must be explained, and who earns authorship.
  13. 13. Supervision and teaching ethics12 min · What psychologists owe the people they train: timely and specific feedback, fair evaluation, honest programs and syllabi, limits on required personal disclosure and therapy, careful delegation, telling clients about a trainee, and firm limits on sexual relationships.
  14. 14. Telepsychology: same ethics, new room13 min · How the Ethics Code reaches video, phone and text services, what the 2013 APA telepsychology guidelines recommend, and how licensure, location checks, emergency plans and the PSYPACT compact fit together.
  15. 15. Emerging issues: AI, social media and public statements13 min · How a Code written before today's tools still guides practice: competence in emerging areas, public statements in electronic media, testimonials and solicitation, social media boundaries, and one proposed framework for using AI in therapy.