Ethical social justice: Do the ends justify the means?

This article offers an ethical decision-making model, informed by community psychology values, as a means for guiding psychologists when engaging in social justice-oriented work. The applicability of this model is demonstrated through a case analysis elucidating how America's psychologists individually and collectively arrived at the decision to endorse torture—ostensibly as a means for preventing terrorism. Critics have wondered how the American Psychological Association succumbed to these involvements, and how to prevent such ethical lapses in the future. Unfortunately, the American Psychological Association's ethical codes fail to provide explicit guidance for psychologists' involvement in social justice work that impacts communities and systems. To address this gap, we present a values-driven, ethical decision-making framework that may be used to guide psychologists' future practices. This framework infuses fundamental community psychology values (i.e., caring and compassion; health; self-determination and participation, human diversity, social justice; and critical reflexivity) into a 9-step model.