Do the Right Thing: Living Ethically in an Unethical World

How should you live your life? Our actions and choices dramatically affect our thoughts and feelings about ourselves and the world around us. Few things promote good mental health better than a clear conscience and the peace of mind that come from knowing you’ve done the right thing. But, in our ever more complicated world, what are the right choices? How can we make decisions that are at the same time good for us, good for our community—and just plain good?

This book, written by an esteemed psychologist and ethicist, helps you answer these questions and develop a sound system for making the right choices in each situation. First, the book offers a clear, easy-to-understand survey of the major traditions in ethics and their approaches to problem solving. Then it explains an innovative, five-step process you can use to make sound, ethical choices. The RRICC system works by helping you examine situations according to five ethical principles: responsibility, respect, integrity, competence, and concern. By following the lucid, step-by-step exercises that introduce the system, you will learn and practice invaluable decision-making skills—simple, reliable techniques you can use at any time, in any place to make sure you always do the right thing.

Thomas G. Plante, Ph.D., ABPP, is professor of psychology and director of the Center for Professional Development at Santa Clara University. He is also adjunct clinical associate professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and consulting associate professor at the Stanford University School of Education. He is a licensed psychologist with a private practice in Menlo Park, CA. For more than a decade, he has taught classes in ethics at both Santa Clara and Stanford Universities and conducted workshops in ethics for mental-health care professionals as well as for the public. Plante is the author of Contemporary Clinical Psychology, Second Edition (2005, Wiley); editor of Bless Me Father For I have Sinned: Perspectives on Sexual Abused Committed by Roman Catholic Priests (1999, Greenwood) and Sins Against the Innocents: Sexual Abuse by Priests and the Role of the Catholic Church (2004, Greenwood); co-author of Getting Together, Staying Together: The Stanford University Course on Intimacy (Firstbooks, 2000); and coeditor of Faith and Health: Psychological Perspectives (2001, Guildford). He conducts research concerning religious faith and health outcomes, the psychological benefits of exercise, and psychological issues among Catholic clergy. Over the course of his career, he has published more than 100 professional journal articles. Plante has appeared and been featured on the BBC, CNN, PBS’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer, National Public Radio, and local television new shows as well as in national magazines an newspapers including Time Magazine, US News and World Report, USA Today, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the London Times, and the Washington Post.