ACTIVITY IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST
References to "the public interest" and "public interest activity" have become increasingly frequent within organized psychology during the last few years, For the past four years the APA Board of Professional Affairs sponsored an ad hoc Committee on Promoting Public Interest Activities. Almost three years ago, members of the Council of Representatives who felt that attention to scientific and professional "self-interests'' were leading to a neglect of "public and social issues" within APA formed the Public Interest Coalition. During this period the Association for the Advancement of Psychology decided to reserve one-third of the seats on its Board of Trustees for psychologists identified with "public-social" interests. Last year the APA established an "APA Award for a Distinguished Contribution to Psychology in the Public Interest" which will be presented for the first time in September. At the 1978 midwinter meeting, the Division 27 Executive Committee decided to become a member of The Public Interest Coalition and to emphasize the public interest of professional and scientific activities.
But what exactly do we mean by activity in the public interest? Is it true as the Citibank (1978) of New York City, one of the nation's largest financial institutions, warns in a full-page advertisement in a number of newspapers as this article is being written that: "Probably no phrase in the English language affords more ambiguity or opportunities for demagoguery than 'the public interest' "? That seems an extreme judgment, but it does not seem unreasonable to follow Citibank's lead in defining the "public interest community" as consisting of people who are concerned about things that affect all of us, such as a clean environment or integrity in government or adequate health care, and who take action when they see these things neglected or diminished. Generally, their actions can be classified into two categories. The first consists of "consumerist" concerns, eliminating inflated costs, and increasing responsiveness of goods and services to the needs of consumers. An example that is relevant to psychology is the "consumer's guide to finding a psychotherapist" that has been published by Ralph Nader's Public Citizen organization (Adams & Orgel, 1975). The second and more dramatic category is "whistleblowing," the exposing of waste, abuse, illegality and other forms of wrongdoing and irresponsiblity on the part of the government or other large, powerful organizations. Occasionally, public interest work will be identified exclusively with whistleblowing. Thus, von Hippel and Primack (1972), concerned by the tendency for "the executive branch to abuse its near monopoly of politically relevant technical information and expertise," have defined "public interest science" as the provision of information to public and the Congress that the executive branch has failed to make available.
Public interest activity need not, and perhaps should not, be defined this narrowly, as a study of public interest lawyers commissioned by the American Bar Foundation reveals. The investigators in this study (Marks, Lewsing, & Fortinsky, 1972) considered a variety of proposed definitions of the "public interest response" and interviewed a number of lawyers in a wide range of settings. (In one case they were told by a lawyer in a large firm that "his exclusive work in the field of municipal bonds qualified as 'public interest' work because it produced the necessary capital for public works and projects.") 294