Confidentiality at the Crossroads: Legal and Psychological Perspectives on Privacy and Ethics
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Abstract
This study explores the ethical and legal aspects of maintaining and violating confidentiality and privacy. The study employed the systematic literature review (SLR) approach. The authors searched for articles from relevant databases such as PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Suitable studies were selected through the application of established inclusion and exclusion criteria. In the end, 15 studies published between 2015 and 2025 were included in the final review. The findings of the review show that although confidentiality is regarded as a fundamental rule of professional conduct, it is far from absolute. The research portrays it as a negotiated practice under pressures of conflicting sorts. The emerging themes include legal and ethical dilemmas of law in confidentiality, trust, and professional duty, technological issues and cyber confidentiality, system and institutional defects, and confidentiality within sensory spaces. The study concludes that professionals continue to find it difficult to handle confidentiality and privacy within the dictates of law and ethics. However, researchers have barely explored how professionals conduct themselves or their practices when they find themselves in this conflicting situation. The study concludes that the main task for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers is how to reconcile law, ethics, and professional practice so that confidentiality can be a legal obligation and a moral assurance.
Keywords
Confidentiality; Ethics; Legal frameworks; Privacy; Psychological perspective
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How to cite this paper
Confidentiality at the Crossroads: Legal and Psychological Perspectives on Privacy and Ethics
How to cite this paper: Ogochukwu C. Nweke, Evelyn Owusu. (2026) Confidentiality at the Crossroads: Legal and Psychological Perspectives on Privacy and Ethics. Scientific Access, 2(1), 14-23.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/sa.2026.03.002