Ethicists’ Personal Moral Behavior No Better than Anybody Else’s: Poll
Jun 22nd, 2009 • Posted in: NewsBut study author says that even if results are taken at face value, it doesn’t mean that ethicists can’t teach others to behave better
RIVERSIDE, Calif.
A poll of philosophy professors rating their peers’ ethics finds that the professionals don’t seem to behave more ethically than anyone else, according to a university study.
The education journal Inside Higher Ed reports that the study’s co-author, Eric Schwitzgebel of the University of California at Riverside, said he presumed at the start of the study that ethicists “would behave with particular moral scruple. After all, they devote their careers to studying and teaching about morality. Presumably, many of them care deeply about it. And if they care deeply about it, it is not unreasonable to expect them to act on it.”
But most of the 227 survey respondents, all philosophy professors, reported no correlation between an academic focus on ethics and personal moral behavior, Inside Higher Ed reports. Respondents who specialized in ethics generally gave more charitable evaluations to fellow ethicists than did philosophers from other disciplines.
But Schwitzgebel cautions that his study can’t be used to justify banishing ethics from the curriculum. In addition to the small sample size and the fact that respondents might be biased in rating their peers’ behavior, ethics professors might very well teach others to behave more ethically even if they don’t practice what they preach.
Schwitzgebel’s next study will look at whether ethics books are any less likely to be stolen from campus libraries than non-ethics texts, notes Inside Higher Ed.
Source: Inside Higher Ed, June 16.
For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 8 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 20 — Related Newsline story, Apr 6 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 16 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 28, 2006.
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