The relations between ethical reasoning and moral intuitions among engineering students in the US, Netherlands, and China
Rockwell F. Clancy (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)
Qin Zhu (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)
Scott Streiner (University of Pittsburgh)
Andrea Gammon (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
Ryan Thorpe (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
Xianghong Wu (Shandong University - Qianfoshan Campus)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Ethical reasoning has been adopted as a goal of engineering ethics education, and measures of reasoning have been developed by researchers and with participants in mostly the US. However, US participants are outliers on various psychological and social characteristics, and it is unclear whether reasoning results in more ethical judgments or behaviours. To address these issues, this study sought to better understand the natures of and relations between ethical reasoning and moral intuitions among engineering students in the US, Netherlands, and China. It was found that: students in the US scored higher on postconventional reasoning than those in the Netherlands or China; ethics education was associated with lower rates of preconventional reasoning; postconventional reasoning was positively related to intuitions about care and fairness, and negatively relations to intuitions about loyalty, authority, and sanctity; and students in China cared more about loyalty, authority, and sanctity, and less about care and fairness.
help_outline