Self-Evaluation Bias of Social Comparisons in Ethical Decision Making: The Impact of Accountability

The purpose of this paper is to examine how accountability and judgment biases that occur in social comparisons may be related to ethical decision making. Using Jones' (1991 ) model as the theoretical framework to investigate this phenomenon, we found that self-enhancing individuals (i.e., those who thought they were more ethical in comparison to their peers) demonstrated higher responsiveness to increases in accountability than did self-effacing individuals (i.e., those who thought they were less ethical in comparison to their peers). We discuss these findings and outline the implications for future ethics research. Further, we provide practical guidance to those who administer ethics compliance programs on effective ways of facilitating ethical behavior in organizations.     

Moving Life Science Ethics Debates Beyond National Borders: Some Empirical Observations

The life sciences are increasingly being called on to produce “socially robust” knowledge that honors the social contract between science and society. This has resulted in the emergence of a number of “broad social issues” that reflect the ethical tensions in these social contracts. These issues are framed in a variety of ways around the world, evidenced by differences in regulations addressing them. It is important to question whether these variations are simply regulatory variations or in fact reflect a contextual approach to ethics that brings into question the existence of a system of “global scientific ethics”. Nonetheless, within ethics education for scientists these broad social issues are often presented using this scheme of global ethics due to legacies of science ethics pedagogy. This paper suggests this may present barriers to fostering international discourse between communities of scientists, and may cause difficulties in harmonizing (and transporting) national regulations for the governance of these issues. Reinterpreting these variations according to how the content of ethical principles is attributed by communities is proposed as crucial for developing a robust international discourse. To illustrate this, the paper offers some empirical fieldwork data that considers how the concept of dual-use (as a broad social issue) was discussed within African and UK laboratories. Demonstrating that African scientists reshaped the concept of dual-use according to their own research environmental pressures and ascribed alternative content to the principles that underpin it, suggests that the limitations of a “global scientific ethics” system for these issues cannot be ignored.     

Training ethical psychologists: an acculturation model

This article presents an approach to graduate (and professional) training that views becoming an ethical psychologist as an acculturation process. J.W. Berry's (1980, 2003) model of acculturation strategies is used as a framework for understanding ethical acculturation, a developmental process during which students can use several types of adaptation strategies. Students enter training with their own moral value traditions and concepts but are confronted with new ethical principles and rules, some of which may be inconsistent with their ethics of origin. The article explores several applications of the framework to ethics courses, practicum supervision, and other areas of training.     

The importance of meta-ethics in engineering education

Our shared moral framework is negotiated as part of the social contract. Some elements of that framework are established (tell the truth under oath), but other elements lack an overlapping consensus (just when can an individual lie to protect his or her privacy?). The tidy bits of our accepted moral framework have been codified, becoming the subject of legal rather than ethical consideration. Those elements remaining in the realm of ethics seem fragmented and inconsistent.Yet, our engineering students will need to navigate the broken ground of this complex moral landscape. A minimalist approach would leave our students with formulated dogma—principles of right and wrong such as the National Society for Professional Engineers (NSPE) Code of Ethics for Engineers—but without any insight into the genesis of these principles. A slightly deeper, micro-ethics approach would teach our students to solve ethical problems by applying heuristics—giving our students a rational process to manipulate ethical dilemmas using the same principles simply referenced a priori by dogma. A macro-ethics approach—helping students to inductively construct a posteriori principles from case studies—goes beyond the simple statement or manipulation of principles, but falls short of linking personal moral principles to the larger, social context. Ultimately, it is this social context that requires both the application of ethical principles, and the negotiation of moral values—from an understanding of meta-ethics.The approaches to engineering ethics instruction (dogma, heuristics, case studies, and meta-ethics) can be associated with stages of moral development. If we leave our students with only a dogmatic reaction to ethical dilemmas, they will be dependent on the ethical decisions of others (a denial of their fundamental potential for moral autonomy). Heuristics offers a tool to deal independently with moral questions, but a tool that too frequently reduces to casuistry when rigidly applied to “simplified” dilemmas. Case studies, while providing a context for engineering ethics, can encourage the premature analysis of specific moral conduct rather than the development of broad moral principles—stifling our students’ facility with meta-ethics. Clearly, if a moral sense is developmental, ethics instruction should lead our students from lower to higher stages of moral development.     

The personal is the organizational in the ethics of hospital social workers

Understanding the social context of clinical ethics is vital for making ethical discourse central in professional practice and for preventing harm. In this paper, we present findings about clinical ethics from in-depth interviews and consultation with 7 members of a hospital social work department. Workers gave different accounts of ethical dilemmas and resources for ethical decision making than did their managers, whereas workers and managers agreed on core-guiding ethical principles and on ideal situations for ethical discourse. We discuss the research team's initial interpretations, the relevance of the extant ethics literature to organizational structures and dynamics, and alternative perspectives on clinical ethics.     

Health Research in Complex Emergencies: A Humanitarian Imperative

Health researchers, research trainees, and ethics reviewers should be prepared for the special application of research ethics within complex humanitarian emergencies. This paper argues that as a precursor to published ethical guidelines for conducting research in complex emergencies, researchers and research ethics committees should observe the following primary ethical considerations: (1) the research is not at the expense of humanitarian action; (2) the research is justified in that it is needs-driven and relevant to the affected populations; and (3) the research does not compromise the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence. These primary considerations are in harmony with the humanitarian goals of saving lives, alleviating suffering, and témoignage. Furthermore, there is an important role for research in supporting humanitarian action, and the extreme vulnerability of research participants in complex emergencies demands intense research ethics scrutiny. It is important to discern which ethical considerations are essential, and which are merely desirable, as excessive research ethics requirements may impede life-saving research.     

Basing Science Ethics on Respect for Human Dignity

A “no ethics” principle has long been prevalent in science and has demotivated deliberation on scientific ethics. This paper argues the following: (1) An understanding of a scientific “ethos” based on actual “value preferences” and “value repugnances” prevalent in the scientific community permits and demands critical accounts of the “no ethics” principle in science. (2) The roots of this principle may be traced to a repugnance of human dignity, which was instilled at a historical breaking point in the interrelation between science and ethics. This breaking point involved granting science the exclusive mandate to pass judgment on the life worth living. (3) By contrast, respect for human dignity, in its Kantian definition as “the absolute inner worth of being human,” should be adopted as the basis to ground science ethics. (4) The pathway from this foundation to the articulation of an ethical duty specific to scientific practice, i.e., respect for objective truth, is charted by Karl Popper’s discussion of the ethical principles that form the basis of science. This also permits an integrated account of the “external” and “internal” ethical problems in science. (5) Principles of the respect for human dignity and the respect for objective truth are also safeguards of epistemic integrity. Plain defiance of human dignity by genetic determinism has compromised integrity of claims to knowledge in behavioral genetics and other behavioral sciences. Disregard of the ethical principles that form the basis of science threatens epistemic integrity.     

The Personal Is the Organizational in the Ethics of Hospital Social Workers

Understanding the social context of clinical ethics is vital for making ethical discourse central in professional practice and for preventing harm. In this paper we present findings about clinical ethics from in depth interviews and consultation with 7 members of a hospital social work department. Workers gave different accounts of ethical dilemmas and resources for ethical decision making than did their managers, whereas workers and managers agreed on core-guiding ethical principles and on ideal situations for ethical discourse. We discuss the research team's initial interpretations, the relevance of the extant ethics literature to organizational structures and dynamics, and alternative perspectives on clinical ethics.     

ART伦理委员会构建与作用的探讨

辅助生殖技术(Assisted Reproduction Technique,ART)的飞速发展给社会带来了复杂的伦理难题。实践证明,只有发挥伦理委员会作为一个工作机构的职能,在医患人群中加强ART技术基本原理及相关伦理原则的宣传教育,才能促使医患人群都能够自觉遵守优良的医学伦理道德规范,保证人类辅助生殖技术的健康发展。     

伦理导向人力资源管理实践的跨层次作用机制:基于社会情境与社会认知理论

伦理 ¹( ¹ 与组织管理领域的常规做法一致, 本文将伦理与道德看作同义概念, 交替使用。)危机给企业经营带来巨大挑战, 现有文献较多关注微观视角的伦理行为, 缺乏从中观视角对人力资源管理制度开展研究, 导致在实践上无法形成有效的制度化抓手。人力资源管理实践作为中观视角的企业伦理实践之一, 正是针对伦理问题的有效回应。立足于人力资源管理与企业伦理领域的交叉点, 从三个方面构建伦理导向人力资源管理实践的研究框架:(1)基于社会情境理论探讨伦理导向人力资源管理实践对组织伦理绩效的影响机制; (2)基于社会认知理论探讨伦理导向人力资源管理实践对团队伦理建言的跨层次影响机制; (3)基于社会认知理论探讨伦理导向人力资源管理实践对个体伦理建言的跨层次影响机制。研究将丰富人力资源管理理论, 并为企业有效实施伦理导向人力资源管理实践提供启示与帮助。     

Ethics and Social Science: Which Kind of Co-operation?

The relation between ethics and social science is often conceived as complementary, both disciplines cooperating in the solution of concrete moral problems. Against this, the paper argues that not only applied ethics but even certain parts of general ethics have to incorporate sociological and psychological data and theories from the start. Applied ethics depends on social science in order to asses the impact of its own principles on the concrete realities which these principles are to regulate as well as in order to propose practice rules suited to adapt these principles to their respective contexts of application. Examples from medical ethics (embryo research) and ecological ethics (Leopold's land ethic) illustrate both the contingence of practice rules in relation to their underlying basic principles and the corresponding need for a co-operation between philosophy and empirical disciplines in judging their functional merits and demerits. In conclusion, the relevance of empirical hypotheses even for some of the perennial problems of ethics is shown by clarifying the role played by empirical theories in the controversies about the ethical differentiation between positive and negative responsibility and the relation between utility maximisation and (seemingly) independent criteria of distributive justice in the context of social distributions.     

Changing the Paradigm for Engineering Ethics

Modern philosophy recognizes two major ethical theories: deontology, which encourages adherence to rules and fulfillment of duties or obligations; and consequentialism, which evaluates morally significant actions strictly on the basis of their actual or anticipated outcomes. Both involve the systematic application of universal abstract principles, reflecting the culturally dominant paradigm of technical rationality. Professional societies promulgate codes of ethics with which engineers are expected to comply (deontology), while courts and the public generally assign liability to engineers primarily in accordance with the results of their work, whether intended or unintended (consequentialism). A third option, prominent in ancient philosophy, has reemerged recently: virtue ethics, which recognizes that sensitivity to context and practical judgment are indispensable in particular concrete situations, and therefore rightly focuses on the person who acts, rather than the action itself. Beneficial character traits—i.e., virtues—are identified within a specific social practice in light of the internal goods that are unique to it. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for implementing virtue ethics within engineering.     

Do we Need a Special Ethics for Research?

Research is subject to more stringent ethical requirements than most other human activities, and a procedure that is otherwise allowed may be forbidden in research. Hence, risk-taking is more restricted in scientific research than in most non-research contexts, and privacy is better protected in scientific questionnaires than in marketing surveys. Potential arguments for this difference are scrutinized. The case in its favour appears to be weak. A stronger case can be made in favour of a difference in the opposite direction: If perilous or otherwise problematic activities have to be performed it is usually better to perform them in a research context where they are properly evaluated so that guidance is obtained for the future. However, retreating from current ethical demands on research is not a desirable direction to go. Instead, research ethics can serve to inspire the introduction of more stringent ethical principles in other social sectors.     

The Ethics of Ethics Reviews in Global Health Research: Case Studies Applying a New Paradigm

With increasing calls for global health research there is growing concern regarding the ethical challenges encountered by researchers from high-income countries (HICs) working in low or middle-income countries (LMICs). There is a dearth of literature on how to address these challenges in practice. In this article, we conduct a critical analysis of three case studies of research conducted in LMICs. We apply emerging ethical guidelines and principles specific to global health research and offer practical strategies that researchers ought to consider. We present case studies in which Canadian health professional students conducted a health promotion project in a community in Honduras; a research capacity-building program in South Africa, in which Canadian students also worked alongside LMIC partners; and a community-university partnered research capacity-building program in which Ecuadorean graduate students, some working alongside Canadian students, conducted community-based health research projects in Ecuadorean communities. We examine each case, identifying ethical issues that emerged and how new ethical paradigms being promoted could be concretely applied. We conclude that research ethics boards should focus not only on protecting individual integrity and human dignity in health studies but also on beneficence and non-maleficence at the community level, explicitly considering social justice issues and local capacity-building imperatives. We conclude that researchers from HICs interested in global health research must work with LMIC partners to implement collaborative processes for assuring ethical research that respects local knowledge, cultural factors, the social determination of health, community participation and partnership, and making social accountability a paramount concern.     

“It's the Way That You Do It”: Developing an Ethical Framework for Community Psychology Research and Action

In the 50 years since the 1965 Swampscott conference, the field of community psychology has not yet developed a well‐articulated ethical framework to guide research and practice. This paper reviews what constitutes an “ethical framework”; considers where the field of community psychology is at in its development of a comprehensive ethical framework; examines sources for ethical guidance (i.e., ethical principles and standards) across multiple disciplines, including psychology, evaluation, sociology, and anthropology; and recommends strategies for developing a rich written discourse on how community psychology researchers and practitioners can address ethical conflicts in our work.     

Getting Beyond Form Filling: The Role of Institutional Governance in Human Research Ethics

It has become almost a truism to describe the interaction between research ethics committees and researchers as being marred by distrust and conflict. The ethical conduct of researchers is increasingly a matter of institutional concern because of the degree to which non-compliance with national standards can expose the entire institution to risk. This has transformed research ethics into what some have described as a research ethics industry. In an operational sense, there is considerable focus on modifying research behaviour through a combination of education and sanctions. The assessment of whether a researcher is ‘ethical’ is too often based on whether they submit their work for review by an ethics committee. However, is such an approach making a useful contribution to the actual ethical conduct of research and the protection of the interests of participants? Does a focus on ethical review minimise institutional risk? Instead it has been suggested that ethics committees may be distorting or frustrating useful research and are promoting a culture of either mindless rule following or frustrated resistance. An alternative governance approach is required. There is a need for a strong institutional focus on promoting and supporting the reflective practice of researchers through every stage of their work. By situating research ethics within the broader framework of institutional governance, this paper suggests it is possible to establish arrangements that actually facilitate excellent and ethical research.     

Ethical issues in the use of the bogus pipeline

This article addresses the ethics of utilizing the bogus pipeline (BPL) procedure in social psychological research. A debate is presented between 2 positions: One challenges the use of the BPL based on ethical principles, and the other confronts these challenges. The debate addresses the void in previous BPL literature regarding concerns about the ethics of using this technique, and raises awareness about potential ethical dilemmas faced by BPL users. The BPL is discussed from utilitarian and deontological ethical perspectives.     

An Insider’s Moments of Confucian Ethical Conflict: Reflexivity as the “Middle Way” Response

Cultural ethical dilemmas occur when ethical research practices, as prescribed by the research ethics codes of Western research institutions, conflict with the cultural and social norms of non-Western researchers and their participants. Thus, insider-researchers working with participants from similar cultural backgrounds may experience ethical dilemmas that result in disconcerting cultural estrangement from their communities. Using reflexive narratives, the author identifies moments of cultural ethical dilemmas that necessitate a choice between two competing sets of values. Working out of a Western university, the narratives reflect on cultural ethical dilemmas relating to non-coercion, confidentiality, and beneficence, encountered during interviews in the researcher’s community. Analyzed through the lens of Confucian social and ethical behavior, the paper asks whether there is a need for East–west polarization, or whether research ethics codes based on Western worldviews can be reconciled with Confucian worldviews. The paper suggests the “Middle Way” approach to reconciling and integrating the diverse worldviews of ethics, through the use of an ethical reflexive process that engenders trust in the research process and resolves cultural ethical dilemmas.     

The Individual or the Institution? Ethics and Behavioural Responses to Social Insurance

abstract   Individuals tend to change their behaviour as a response to insurance. Such behavioural responses to insurance are commonly seen as ethically and morally problematic. This is especially true of effects on behaviour from social insurance. These effects have been seen as an ethical problem, associated with irresponsibility, fraud and an immoral character. This article discusses the relevance of four different types of reasons for claims that behavioural responses to social insurance are immoral. These reasons are (1) independent reasons (2) con-tract related reasons (3) reasons related to fraud and (4) reasons related to justice. I argue that reasons related to justice are most relevant, but that this type of reason does not render the individual morally blameworthy. Hence, insofar as behavioural responses to social insurance are an ethical problem it is a problem that concerns the institution, i.e. what incentives social insurance exhibits, rather than the individual, i.e. the morality of the individual responding to it. Insofar as behavioural responses to social insurance are an ethical problem it is a problem for political philosophy rather than individual ethics.     

Anticipatory Ethics for Emerging Technologies

In this essay, a new approach for the ethical study of emerging technology ethics will be presented, called anticipatory technology ethics (ATE). The ethics of emerging technology is the study of ethical issues at the R&;D and introduction stage of technology development through anticipation of possible future devices, applications, and social consequences. I will argue that a major problem for its development is the problem of uncertainty, which can only be overcome through methodologically sound forecasting and futures studies. I will then consider three contemporary approaches to the ethics of emerging technologies that use forecasting: ethical technology assessment, the techno-ethical scenarios approach and the ETICA approach, and I considered their strengths and weaknesses. Based on this critical study, I then present my own approach: ATE. ATE is a conceptually and methodologically rich approach for the ethical analysis of emerging technologies that incorporates a large variety of ethical principles, issues, objects and levels of analysis, and research aims. It is ready to be applied to contemporary and future emerging technologies.