Why teach ethics in science and engineering?

The following views were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Seminar “Teaching Ethics in Science and Engineering”, 10–11 February 1993 organized by Stephanie J. Bird (M.I.T.), Penny J. Gilmer (Florida State University) and Terrell W. Bynum (Southern Connecticut State University). Opragen Publications thanks the AAAS, seminar organizers and authors for permission to publish extracts from the conference. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions of AAAS or its Board of Directors.     

Appointed and Elected Leader Responses to Favorableness of Feedback and Level of Task Activity from Followers1

Leader evaluations of four types of followers, providing either positive or negative feedback with either high or low task activity, were studied. Forty-six subjects, 20 female and 26 male, were randomly placed in the appointed or elected conditions of leader legitimacy and told they were leading four same-sex followers in a group problem-solving task. The dependent measure was a score made up of their semantic differential ratings of each follower. A three-way interaction indicated that elected and appointed leaders responded differentially to high and low activity followers under the negative feedback condition, but similarly under the positive feedback condition. In addition, a main effect showed that elected leaders were generally more positive than appointed leaders in judgments of their followers. The results were interpreted within a social exchange perspective on leader-follower relations.