Ethics for Researchers: Helping Moral People Act Ethically

Oklahoma State University, Stillwater OK

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds a project in Ethics Education in Science and Engineering, a cross-directorate activity. Existing approaches to teaching research ethics neglect the topic of moral psychology. Specifically, standard classes do not teach students why people act unethically nor provide students with useful strategies to increase the likelihood that they will act in accord with their own ethical commitments and/or the ethical codes of their professions. The goal of this project is to develop a class, Ethics for Researchers: Helping Moral People Act Ethically, which will meet these needs. The class, which will be electronically delivered and can stand alone as a seminar or be added to the curriculum of traditional research ethics classes, exposes students to video clips containing re-enactments of published empirical studies that demonstrate why people act unethically. After a discussion of each case, individual students are guided through a two-part exercise. The first part, developing a Personal Inventory Report, helps them engage in reflection to determine what sorts of situations they might find ethically challenging. The students then develop a personal plan (Adaptive-Strategies Report) addressing what strategies to use to increase the likelihood of behaving ethically in challenging situations (that is, the situations they arrived at while developing the Personal Inventory Report). The products of this exercise, the Personal Inventory Report and the Adaptive-Strategies Report, can be used throughout the student's career, especially when in a new professional situations. The broader impact of this project is potentially far-reaching. First, if the newly conceived ethics class proves to be efficacious, the course can be readily adapted for other professionals outside science and engineering, including law, medicine, education, and business. Second, although the decision-model being used has been applied to other areas (e.g., teaching reasoning), it has never been applied to ethics education. Thus, this course not only advances the teaching of research ethics, but it may advance other areas of ethics, e.g., normative ethical theory. Third, the investigators intend to teach the class in numerous settings and to share the results at professional meetings and in journals. At OSU, the course is being made available to all members of the university community, hence Native-Americans and other under-represented groups will benefit. Since the course is delivered electronically, it can easily be made available to those at other universities and research facilities. Therefore, there are no geographic and temporal limitations to the administration of this course.