14 What is Ethical Judgement?
Ethics is concerned with the kind of people we are, but also with the things we do or fail to do. This could be called the “ethics of doing.” Some people, however, don’t take the time to consider the ethical dimensions of given situations before they act. This may happen because they have not gathered all of the necessary information needed, while others might rationalize excuses, employ defense mechanisms, or incorrectly gauge the intensity of the situation.
A well-known joke shared regularly when many of us were growing up asks, “How do you clean Dracula’s teeth?” The response is very simple: “Very carefully.” When we think about the question, “How do we make ethical decisions in our modern world?” the response to this childhood joke seems very appropriate here as well. Unfortunately, we live in an time where many important situations are not thought through carefully, and too often, are responded to impulsively.
We need to help students realize that in order to know what to do in a given situation, they should explore issues carefully–gathering all the relevant facts, considering the actions involved, and evaluating the potential consequences. Once they have clarified these points, their personal values can guide them in making a final decision. This is the process and basis for what we can call “ethical judgment.”
Judgment on an ethical issue will usually depend on two things: values and priorities.
Values are the things that we hold important for our sense of who we are. They are expressed in statements such as “human life and dignity should be protected,” or “cheating is wrong.” They develop over time and are influenced by family, religion, education, peers and a whole range of experiences, both good and bad, that have helped shape us.
In some situations, even people who agree on the same values, will disagree on the decision because a particular situation brings different values into conflict. This will require people to prioritize their values. It is sometimes referred to as an “ethical dilemma,” where there does not seem to be any solution without compromising one’s values, or where one’s decision may have negative consequences.
This was famously demonstrated by social psychologist Stanley Milgram, whose research experiment exposed how external social forces, even the most subtle, have surprisingly powerful effects on our behavior and our ethical judgment.
Milgram created an electric ‘shock generator’ with 30 switches. The switch was marked clearly in 15-volt increments, ranging from 15 to 450 volts. The “shock generator” was in fact phony and would only produce sound when the switches were pressed. 40 subjects (males) were recruited via mail and a newspaper ad. They thought they were going to participate in an experiment about memory and learning. In the test, each subject was informed clearly that their payment was for showing up, and they could keep the payment regardless of what happened after they arriv