Ethical Sensitivity and Its Relationship to Personality and Area of Study

摘要

Ethical decision-making always seems to be in the news and, being a complex activity, is ripe for analysis. The authors extend their previous work on ethical sensitivity to plumb its relationship to personality and areas of study. Their research involved data from a college in the U.S. Northeast, where 648 students (out of a 655 sample) completed usable questionnaires concerning ethical dilemmas. The "personality " component related Horney's traits of compliance, aggressiveness, and detachment to an ethical sensitivity scale. Personality was found to affect ethical sensitivity. Personality traits, in turn, reflect age and area of study. In general, compliant individuals may be more ethically sensitive, while aggressive types are less so.