Moral intent is the desire to act ethically when facing a decision and overcome the rationalization to not be ethical “this time.”
Moral decision making is the ability to produce a reasonable and defensible answer to an ethical question.
Moral awareness is the first step along the pathway to consistent ethical behavior. It begins with an individual’s ability to detect a moral principle in danger or notice the violation of an ethical principle. Individuals who have strong moral awareness appreciate the ethical aspects of a decision that one must make.
Incentive gaming, or “gaming the system,” refers to when we figure out ways to increase our rewards for performance without actually improving our performance.
Are you using your own judgment? Are you sure? Conformity bias refers to our tendency to take cues for proper behavior in most contexts from the actions of others rather than exercise our own independent judgment. This video shows how conformity bias works, and how to maintain independence in the face of the pressure to…
These two videos explain moral muteness and moral myopia. These are biases that occur in organizations that prevent us from behaving ethically as a group. Moral muteness is when we communicate in ways that obscure our moral beliefs and commitments, or don’t voice moral sentiments at all. Moral myopia is a distortion of moral vision…
Know and appeal to a short list of widely shared values. Don’t assume too little (or too much) commonality with the viewpoints of others.
This video from Ethics Unwrapped introduces the idea of the “overconfidence bias.” You may have heard that most drivers rate their driving skill as above-average. The idea also applies to acting ethically. The overconfidence bias is our tendency to be more confident in our ability to act ethically than is objectively justified by our abilities…
In this edition of the bias series, we look at self-serving bias. It’s tempting to pick and choose information that props up our self-esteem. The self-serving bias causes us to see things in ways that support our best interests and our pre-existing points of view.
Everyone has biases, whether they consciously know it or not. Implicit bias exists when people unconsciously hold attitudes toward others or associate stereotypes with them. Implicit bias is an active area of research, and you can test your own biases after watching this video.