Skip to main content

Behavioral Ethics

Behavioral Ethics studies why and how people make the choices that they do.

Behavioral Ethics

Behavioral ethics is the study of why people make the ethical and unethical decisions that they do. Its teachings arise from research in fields such as behavioral psychology, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology.

Behavioral ethics is different from traditional philosophy. Instead of focusing on how people ought to behave, behavioral ethics studies why people act as they do. Arguably, it is more useful to understand our own motivations than to understand the philosophy of Aristotle.

Research in behavioral ethics finds that people are far from completely rational. Most ethical choices are made intuitively, by feeling, not after carefully analyzing a situation. Usually, people who make unethical decisions are unconsciously influenced by internal biases, like the self-serving bias, by outside pressures, like the pressure to conform, and by situational factors that they do not even notice.

So, behavioral ethics seeks to understand why even people with the best intentions can make poor ethical choices.

Moral Emotions

Moral Emotions

Moral Emotions are the feelings and intuitions–including shame, disgust, and empathy–that play a major role in most of the ethical judgments and decisions people make.

View

Moral Reasoning

Moral Reasoning

Moral Reasoning is the branch of philosophy that attempts to answer questions with moral dimensions.

View

Neuroethics

Neuroethics

Neuroethics uses the tools of neuroscience to examine how we make ethical choices. It is also the investigation of the ethics of neuroscience.

View