Do Ethicists Behave Better Than the Rest of Us? Peer Opinion
Do you think that ethicists, in general, behave morally better, worse, or about the same non-ethicists? I've often posed this question to other philosophers in informal conversation. Most of my interlocutors say "about the same" or "worse"; only a few say that ethicists behave overall better (which would seem to comport with my findings that ethicists steal more books).
Josh Rust and I distributed a questionnaire on this issue at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association a few weeks ago. Josh sat at a table near the book exhibit and offered people snacks in exchange for filling out a questionnaire. The questionnaire came in two versions. Version A asked respondents to compare the moral behavior of the ethics professors they knew first to the behavior of non-ethicists in philosophy and second to that of non-academics of similar socio-economic background. Version B asked similar questions about the moral behavior of the specific ethicist in their department whose name comes next in alphabetical order after theirs (looping from Z to A if necessary). All questions used a scale of 1 to 7, from substantially morally better (1) to about the same (4) to substantially morally worse (7).
54 respondents completed Version A. The mean result on Question 1 (ethicists vs. non-ethicists in philosophy) was exactly 4 ("about the same"). On Question 2 (ethicists vs. non-academics of similar social background) the mean result was 3.9 -- which was not statistically different from 4, given the relatively small sample size. In other words, philosophers when asked their general opinion about ethicists, thought they behaved about the same as non-ethicists.
One interesting trend in the data had to do with academic rank: Undergraduates and distinguished professors were the most sanguine about the behavior of ethicists, assistant professors the least sanguine. Here are the mean responses to Question 1, divided by rank (the means for Question 2 are very similar):
Undergraduate: 3
Graduate student: 3.8
Adjunct instructor, lecturer, or post-doc (non-tenure track): 4.1
Assistant professor (tenure track): 4.6
Associate professor: 4.3
Full professor: 4.3
Distinguished professor: 3.3
Given the small sample, though, it's hard to know whether the appearance of a trend here (with the grimmest views around tenure-time!) is simply chance.
On Version B, the results looked better for the ethicists, with means of 3.4 (Question 1) and 3.2 (Question 2), both statistically different from 4.0. In other words, philosophers thought, on average, that the ethicist next after them in the department roster behaved both better than the rest of the department and than non-academics of similar social background.
So which is it? Do ethicists behave better or not? Which version of the questionnaire better reflects real philosophical opinion? An argument can be made either way. Version A might be misleading due to something like what psychologists call a saliency or availability effect: When asked to think about the moral behavior of ethicists, perhaps the first cases to come to your mind will be cases of particularly nasty ethicists. Version B attempts to control for that, but people may be overly charitable to individuals when asked to compare them to a group -- it may be easier or more comfortable to attribute below-average moral behavior to a group than to a particular individual you know.
Josh and I hope to sort some of these issues out with a longer questionnaire to be distributed at another meeting -- if we can get permission!