The Morality of Ethics Professors: Survey
In an earlier post, The Problem of the Ethics Professors, I asked why ethics professors often behave so badly. What does this suggest about the connection between ethical reflection and moral behavior?
Of course, implicit in this question is the presumably empirically testable assumption that ethics professors do behave (at least as) badly as the rest of us. But how to test that assumption?
I can think of no better way than to ask people who know ethics professors. While asking people about their impressions invites, of course, a variety of problems, the altenatives -- actually trying to run a controlled study or a direct observational study (or looking at criminal records!) -- seem patently infeasible. And perhaps if people are asked in the right way, the answers they give will deserve some credit.
So I've designed a questionnaire. My thought is to set up a table at an APA meeting or two (if the APA will let me!) with a sign saying something like "take this brief questionnaire, get a brownie!"
Q's 1 and 2 of the questionnaire would be:
1. As best you can determine from your own experience, do professors specializing in ethics tend, on average, to behave morally better, worse, or about the same as philosophers not specializing in ethics? (Please circle one number below.)
[Here there'd be a likert scale of 1-7 from "substantially morally better" (1) through "about the same" (4) to "substantially morally worse" (7). I can't reproduce the actual look of scale here due to formatting constraints.]
2. As best you can determine from your own experience, do professors specializing in ethics tend, on average, to behave morally better, worse, or about the same as non-academics of similar social background? (Please circle one number below.)
[Here would be the same likert scale as above.]
I would then ask questions about academic rank, area of teaching/research focus, and whether they knew in advance the topic of the questionnaire or had discussed it with anyone.
Thoughts, reactions, and suggestions welcome! Is this lame and pointlessly irritating? What would you predict for the results?