Does Scientific Literacy Make People More Ethical?

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday March 30, 2013 @08:14AM from the engaged-with-reality dept.

New submitter alysion writes "Per research published in the online journal PLOS One, psychologists Christine Ma-Kellams of Harvard University and Jim Blascovich of the University of California, Santa Barbara report, 'Thinking about science leads individuals to endorse more stringent moral norms.' In one of the four supporting experiments, undergraduates considered an account of a date rape and were asked to judge behavior on a scale of 1 to 100. Science types, perhaps not surprisingly, proved to have a better grasp of reality, including the moral kind."

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Should be more careful with the wording by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-30 08:20 · Score: 5, Interesting

The article's title raises the issue of ethics, but the summary talks about moral norms, these are not the same thing. Ethics and morals, while somewhat related, deal with different view points as they relate to behaviour. If we're going to be scientific about judging someone's actions we first have to make sure everyone agrees on the definitions of ethical and moral, something society in general has trouble doing.