Sunday, January 10, 2010

Morals and Ethics Test Sites

YourMoral.org

This website is a collaboration among five social psychologists who study morality and politics. Our goal was to create a site that would be useful and interesting to users, particularly ethics classes and seminars, and that would also allow us to test a variety of theories about moral psychology. One of our main goals is to foster understanding across the political spectrum. Almost everyone cares about morality, and we want to understand --and to help others understand -- the many different ways that people care. - website's "About Us" page

My results for the Moral Foundations Questionnaire based on Haidt's research:
- On the harm avoidance scale, I'm higher than the average Liberal.
- On the fairness scale, I'm closer the to Liberal score than the Conservation one.
- On the loyalty sale, I'm between the two sides.
- On the authority scale, I'm closer to the Conservative one.
- On the purity scale, I'm higher than the average Conservative.

There are many other studies on the site you can participate in, each with the appropriate research disclosure statement at the start of them.



Ethical Personality Test

The concept for the test has been designed by Roger Steare, Visiting Professor of Organizational Ethics at Cass Business School. He is the author of the book “ethicability®” which describes a proven framework for making tough choices in life and work (www.ethicability.org). - website's "welcome" page

There is also this disclaimer: "The test results and report are for personal education purposes only. They are not designed to be relied on as a methodology for assessing the character of any individual and should not be used as such in any circumstances."

Unlike the other moral test above, the results are based on theory and not strict research. That is not to say that there isn't any research on the subject. It is baded on Kolhberg and Gillian's work and the author is more than willing to release a PDF of it if you contact him through the site. (Which I will do soon.) I would like to point out, however, that there are very valid critisms of Kolhberg's and Gilligan's work: the bias towards the researchers' own value systems and the focus on only the ethic of autonomy.


My results:

Judge
PRS Type Moral DNA

Judges believe that moral principle, or “virtue” is the most important ethical perspective. They ask “what would be the fair thing to do?” Then they’ll make sure that laws, rules and contracts have been complied with, although they’ll sometimes “interpret” a rule differently to be consistent with their principles. Finally they’ll consider the human dimension and the impact of their decisions on others. Judges are stubborn but good to have around when the going gets tough. About 17% of adults are Judges.

Strengths: Good at solving really challenging dilemmas.
Weaknesses: Could lack empathy with others in making tough decisions. May sometimes bend the rules if they believe a higher principle is at stake.


Other posts on this blog dealing with this subject:
http://cosmicsiren.blogspot.com/2009/10/theories-of-morality.html
http://cosmicsiren.blogspot.com/2005/02/kolhbergs-levels-of-morality.html
http://cosmicsiren.blogspot.com/2005/02/carol-gilligans-levels-of-moral.html

2 comments:

Roger Steare said...

Thanks for reviewing the test. However, it IS in fact a scientific research study based now on over 30,000 results from people in 162 countries. The caveat you quote is standard for all psychometric tests, as no such test should be relied on in isolation. The test results concur with both Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development (Harvard, 1981) and Gilligan's work on gender difference (Harvard, 1982). I'm happy to release our PDF report to anyone who's interested. Please contact me via www.ethicability.org.

Cosmic Siren said...

Thank you for the correction and the offer to release the information. I will correct my post and leave your comment so others can contact you.

Though, I must add that the research I've read on Kohlberg and Gilligan's work shows it to have biases - and it is still lead by their theories more than Haidt's work is.