Do Ethicists Behave Better Than Non-Ethicists?

Experimental philosophy was on display at the Pacific APA last week, where Joshua Rust and I set up a table offering passersby chocolate in exchange for completing a questionnaire.  While some responses were negative, by and large people reacted neutrally or positively.  The response rate was even better than we had hoped: We had 277 questionnaires completed out of approximately 1300 registered attendees.

The topic of the questionnaire was whether ethicists behave morally better than non-ethicists.  More details, and preliminary results, are available on The Splintered Mind.

Comments

[Clearthinker42]

It's an interesting study. However, morality is continuum. Those who are somewhat moral when participating in a study could be pious in another year.Same is true for the opposite effect. So the question is how precedented the study is expected to be?