**OLD ABSTRACT:**
*The Moral Behaviour of Ethics Professors: Relationships among Expressed Normative Attitude and Self-Reported Behaviour. A Replication-Extension in German-Speaking Countries*
What is the relation between ethical reflection and moral behaviour? Does professional reflection on ethical issues positively impact moral behaviour? Schwitzgebel and Rust (2014) addressed these questions by empirically investigating if philosophy professors engaged with ethics professionally behave, on average, any morally better, or at least more consistently with their expressed values, than do non-ethicist professors with otherwise comparable academic background. Results from Schwitzgebel and Rust's US-based sample indicate that neither is the case, thereby suggesting that there might be no straightforwardly positive influence of ethical reflection on moral behaviour. In our study, we aim to cross-validate their US-based findings by conducting a replication attempt of their original study in the German-speaking world.
More specifically, we aim to replicate Schwitzgebel and Rust's main finding, according to which ethicists expressed more pronounced normative attitudes towards some moral issues such as vegetarianism and charity, while showing no significant difference in self-reported moral behaviour compared to non-ethics philosophers and non-philosophy professors. Like the original study, we examine and compare the expressed normative attitudes and self-reported moral behaviour of ethicists and two non-ethicists control groups. We will survey 418 ethics professors, 527 philosophy professors and 521 non-philosophy professors from 62 German-speaking universities from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland for their normative assessment and moral behaviour on eight moral issues, ranging from stealing to vegetarianism to organ donation. While a replication attempt in another culture introduces cultural and linguistic confounds and thus makes it difficult to interpret non-replication, a successful replication of effects has higher confirmatory validity exactly because of being conducted in circumstances that differ in relevant dimensions of interest. To balance this trade-off, we strictly modelled our research design in all aspects after Schwitzgebel and Rust (2014), unless this was impossible due to cultural or institutional reasons like differing election systems or varying legal structures.
While we leave the body of the survey as unchanged as possible, we extend Schwitzgebel and Rust's list of questions by a) asking for an assessment of reasons internalism/externalism (without utilising these technical terms), as well as b) for the relation between moral reflection, ethical truths, and moral behaviour. As for the former, asking participants for how they themselves conceive of the relation between moral reasons and moral motivation might, for instance, help explain the gap between ethicists' self-reported normative attitude and behaviour that Schwitzgebel and Rust originally observed. As for the latter, we thought it to be potentially illuminating to obtain participants' explicit take on the relations of philosophical moral reflection to moral truths and moral behaviour respectively, as these relations are our basic research questions.
References:
Schwitzgebel, E., Rust, J., 'The Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors: Relationships among Self-Reported Behavior, Expressed Normative Attitude, and Directly Observed Behavior', Philosophical Psychology, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2014), 293-327.
Bonett, D., 'Replication Extension Studies', Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 21, No. 6 (2012), 409-12.
**NEW ABSTRACT:**
*The Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors
Relationships among Expressed Normative Attitude and Self-Reported Behavior. A Replication-Extension in German-Speaking Countries*
What is the relation between ethical reflection and moral behavior? Does professional reflection on ethical issues positively impact moral behaviors? To address these questions, Schwitzgebel and Rust (2014) empirically investigated if philosophy professors engaged with ethics on a professional basis behave any morally better, or at least more consistently with their expressed values than do non-ethicist professors. Findings from their original US-based sample indicated that neither is the case, suggesting that there is no positive influence of ethical reflection on moral action. In the study at hand, we attempted to cross-validate this pattern of results in the German-speaking countries and surveyed 417 professors using a replication-extension research design. Our results indicate a successful replication of the original effect that ethicists do not behave any morally better compared to other academics across the vast majority of normative issues. Yet, unlike the original study, we found mixed results on normative attitudes generally. On some issues, ethicists and philosophers even expressed more lenient attitudes. However, one issue on which ethicists not only held stronger normative attitudes but also reported correspondingly better moral behaviors was with respect to vegetarianism.
Keywords: experimental philosophy; replication-extension; moral attitudes; moral behavior