Review of General Psychology

2012, Vol. 16, No. 4, 319 326

2012 American Psychological Association

1089-2680/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0027854

A Model for Ethical Reasoning

Robert J. Sternberg
Oklahoma State University

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This article presents a model of ethical reasoning. The article reviews lapses in ethical reasoning and the
great costs they have had for society. It presents an eight-step model of ethical reasoning that can be
applied to ethical challenges and illustrates its application. It proposes that ethical reasoning can be taught
across the curriculum. It further points to a source of frustration in the teaching and application of ethics:
ethical drift. Finally it draws conclusions.
Keywords: ethics, ethical reasoning, wisdom, foolishness

tions, bystanders intervene when someone is in trouble only in

very limited circumstances. For example, if they think that someone else might intervene, the bystanders tend to stay out of the
situation. Latane and Darley even showed that divinity students
who were about to lecture on the parable of The Good Samaritan
were no more likely than other bystanders to help a person in
distress who was in need ofa good Samaritan!
Gardner (1999) has wrestled with the question of whether there
is some kind of existential or even spiritual intelligence that guides
people through challenging life dilemmas. Coles (1998) is one of
many who have argued for a moral intelligence in children as well
as adults. Is there some kind of moral or spiritual intelligence in
which some children are inherently superior to others? Piaget
(1932) and Kohlberg (1984) believed that there are stages of moral
reasoning, and that as children grow older, they advance in these
stages. Some will advance faster and further than others, creating
individual differences in levels of moral development. Harkness,
Edwards, and Super (1981) have questioned whether the stages are
culturally generalizable. In contrast to the Kohlberg model, Gilligan (1993) argued that Kohlberg overly emphasized development
of principles of universal justice over a psychology of caring and
compassion.
Some believe that ethical reasoning has a large nonrational
component (e.g., Rogerson, Gottlieb, Handelsman, Knapp, &
Younggren, 2011), but the claim here is that ethical reasoning can
be largely rational, but usually isnt because people fail to follow
through on the complete set of steps needed to reach an ethical
conclusion.

The beginning of the end, it is generally agreed, was in 1962

(Centralia, Pennsylvania: Truth is Stranger than Fiction, 2009).
Someone burned trash in the pit of an abandoned strip mine in
Centralia, Pennsylvania. It was illegal; it was unethical; but people
do this kind of thing all the time. An exposed vein of coal caught
fire. The fire was doused with water and town officials thought the
fire was extinguished. But it wasnt, and the fire erupted again,
unexpectedly, in the same pit just a few days later. More water was
applied and town officials thought that was the end of it. But again,
it wasnt.
The fire spread underground. People debated long and hard as to
what to do about it. As they debated, life went on. People attended
to the problems that confronted them in their daily livesmaking
ends meet, raising their kids, marrying and divorcingmeanwhile
relegating the fire to the backs of their minds. Every once in a
while, though, the fire or its byproducts would emerge from the
ground. Toxic gases would start to come up out of the ground. A
basement would become very hot and eventually people would
realize that the fire had reached under their basement. Roads would
start to buckle from the heat. Half-hearted efforts would be made
to extinguish the fire, but the longer people waited, the more the
fire spread, and the more expensive it would be to extinguish it.
The government started to pay people to relocate. They had little
other choice.
Today, Centralia, Pennsylvania, is a ghost town. All but the
steadfast few have abandoned the town. The town no longer
appears on some maps. Relatively few people even remember the
fire that still burns under the ruins of Centralia. Among those who
do are the residents of Ashland, Pennsylvania, because the fire is
making its way in their direction. They fear they are next.
Not all ethical problems are as difficult as these. Yet people act
unethically in many situations. Why? Sometimes, it is because
ethics mean little or nothing to them. But more often, it is because
it is difficult to translate theory into practice. Consider an example
of this difficulty.
Latane and Darley (1970) opened up a new field of research on
bystander intervention. They showed that, contrary to expecta-

A Model of Ethical Reasoning and Its Translation

Into Behavior
Drawing in part upon the Latane & Darley (1970) model of
bystander intervention, I have constructed a model of ethical
behavior that would seem to apply to a variety of ethical problems.
The model specifies the specific skills students need to reason and
then behave ethically.
The basic premise of the model is that ethical behavior is far
harder to display than one would expect simply on the basis of
what we learn from our parents, from school, and from our
religious training (Sternberg, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c). To intervene,

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert J.

Sternberg, Office of Academic Affairs, Whitehurst 101, Stillwater, OK
74078. E-mail: robert.sternberg@okstate.edu
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individuals must go through a series of steps, and unless all of the

steps are completed, they are not likely to behave in an ethical
way, regardless of the amount of training they have received in
ethics, and regardless of their levels of other types of skills.
Consider the skills in the model and how they apply in an ethical
dilemmawhether a student, John, should turn in a fellow student,
Bill, whom he saw cheating on an examination:
According to the proposed model, enacting ethical behavior is
much harder than it would appear to be because it involves
multiple, largely sequential, steps. To behave ethically, the individual has to:
1.

recognize that there is an event to which to react;

2.

define the event as having an ethical dimension;

3.

decide that the ethical dimension is of sufficient significance to merit an ethics-guided response;

4.

take responsibility for generating an ethical solution to

the problem;

5.

figure out what abstract ethical rule(s) might apply to the

problem;

6.

decide how these abstract ethical rules actually apply to

the problem so as to suggest a concrete solution;

7.

prepare for possible repercussions of having acted in

what one considers an ethical manner;

8.

act.

I shall present the model in terms of a challenge that might

confront a typical college student. The student, Bill, enters his
dormitory room. The student sees his roommate, Jim, sitting at his
computer. A somewhat casual look reveals that the roommate
appears to be copying text from the Internet into a paper he is
writing, without attribution. It is not clear how much text was
copied, if any. Bill cannot be certain that his perception of events
is correct. On seeing Bill enter the room Jim turns around, and
upon realizing that Bill is there, places his body between Bill and
the computer screen and quickly changes the screen to something
else. This example will be used to illustrate the model, in that it
contains many of the characteristics of ethical problems.

existence of death camps and referred to Jews, Roma, and other

peoples merely as being resettled. The goal of the transgressors
is to obscure the fact that anything is going on that is even worth
anyones attention.
When people hear their political, educational, or religious leaders talk, they may not believe there is any reason to question what
they hear. After all, they are listening to authority figures. In this
way, leaders, including cynical and corrupt leaders, may lead their
flocks to accept corruption and even disappearances as nonevents.

2. Define the Event as Having an Ethical Dimension

Bill may think he has seen Jim lift text without attribution, but
he may not define the act of lifting the text and implanting it in
Jims paper as an ethical transgression. Perhaps he thinks there is
nothing wrong with lifting text, having done it himself. Or maybe
it looked like too little text to be worth bothering about. Or perhaps
Jim did make an attribution and Bill just did not see it, in which
case there would have been no ethical transgression at all.
Cynical leaders may flaunt their unethical behavior one is
reminded today of Robert Mugabe, but there are other world
leaders who might equally be relevant here. When Mugabe and his
henchmen seized the farms of white farmers, the seizure was
presented as one of compensating alleged war heroes for their
accomplishments. Why should it be unethical to compensate war
heroes?
The Chinese government has attempted to manipulate media to
downplay the dimensions of events with major ethical components
(Atlas, 2008). For example, on May 12, 2008, an earthquake in
Sichuan province killed an estimated 10,000 schoolchildren. But
there was an irregularity in the buildings that imploded during the
earthquake. Schools for children of well-connected party leaders as
well as government buildings withstood the earthquake with no
problem. In contrast, schools housing poor children crumbled to
dust. It turned out that the schools had been built in ways that could
only poorly withstand an earthquake. Presumably, the money that
was supposed to have supported better construction went to line
the pockets of Party functionaries (Atlas, 2008). The government
did what it could to suppress these basic facts. Of course, the U.S,
government also has a history of hiding unethical behavior (McClellan, 2008), such as at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The
difference, to the extent there is one, is that where there is a free
or almost free press, or where there is a functioning Internet,
unethical events often come out, regardless of government efforts
to suppress them.

1. Recognize That There is an Event to

Which to React

3. Decide That the Ethical Dimension is Significant

First, Bill has to recognize that there even is an event that is

worthy of his attention. Maybe Bill has seen so many students
lifting text that it simply escapes his notice as anything unusual.
Maybe he has lifted text himself and hence scarcely notices it
anymore. Perhaps he is distracted with his own problems. Or
maybe, once Jim blocks the screen, his mind moves on to other
things.
In cases where there has been an ethical transgression, the
transgressors often go out of their way to hide that there is even an
event to which to react. For example, many countries hide the
deplorable condition of their political prisoners. The Nazis hid the

Bill may have reflected upon Jims behavior and decided that it
was unethical; but he may also have decided the transgression was
so small it was not worth pursuing. After all, he may reason,
students lift text all the timewhats the big deal? Perhaps Bill is
concerned only with whether Jim will get away with it and decides
that the amount of lifted text is so small that it is not worth any
bother. In short, people may recognize an ethical dimension, but
not see it as sufficiently significant to create a fuss.
Some politicians seem to specialize in trying to downplay the
ethical dimension of their behavior. The shenanigans and subsequent lies of Bill Clinton regarding his behavior are well known.

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A MODEL FOR ETHICAL REASONING

On June 5, 2008, a state senator in Massachusetts was arrested the

day before for attempting to grope a woman on the street (Senator
faces list of assault allegations, 2011). The Senator apparently had
a record of harassing other women over a period of years. What is
more amazing than his pleading innocent after being caught redhanded was that, when asked his name, he gave the name of a
colleague in the state Senate as his name! He thereby sought to
duck responsibility for his own unethical behavior.
As this article is being written, the 2012 primary elections are
going on and some are questioning whether one of the candidates
was ethical in his role in private equity in leading many people to
lose their jobs while claiming to have created large number of jobs.
Others are questioning whether the criticism of this candidate is
itself ethical.

4. Take Responsibility for Generating an Ethical

Solution to the Problem
Bill may believe that, what Jim has done, it is none of his
(Bills) business. Perhaps Bill has done similar things, or considered doing them. But in any case, he may take the position that
what Jim does for a course is between Jim and his professor.
Similarly, people may allow leaders to commit wretched acts
because they figure it is the leaders responsibility to determine the
ethical dimensions of their actions. Isnt that why they are leaders
in the first place? Or people may assume that the leaders, especially if they are religious leaders, are in a uniquely good position
to determine what is ethical. If a religious leader encourages
someone to become a suicide bomber, that someone may feel
that being such a bomber must be ethical. Why else would a
religious leader suggest it?

5. Figure Out What Abstract Ethical Rule(s) Might

Apply to the Problem
When Bill sees Jim appear to lift text, it may not be clear to him
what, if any, ethical rule is being broken. He may believe that one
can lift textjust not too muchand not know whether Jim has
gone over the line, and if so, by how much. Or he may not be sure
whether Jim actually was going to use the text he lifted in unadulterated form. Maybe he was planning to change some of the
wording later.
Most of us have learned, in one way or another, ethical rules that
we are supposed to apply to our lives. For example, we are
supposed to be honest. But who among us can say he or she has not
lied at some time, perhaps with the excuse that we were protecting
someone elses feelings? By doing so, we insulate ourselves from
the effects of our behavior. Perhaps, we can argue, the principle
that we should not hurt someone elses feelings takes precedence
over not lying. Of course, as the lies grow larger, we can continue
to use the same excuse. Or politicians may argue that they should
provide generous tax cuts to the ultrawealthy, on the theory that the
benefits will trickle down to the rest of the population. So
perhaps one is treating all people well, as we learn to dojust
some people are treated better than others with the rationalization
that eventually the effects will reach all the others.

321

6. Decide How These Abstract Ethical Rules

Actually Apply to the Problem so as to Suggest a
Concrete Solution
Bill may know that lifting text is unethical, but be unsure of the
exact circumstances under which it is unethical. Bill knows nothing about the assignment on which Jim is working, and for all he
knows, the assignment may have encouraged or even required
taking quotes from others without worrying about attribution. His
context for understanding what happened is very limited.
This kind of translation is, I believe, nontrivial. In our work on
practical intelligence, some of which was summarized in Sternberg
et al. (2000), we found that there is, at best, a modest correlation
between the more academic and abstract aspects of intelligence
and its more practical and concrete aspects. Both aspects, though,
predicted behavior in everyday life. People may have skills that
shine brightly in a classroom, but that they are unable to translate
into real-world consequential behavior. For example, someone
may be able to pass a written drivers test with flying colors, but
not be able to drive. Or someone may be able to get an A in a
French class, but not to speak French to passers-by in Paris. Or a
teacher may get an A in a classroom management course, but be
unable to manage a classroom. Translation of abstracted skills into
concrete ones is difficult, and may leave people knowing a lot of
ethical rules that they are nevertheless unable to translate into their
everyday lives.
If one follows reports in the media, there are any number of
instances in which pastors who are highly trained in religion and
ethics act in unethical and unscrupulous ways. They may be able
to teach classes on ethics, but they fail to translate what they teach
into their own behavior. One may tend to be quick to blame them,
but as a psychologist, I know that there are many competent
psychologists who are unable to apply what they do in therapy to
their own lives. Being a psychologist is no protection against
personal strife, any more than being an ethicist is protection
against unethical behavior.

7. Prepare for Possible Repercussions of Having Acted

in What One Considers an Ethical Manner
Bill may be rather certain that Jim has crossed ethical lines, but
may decide that getting involved in the situation can only be
disadvantageous to him. If he talks to Jim about what he saw, he
may lose Jims friendship. He may also lose the friendships of
Jims friends. And Jim may retaliate in ways as yet unknown.
Certainly it is safer for him just to keep his mouth shut.
We would like to think that the pressure to behave ethically will
lead people to resist internal temptations to act poorly. But often,
exactly the opposite is the case. In the Enron case, when Sherron
Watkins blew the whistle on unethical behavior, she was punished
and made to feel like an outcast (Person of the week: Enron
whistleblower Sherron Watkins, 2002). In general, whistleblowers
are treated poorly, despite the protections they are supposed to
receive. Harry Markopolos, who first blew the whistle on Bernard
Madoff, was for a long period of time largely ignored and ridiculed
when he pointed out that the returns Madoff claimed to make were
not possible (Markopolos, 2011).

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8. Act
Bill may feel that he really should do something, and decide
that, at some future time, he likely will. But he may not feel that
the time is now. He may never feel that the time is now. Or he
may feel that he should act, but just not have the courage to do so.
In the Latane and Darley (1970) work, the more bystanders there
were, the less likely one was to take action to intervene. Why?
Because one figured that, if something is really wrong, then
someone among all the others witnessing the event will take
responsibility. You are better off having a breakdown on a somewhat lonely country road than on a busy highway, because a driver
passing by on the country road may feel that he or she is your only
hope.
Sometimes, the problem is not that other people seem oblivious
to the ethical implications of the situation, but that they actively
encourage you to behave in ways you define as unethical. In the
Rwandan genocides, Hutus were encouraged to hate Tutsis and to
kill them, even if they were within their own family (see discussion
in Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008). Those who were not willing to
participate in the massacres risked becoming victims themselves
(Gourevitch, 1998). The same applied in Hitlers Germany. Those
who tried to save Jews from concentration camps themselves
risked going to such camps (Totten, Parsons, & Charny, 2004).

Teaching for Ethical Reasoning

The story of Centralia is a precautionary tale for our society as
a whole. We need to teach for ethical reasoning (Sternberg, 2010)!
The whole mess in Centralia started with one clearly unethical act.
Local, state, and government officials had a chance to do something about it, but they failed adequately to recognize the looming
crisis. And so the crisis spread underground, erupting here and
there, until it became unmanageable. The financial costs were
staggering. But what about the ethics of making only a half-hearted
attempt to control a fire that eventually would destroy the entire
town, including the homes both of innocent victims and of those
who did nothing?
One can argue that lapses such as occurred in Centralia are
exceptions, scarcely the rule. The financial collapse of 2008 appears to have been partly a result of pure greed on the part of
certain banks and bankers. At the time this is being written, at least
one well-known investment bank is under criminal as well as civil
investigation. In 2010, coal miners died in a mine shaft that had
been cited numerous times for inadequate ventilation, and a
record-breaking oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurred at least in
part because of improper safeguards against such spills.
Such problems are nothing new. A. H. Robins went bankrupt in
1985. The company could not afford settlements for the more than
300,000 lawsuits filed against them as a result of their production
and marketing of an unsafe intrauterine device for birth control, the
Dalkon Shield. In 2001, Enron collapsed after Fortune magazine
had named it Americas most innovative company for six years in
a row. It was a house of cards, built on phony books and fraudulent
shell companies. Worldcoms bankruptcy came a year later, in
2002. It had incorrectly accounted for $3.8 billion in operating
expenses. More recently, we have seen the end of Bear Stearns,
Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and numerous other financial
enterprises. Few people reached the depths of Bernard Madoff, the

epitome of unethical behavior on Wall Street, who sits in a prison

cell.
The model applies not only to judging others but to evaluating
ones own ethical reasoning. When confronted with a situation
having a potential ethical dimension, students can learn literally to
go through the steps of the model and ask how they apply to a
given situation.
Effective teaching of ethical reasoning involves presenting case
studies, but it is important that students as well generate their own
case studies from their own experience, and then apply the steps of
the model to their own problems. They need to be actively involved in seeing how the steps of the model apply to their own
individual problems.
As a university administrator, I, like other administrators, have
discovered that students ethical skills often are not up to the level
of their ability-test scores. Colleges run the full gamut of unethical
behavior on the part of students: drunken rampages, cheating on
tests, lying about reasons for papers turned in late, attacks by
students on other students, questionable behavior on the athletic
field. Faculty members, of course, are not immune either: Few
academic administrators probably leave their jobs without having
had to deal with at least some cases of academic or other misconduct on the part of faculty.
People can certainly differ in their moral reasoning and moral
development, but we can teach children as well as adults to
enhance their ethical reasoning and behavior simply by instructing
them regarding the challenges of thinking and acting in an ethical
way. It is not enough to teach religion or values or ethics. One
needs to teach children about the steps leading to ethical behavior,
as described above, so that they can recognize for and in themselves how and why it is that ethical behavior presents such a
challenge. They need education and they need inoculation against
the forces that are likely to lead them to fail to behave ethically
because they do not make it through all eight of the steps as
described above.
In speaking of the challenges of leadership, and particularly of
leaders who become foolish, I have spoken of the risk of ethical
disengagement (Sternberg, 2008).
Ethical disengagement (based on Bandura, 1999) is the dissociation of oneself from ethical values. One may believe that ethical
values should apply to the actions of others, but one becomes
disengaged from them as they apply to oneself. One may believe
that one is above or beyond ethics, or simply not see its relevance
to ones own life.
There are other fallacies that lead people to be foolish (Sternberg, 2008). They include:
1.

unrealistic optimism. The person thinks he or she is so

bright, or so powerful, that anything he or she does will
turn out all right, regardless of how foolish or unethical it
may be.

2.

egocentrism. The person comes to believe that his or her

leadership or power is for purposes of selfaggrandizement. Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, currently
in prison for tax evasion, ran the company as though it
was his own personal piggybank (Timeline of the Tyco
international scandal, 2005). Ethics took the back seat to
Kozlowskis desire to enrich himself and his family.

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A MODEL FOR ETHICAL REASONING

3.

false omniscience. Some people come to believe themselves as all-knowing. The surprising thing about the
behavior of a Bill Clinton or a George W. Bush, in quite
different domains, is not that they made mistakes, but
rather, that they kept making the same mistakes over and
over again. Clinton correctly viewed himself as very
intelligent, and perhaps thought that his intelligence and
excellent education gave him levels of knowledge that he
did not have. George W. Bush appears to have believed
that he could trust his gut. He was wrong, over and over
again, but was so lacking in intrapersonal intelligence
(Gardner, 1999) and self-reflection, that he learned little,
if anything, from his mistakes. In contrast, Barack
Obama, during his presidential campaign, made mistakes, but each time seemed to learn from them and not
repeat them, which is one of many reasons he was elected
as president.

4.

false omnipotence. Napoleons failed invasion of Russia

stands as one of the great historical monuments to false
feelings of power. Napoleon believed himself to be extremely powerful. His invasion of Russia was politically
pointless and strategically flawed; but he wanted the
prize nevertheless. The invasion was the beginning of the
end for Napoleon. Like so many other powerful leaders,
he overreached, and his feelings of omnipotence led to
his doom.

5.

false invulnerability. Perhaps Eliot Spitzer, as governor

of New York State, felt himself not only extremely
powerful, but invulnerable. He must have felt pretty close
to invulnerable, because as a former prosecutor, he must
have known that police agencies had multiple ways of
tracking patrons of prostitutes. He nevertheless engaged
in a pattern of repeated reckless behavior (Spitzer is
linked to prostitution ring, 2008), which eventually cost
him the governorship.

6.

sunk costs. Leaders often come to the realization that they

have made a mistake. But retreating from the mistake
may be much more costly than feigning belief in the
rightness of ones action. If a leader invades another
country and the invasion turns out to be a mistake (e.g.,
few people believe that the Vietnam War produced much
good for the United States), politically, it may be much
more costly to withdraw from the mistake than to continue down the course already taken, no matter how
mistaken the course of action may have been.

Schools should teach ethical reasoning; they should not necessarily teach ethics. There is a difference. Ethics is a set of principles for what constitutes right and wrong behavior. These principles are generally taught in the home or through religious training
in a special school or through learning in the course of ones life.
It would be challenging to teach ethics in a secular school, because
different religious and other groups have somewhat different ideas
about what is right and wrong. There are, however, core values that
are common to almost all these religions and ethical systems that
schools do teach and reinforce, for example, reciprocity (the

323

golden rule), honesty, sincerity, compassion in the face of human

suffering.
Ethical reasoning is how to think about issues of right or wrong.
Processes of reasoning can be taught, and the school is an appropriate place to teach these processes. The reason is that, although
parents and religious schools may teach ethics, they do not always
teach ethical reasoning, or at least, do so with great success. They
may see their job as teaching right and wrong, but not how to
reason with ethical principles. Moreover, they may not do as good
a job of it as we would hope for.
Is there any evidence that ethical reasoning can be taught with
success? There have been successful endeavors with students of
various ages. Paul (Paul & Elder, 2005), of the Foundation for
Critical Thinking, has shown how principles of critical thinking
can be applied specifically to ethical reasoning in young people.
DeHaan and his colleagues at Emory University have shown that
it is possible successfully to teach ethical reasoning to high school
students (DeHaan & Narayan, 2007). Myser et al. (1995) of the
University of Newcastle has shown ways specifically of teaching
ethics to medical students. Weber (1993) of Marquette University
found that teaching ethical awareness and reasoning to businessschool students can improve from courses aimed at these topics,
although the improvements are often short-term. But Poneman
(First Center to Study Accounting Ethics Opens, 2010) and Jordan
(2007) both found that as leaders ascend the hierarchy in their
businesses, their tendency to define situations in ethical terms
actually seems to decrease.
How does one actually teach ethical reasoning? In my view, the
way you teach ethical reasoning is through the case study method,
which is the principal method I now use in my course on leadership. Ideally, ethics is taught not just in a course on ethics but in
any course in which ethics might potentially apply. Otherwise,
there is the risk that what the students learn will be inertthat
students will not see how to apply it outside the one course on
ethics. Students need to learn how to reason about and apply
ethical principles by being confronted with ethical problems in a
variety of domains. They also need to be inoculated against the
pressures to behave unethically, such as occurs when there is
retaliation for whistle-blowing.

Problems for Teaching and Assessing

Ethical Reasoning
A famous, perhaps now classical, problem for teaching/
assessing ethical reasoning is the following (based on Foot, 1978):
A train is going out of control and hurtling down the tracks
toward four people who are strangers. You are unable to call out
to the people or get them off the tracks. However, it is in your
power to press a button that will divert the train. But there is a
problem, namely, that there is a person on the tracks onto which
you would divert the train. This person will be killed if you divert
the train. Thus, you can touch the controls and divert the train,
resulting in the death of one person, or you cannot touch the
controls, and four people will die. What should you do?
Consider other more realistic problems:
1. A university in New York City has run out of room. It is
confined on all sides in a crowded city and cannot fulfill its
expanding academic mission with the real estate currently available to it. Its solution in the past was to buy up as much neigh-

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324

STERNBERG

boring land as it could. But it has run out of willing sellers. The
university now is attempting to use the law of eminent domain to
take over land by having the city kick out landowners. In order to
do so, it has claimed that some of the areas into which it wishes
to move are blighted. Landowners of these adjacent properties
point out that the university has no right to their land and that if the
adjacent areas are blighted, it is because the university itself has
failed properly to maintain properties it has bought and thus, has
been a major contributor to the blight. What should be done?
2. Your friend is the CEO of a powerful company in your town.
You follow the local news and know that there have been some
rumblings about his performance because as CEO, he has just
awarded a large no-bid contract to manage the construction of a
new research center owned by the company. In other words, the
winning contractor did not have to compete against any other
companies for the contract. At a dinner party, you ask your friend
the CEO how his vacation was, and he mentions that it was really
nice. He and his family went on a weeklong free skiing vacation at
the mountain house of Mr. X. You realize that Mr. X is none other
than the owner of the company that received the contract to
manage construction of the new building. What should you do?
3. Doctors sometimes write notes on pads furnished them by
pharmaceutical companies with pens also furnished by such companies. Some doctors also may accept free meals, club memberships, subsidized travel, and research funds from such companies.
With regard to gifts and subsidies from pharmaceutical companies
to doctors, what kinds of guidelines do you think ought to be in
place, and why? Is there an ethical failure here, and if so, is it in
the pharmaceutical companies, the doctors, or both?
4. Mr. Smith, a close friend of yours with whom you have
worked closely in your company for 40 years, is clearly dying.
There is no hope. On his deathbed, he tells you that he has been
burdened for many years by the fact that, between the ages of 35
and 42, he had a mistress whom he saw frequently and subsidized
financially. He asks you to tell his wife what he has told you and
to tell her that he begs her forgiveness.
Mr. Smith has now died. What should you do about his request?
Other examples are given in Table 1.
If students are not explicitly given a chance to confront ethical
dilemmas, how are they going to learn to solve them? In my own
instruction, I care less about the conclusions students come to than

I do about their reasoning processes in coming to those conclusions.

There are no easy answers to any of these problems, but that is
the point: Teaching ethical reasoning is not about teaching what
one should do in particular circumstancesperhaps that is the role
of religious training. Teaching ethical reasoning is about teaching
students how wisely to make very difficult decisions involving
ethical considerations where the answers are anything but clear
cut.

Ethical Drift
Even if students understand the steps involved in ethical reasoning, they must be prepared to face another challenge, ethical
drift (Sternberg, in press). In Lifeboat, a film by Alfred Hitchcock,
several marooned individuals who have survived the wrecks of
their two ships drift in the middle of the ocean. Their meager
supplies soon begin to run out, and as they do, the drifting of their
lifeboat becomes a metaphor for the drifting of their ethical standards. Within less time than one might have imagined, they and
their audience find the survivors acting in ways none of them ever
would have thought possible.
Ethical drift is the gradual ebbing of standards that can occur in
an individual, a group, or an organization as a result of the
interaction of environmental pressures with those subjected to
these pressures (Sternberg, in press). It often occurs insidiously
and even without the conscious awareness of those being subjected
to it. Just as a boat adrift in the midst of the ocean can travel long
distances without any visible change in its location, so can ethical
drift occur without people even realizing that they have changed
(usually for the worse) their ethical standards.
If one is adrift at sea, eventually one can see one has drifted
because the constellations, which are fixed in position, seem to
have moved because one has oneself moved. But it can take a
while before one realizes that the constellations seem to be in a
different place, and by the time they seem to be in a different place,
one may have forgotten where they originally seemed to be.
Similarly, when ethical drift occurs, one typically realizes it only
after a great while and by then, one may have lost ones original
bearings.

Table 1
Sample Items for Measuring Ethical Reasoning
You are running for president of your student organization, of which you are currently treasurer. At the elections meeting, paper ballots are handed out
and you hand yours in. You notice that one of your friends is there. You happen to know that he has not paid his dues for the past year and thus, is
ineligible to vote, but you dont think much of it at the time. After the meeting, your friend mentions to you that he voted for you and thinks you
will do a great job. The next day, the results are announced. To your dismay, you win by one vote. You now recall that your friend, who was
ineligible to vote, said he voted for you. What should you do?
You are a waiter at a school festival, which is raising money for a local charity. You serve food to a man you dont know; he pays you, and you give
him change. An hour later, the man comes up to you and says that you shortchanged him. He says that you gave him change for a $5 bill when in
fact he had given you a $20 bill. He demands the correct change, which is $15 more than you had given him. What should you do?
Your friends father is the mayor of the town. You follow the local news and know that there have been some rumblings about his performance
because as mayor, he has just awarded a large no-bid contract for repaving roads in the town. In other words, the winning contractor did not have
to compete against any other companies for the contract. You ask your friend how his vacation was, and he mentions that it was really nice. He and
his family went on a weeklong free skiing vacation at the mountain house of Mr. X. You realize that Mr. X is none other than the owner of the
company that received the contract to repave the town roads. What should you do?
You take a part-time job in a fairly fancy and quite expensive local restaurant. Your job is a lowly onewashing dishes. After working in the
restaurant for just a day, you are thoroughly disgusted. You have seen that the kitchen is very dirty and has an infestation of cockroaches. You
mention this to a fellow worker and he gives you a wink and a nod. Then he walks away. What should you do?

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
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A MODEL FOR ETHICAL REASONING

The biggest challenge of ethical drift is that, because it typically

is insidious, people are not even aware it is happening. They may
believe that they are adhering to the same ethical standards they
had before. Or, by the time they realize that their standards have
changed, it may be too late. We often assume that people who act
unethically simply decide to behave in a way that they or anyone
else can see is clearly wrong. Frequently, however, they have
experienced ethical drift, whereby their frame of reference has
changed so gradually that they are not even aware that they are
behaving unethically. Others may be appalled by their actions
except those who have drifted along with them.
Students, for example, may begin by lifting a few words from
materials gathered from the Internet, and gradually progress to
sentences, paragraph, and then major parts of, or even, whole
papers. The process is much more insidious than when a student
merely decides to buy a paper from a paper-writing mill. The
students may not be aware the process even has taken place,
although of course they should have been.
I once talked to an individual who had gone from working in
one organization (a university) to another (a consulting company).
He described to me in some detail the unethical practices of the
firm. I asked him why he did not leave. He replied that the
down-drift in ethics had occurred over a long period of time, or at
the very least, he had become aware of it only over an extended
period of time. Had he realized it at once, he would have left, but
the process had been so slow he had not even been aware it was
taking place. At that point, he felt he would have trouble finding
another job, and had himself become somewhat ethically compromised.
Such drift can happen in many contexts, of course. The quality
of intimate relationships can decline, as can the quality of life in a
particular home or town. What is potentially different about ethical
drift is how it eats away at the individuals humanity and leaves the
person caught in a situation that can be not only ethically, but also,
potentially legally compromising.
Ethical drift is provoked by at least four environmental forces.
First, it typically occurs when there is intense competition for
resources, as on the lifeboat. Second, people start to feel that they
are in a zero-sum game, often with relatively meager rewards,
again as characterized the lifeboat. Third, people perceive, or think
they perceive, others acting in ways that are ethically compromised, as Hitchcocks characters saw each other acting in more
and more ethically challenged ways. Sometimes, when individuals
or organizations compete, team members actually may encourage
an individual to act in ethically compromised ways. Finally, people
may see no other viable way out of the quandary. They feel they
cannot just leave the situation (as, e.g., where exit from the lifeboat
meant almost certain death).
When we teach students ethical reasoning and behavior, we
need to make them aware of the challenges of ethical drift. People
who experience it often started out acting according to ethical
principles and may not realize that they have drifted into behavior
that no longer upholds the ethical standards they originally set for
themselves. For example, students may start off setting high standards for themselves in writing papers, but after observing others
lift material from the Internet without attribution, may start doing
so themselves, with the amounts of material lifted increasing from
one assignment to the next. Or a scientist may start cleaning data
and proceed to massaging and then to falsifying it. Or a

325

college administrator may exchange a home renovation for a

vendor contract at his college, thinking thats what others do so
why shouldnt he?
If one looks at people who have committed serious transgressions, often, one finds, they started out just like anyone else.
Consider, for example, two notorious employees of banks. Jerome
Kerviel at the Societe General and Kweku Adoboli at UBS, from
what the records show, started off as honest but aggressive traders.
They made bets that went wrong. They tried to recoup the money
they lost, at first, through legal activity, then through activity that
went beyond the bounds of legality and ethicality. In the end, their
behavior became egregious and they were caught. They were in an
intense competition for resources; they experienced it as a zerosum gamethey are either making money or losing it; they were
acting in banking cultures that encouraged aggressive risk-taking
and even going beyond the bounds so long as the actors did not get
caught; they finally saw no way out of their quandary except to
recoup their losses illegally, although of course they could have
turned themselves in, perhaps losing their jobs but not exposing
themselves to possible prison terms. Perhaps the most critical
element was the organizational culture of ethical driftthat it is all
right to shave a little here, a little there, so long as appearances are
maintained and the ends are alleged (falsely) to justify the means.
What can one do to discourage ethical drift in ones colleagues,
ones students, or even oneself? First, an organization needs to
recognize and warn its members of the phenomenon of ethical
drift. Second, there needs to be a culture of no tolerance for ethical
drift. Third, actors need to be warned to be vigilant for ethical drift
in themselves and others. Fourth, mechanisms must exist to identify ethical drift when it occurs (such as curbs on illegal trading, in
the case of the banks, or services such as Turnitinwhich detects
plagiarismin the case of colleges and universities). Finally, those
who are caught drifting beyond the permissible bounds must be
quickly, visibly, and appropriately punished. For example, at Oklahoma State University, the university where I teach and where I am
an administrator, students are taught from Day 1 that ethical
practice and leadership are the core of our land-grant mission. For
those who take another path, we use a grade of F! to indicate
dishonesty, as distinguished from a grade merely of F for a
failure.
Ultimately, the greatest protection against ethical drift is wisdomrecognizing that, in the end, people benefit most when they
act for the common good. Wisdom is the ultimate lifeboat (Sternberg, 2003, 2005; Sternberg, Jarvin, & Grigorenko, 2009; Sternberg & Jordan, 2005; Sternberg, Reznitskaya, & Jarvin, 2007).

Conclusion
Figuratively speaking, we are all living in Centralia. But should
we do anything to stop the fire, and if so, what? Is it worth the
cost? Or should we just deal with the consequences of the fire as
they erupt, as we have been doing? Deciding what to do is one of
the most challenging ethical problems of all (Sternberg, 2011a,
2011b). And if we do nothing, what will happen to our metaphorical Ashlandthe next generation for whom we bear responsibility as we do for our own? We need to take responsibility for
teaching students to reason ethically. Otherwise, we risk the fire
burning further out of control, with catastrophic results for our
nation and the world.

STERNBERG

326

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Received January 15, 2012

Revision received February 27, 2012
Accepted February 27, 2012