Abstract
Moral sensitivity is the mechanism by which an individual formulates a moral judgment. The ethical decision-making literature has examined a number of individual factors that affect moral judgment including cognitive moral development (CMD), gender, relativism, and idealism (O’Fallon and Butterfield, 2005). In the current study I assess the precision of three scales of cognitive moral development (CMD), the Defining Issues Test (DIT) P-score, the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2) N2-score and the Moral Judgment Test (MJT) C-score to predict moral sensitivity as proxied by moral judgment. I also examine the shape of the relationship between CMD and moral judgments as well as examine the importance of fairness in the moral judgment process. I use a survey instrument to assess individual’s moral judgment to a hypothetical ethical dilemma. My results indicate that the cognitive moral development as measured by the DIT2 is an effective tool to predict higher moral judgments in an accounting setting. The results are consistent with a model that specifies the relationship between CMD and moral judgments is linear. Moreover, my results indicate that individuals with high cognitive moral development as measured by the MJT make lower ethical judgments when budgets are unfair. This result highlights the importance of fairness considerations in ethical judgment and decision-making.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Perspectives on Ethics |
Pages | 171-191 |
Number of pages | 21 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781536117073 |
State | Published - 1 Jan 2011 |
Keywords
- Ethical decision-making
- Moral judgment
- Moral sensitivity