ABSTRACT
Ethics is concerned not only with moral reasoning – how people should make judgments about what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ – but also how people decide what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ To date, however, engineering ethics education (EEE) has mostly focused on ethical reasoning. As with other foundational disciplines of ethics education, several different research traditions within moral psychology inform EEE – from trends concerned with developing and measuring moral reasoning to pro-social behavior and associated concepts such as care and empathy to understand why people engage in helping behaviors. More recently, moral intuitionism and positive psychology have become influential concepts in moral psychology and ethics education. This chapter presents the psychological foundations of ethics education with a focus on cognitive approaches to moral reasoning – which still permeate many studies and practices in engineering ethics education. The chapter describes two other strands in moral psychology that depart from rational approaches of ethics education: (a) care, empathy, and pro-social behavior; and (b) moral intuitionism. The chapter calls for integrating positive psychology in developing a complementary approach toward fostering moral and ethical reasoning, attitudes, and behaviors in engineering – and contributing to students’ thriving.
