ABSTRACT
This chapter examines that assumption, and discusses the development of the Ethics Position Questionnaire, which is an inventory that can be used to measure the differences. Ethics position theory suggests that some of the distinctions made by moral philosophers are also made by laypersons when they are formulating moral judgments. Our initial foray into the assessment of differences in individual’s beliefs about morality focused specifically on their evaluations of research that yielded scientific advances, but in so doing violated certain moral principles and caused harm to those who took part in the research. Individuals can range from high-to-low in their commitment to moral principles and low-to-high in their concern for generating positive outcomes and avoiding harm, so these two aspects of moral thought are not mutually exclusive, either-or positions. The idealism scale includes items that explicitly reject balancing harm against gaining positive outcomes and subjectivists’ disagreement with such items may indicate their utilitarian tendencies and act-utilitarianism in particular.
