| Abstract: | Discusses 4 ethical perspectives: (a) situationism, which advocates a contextual analysis of morally questionable actions; (b) absolutism, which uses inviolate, universal moral principles to formulate moral judgments; (c) subjectivism, which argues that moral judgments should depend primarily on one's own personal values; and (d) exceptionism, which admits that exceptions must sometimes be made to moral absolutes. The Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ), which assesses degree of idealism and rejection of universal moral rules in favor of relativism, was developed to measure the extent to which individuals adopt one of the ideologies. 241 university students were Ss. The 2 scales that make up the EPQ were found to have adequate internal consistency, were reliable over time, were not correlated with social desirability, and were not related to scores on the Defining Issues Test. The Relativism scale did correlate with scores on the Survey of Ethical Attitudes. When the scales were used to classify Ss into one of the ideologies, predictions concerning differences in each ideology's moral judgment processes were supported. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
