The Relations between Ethical Reasoning, Moral Intuitions, and Foreign Language among Engineering Students in the US, Netherlands, and China

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-5241927/v1

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The Relations between Ethical Reasoning, Moral Intuitions, and Foreign Language among Engineering Students in the US, Netherlands, and China

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-5241927/v1

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Background: Ethical knowledge and reasoning have been adopted as the goals of engineering ethics education, and measures of ethical reasoning have been developed by researchers and with participants in mostly the US. But US participants are global outliers on various psychological and social characteristics, and engineering is increasingly global. Further, it is also unclear whether ethical reasoning results in more ethical judgments or behaviors. To address these issues, this study sought to better understand the natures of and relations between ethical reasoning, moral intuitions, and foreign language among engineering students across multiple countries. Students at universities in the US, Netherlands, and China completed the ESIT (Engineering and Science Issues Test), MFQ (Moral Foundations Questionnaire), and demographics items online. Statistical hypothesis testing and correlation analysis were used to examine relations between study variables.

Results: (1) Students in the US evidenced higher rates of ethical reasoning than those in the Netherlands or China. (2) Ethics education was associated with lower rates of self-based reasoning. (3) Ethical reasoning was positively related to intuitions about care and fairness, and negatively relations to intuitions about loyalty, authority, and sanctity. (4) Students in China care more about loyalty, authority, and sanctity, and less about care and fairness, than those in the US or Netherlands. (5) Foreign language was associated with higher rates of ethical reasoning and less concern with sanctity.

Conclusions: Rather than ethical reasoning, education should aim at reducing self-based reasoning, and researchers must study a broader range of national groups to better understand how language affect ethics education.

Leadership and Ethics

Ethics

morals

reasoning

intuitions

global

culture

Given the tremendous positive and negative consequences of engineering, ethics has been recognized as essential to engineering (ABET, 2016; “Washington Accord: 25 years 1989–2014,” 2014). As a result, ethics has become central to engineering education, mostly in the form of integrated modules and standalone courses, which has been developed in the US and Europe (Rockwell Franklin Clancy & Zhu, 2022; NASEM, 2016; Picard, Hardebolle, Tormey, & Schiffmann, 2021).[1] Such education typically consists in introducing students to principles belonging to professional codes of ethics and/or philosophical ethical theories, which are then applied to cases to help students to identify and/or resolve engineering ethical dilemmas (Hess & Fore, 2018). This education has often adopted ethical knowledge and/or the ability to reason ethically as student outcomes. However, these outcomes and the form of this education is problematic for at least two main reasons.

First, measures of ethical reasoning have been developed by and with researchers and study participants from mostly the US (Buchtel et al., 2015). However, engineering is increasingly global in nature, with people from different cultures and countries studying and working together as never before (Rockwell Franklin Clancy & Zhu, 2022). National guidelines, practices, and cultures can affect understandings of ethics (AlZahir & Kombo, 2014; Luegenbiehl, 2004). Additionally, relative to global populations, individuals from the US are outliers on numerous psychological and social characteristics, including self-concepts, thought styles, and ethical reasoning (Henrich, 2020).

Second, it is unclear whether ethical reasoning results in more ethical judgments or behaviors. If this were the case, then professional ethicists – arguably the most skilled in ethical reasoning – would behave the most ethically, but research has consistently failed to find evidence to support this assumption (Schönegger & Wagner, 2019). Rather, ethical behaviors can be affected by unconscious, environmental factors (Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2012), and ethical judgments can result from intuitions, closer in nature to emotions than reflective thought (Greene, 2014; Haidt, 2012).

Third, research has found that foreign language affects a range of cognitive processes, including those associated with ethical reasoning (Circi, Gatti, Russo, & Vecchi, 2021). Although previous research has included non-native-English-speaking participants, studies on ethical reasoning and moral intuitions among engineering students have generally used English-language materials. In the US, foreign students have been found to score lower on measures of ethical reasoning and make smaller gains as a result of ethics education than their domestic counterparts (Borenstein, Drake, Kirkman, & Swann, 2010; Canary, Herkert, Ellison, & Wetmore, 2012). However, it is not clear whether these effects are the result of linguistic or cultural differences.

Given these challenges, this study sought to better understand the natures of and relations between ethical reasoning, moral intuitions, and foreign language among engineering students across multiple countries, with different forms of professional engineering practice, education, national cultures, and languages. These include the US, Netherlands, and China. Engineering has played and does play a major role in the development and economies of these countries. However, across the US, Netherlands, and China, engineering practices differ significantly (Channa, Amin, Liu, & Chen, 2018). Professional and technical differences are related to historical and cultural factors, which have affected the development and implementation of engineering education across these countries (Van de Poel & Royakkers, 2011; Zhu, 2010).

Although previous work has explored ethical reasoning among engineering students in the US (Borenstein et al., 2010; Hess & Fore, 2018), and the relation between ethical reasoning and moral intuitions among engineering students in China (Rockwell Franklin Clancy, 2020a, 2021a), this is the first study of which the authors are aware to explore the relations between ethical reasoning, moral intuitions, and foreign language among engineering students across three countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. Better understanding how ethical reasoning and moral intuitions are related to each other, and how these are affected by culture and language, could help to improve global engineering ethics education.

1.1 Approaches to Global Engineering Ethics Education

Educators disagree on the extent to which professional versus national cultures do or should take priority in engineering ethics education, for example, (1) whether engineers in the US and China share a common professional culture that unites them as a group, in contradistinction to non-engineers in the US and China, or (2) whether national culture plays a more significant role, such that engineers in the US and China are US and Chinese citizens first and engineers second (Rockwell Franklin Clancy & Zhu, 2022; Davis, 2021). With a few exceptions (Balakrishnan, Tochinai, & Kanemitsu, 2018; Balakrishnan, Tochinai, Kanemitsu, & Altalbe, 2021; Rockwell Franklin Clancy, 2020b, 2021a; Davis & Zhang, 2024; Murrugarra & Wallace, 2015), these questions have been understudied. However, answers to these questions are central to how global engineering ethic education is conceived and delivered.

If professional cultures are stronger than national ones, then some would argue that engineering ethics education should be tailored to different national and cultural contexts, to better respond to different stakeholder needs (Didier & Derouet, 2013; Iseda, 2008; Luegenbiehl, 2004). Alternatively, if national cultures are stronger than professional ones, then others would argue that engineering ethics education should stress professional commonalities between national and cultural contexts, thereby better responding to international and cross-cultural contexts (Davis, 2021). The former is associated with “particularist” trends in global engineering ethics education, while the latter is associated with “universalist” trends (Rockwell Franklin Clancy & Zhu, 2022). Depending on answers to these questions, additional ones arise about how this should be done – how to effectively develop and deliver global engineering ethics education.

For instance, given differing national and cultural backgrounds, some ethics-related instructional contents might be more intuitive to US than Chinese engineering students (Rockwell Franklin Clancy, Ge, & An, 2022). Engineering education and professional codes typically stress ethical concerns related to harm and fairness, but individuals from non-Western countries tend to conceive of ethics in much broader terms (Graham et al., 2011; Kivikangas, Fernández-Castilla, Järvelä, Ravaja, & Lönnqvist, 2021). Similarly, since foreign language can affect ethical judgments (Circi et al., 2021), the effects of foreign language on engineering ethics education should be better understood and further explored. In all cases, more research is needed, knowledge about how people think about ethical issues, and the effects of culture and language on these processes. To do so, this study uses three different theoretical frameworks.

1.2 Theoretical Frameworks

The first theoretical framework is a rationalist, neo-Kohlbergian approach to ethical decision-making (Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999; Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, & Bebeau, 1999). Named after the developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, in this framework ethical judgments are conceived as resulting from the application of principles belonging to different “schemas.” Schemas are sets of inter-related concepts and ideas: the preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Each refers to a different way of conceiving of and making decisions about matters of right and wrong: The preconventional consists in making decisions based on oneself alone, how behaviors affect oneself; the conventional consists in making decisions based on society, whether behaviors adhere to social conventions and laws; the postconventional consists in making decisions based on universal principles, such as justice or care. According to this framework, postconventional reasoning is more advanced than conventional reasoning, and conventional reasoning is more advanced than preconventional reasoning.

The second framework is called “Moral Foundations Theory” (MFT) (Graham et al., 2011). MFT is a “social intuitionist” theory of ethical judgments. On this view, ethical judgments result from and are associated with different “moral foundations,” responsible for intuitions supporting ways of conceiving matters of right and wrong. Intuitions are closer in nature to emotions than the reflective application of principles in ethical reasoning. There are at least five moral foundations with corresponding intuitions: care-harm, fairness-cheating, loyalty-betrayal, authority-subversion, and sanctity-denigration, where caring for others is good and harming others is bad, behaving fairly is good and cheating in bad, and so on. The first two foundations (care and fairness) are known as the “individualizing” foundations, since they support values associated with protecting individuals, whereas the last three foundations (loyalty, authority, and sanctity) are known as the “binding” foundations, since they support values associated with binding individuals into groups. Unlike neo-Kohlbergian schemas, none of these foundations is more advanced than the others. Rather, all of them have evolved naturally and culturally in response to different kinds of challenges facing human beings throughout our evolutionary history, accounting for similarities and differences between ethical judgments and values across cultural groups.

The third framework is the foreign-language effect, a body of research and corresponding theories exploring how foreign language affects cognitive processes. Research has found that foreign language affects ethical decision-making. For example, people are more likely to endorse sacrificial decisions (Geipel, Hadjichristidis, & Surian, 2015) and seemingly disgusting behaviors (Geipel, Hadjichristidis, & Klesse, 2018) in a foreign than a native language. Researchers have given three main explanations for this effect: (1) reflective processes play a larger role in a foreign than a native language, overriding intuitive – but perhaps irrational – feelings of repugnance (Hayakawa, Tannenbaum, Costa, Corey, & Keysar, 2017); (2) intuitive processes play a smaller role in a foreign than a native language; (3) informational encoding is language sensitive, such that it is easier to retrieve information in the language in which it was learned, and ethics would be learned in a native language (Geipel et al., 2015). To date, it is unclear which of these paradigms best explains the findings.

2.1 Participants

Participants were first-year students from the Colorado School of Mines (Mines) and University of Pittsburg (Pittsburg) in the USA, Delft University of Technology (Delft) in the Netherlands, and Shandong University (Shandong) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Jiao Tong) in China. Because of the nature of the universities and colleges from which participants were recruited, all students had or would declare a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) major. Ultimately, 513 students were included as study participants (Table 1). Detailed explanations of inclusion criteria and numbers can be found in the supplementary materials.

Table 1

Participant information
Institution	Mean age	Gender				Total
Institution		Male	Female	Nonbinary	Prefer not to say	Total
Mines	18.7	53	28	1	1	83
Pittsburgh	18.2	165	81	4	2	252
Delft	18.7	31	9	0	1	41
Shandong	18.2	89	35	0	7	131
Jiao Tong	18.5	5	1	0	0	6
All	18.3	343	154	5	11	513

2.2 Procedures and Materials

Data collection occurred across the five sites in the Fall of 2021. Participants completed all study materials online through the Qualtrics platform. This data is included with Supplementary Materials. Participants were presented with a brief description of the nature of and motivations for the study. Before completing study materials, they were required to consent to have their responses used for research purposes. The study design and materials were reviewed and approved by the IRB at Mines.

At Pittsburgh, Shandong, and Jiao Tong, participants were compensated for participation in the study with extra course credit. At Mines and Delft, participants were compensated with gift cards. The study materials consisted in five parts: (1) the Engineering and Science Issues Test (ESIT), (2) Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) – both of which are further described below – (3) items about values, initially used in (Cech, 2014), (4) open-ended questions about representative unethical behaviors, ethical problems, and good engineers, and (5) demographic items.

Dutch- and simplified Mandarin-language versions of the MFQ were taken from www.moralfoundations.org. Other materials were translated and then back translated into Dutch and Mandarin, checked for fidelity in meaning by a native English speaker, and then altered accordingly. Participants at Delft in the Netherlands and Jiao Tong in China were randomly presented with study materials in either Dutch or English, and Mandarin or English, respectively. Based on previous research and to control for the effects of foreign language on study variables, participants were asked to rate their English-language ability, as well as the age at which they began learning English.

Ultimately, 5 participants from Jiao Tong and 20 participants from Delft completed the survey in English, and 1 participant from Jiao Tong and 21 participants from Delft completed the survey in Mandarin and Dutch, respectively. Among participants who completed the survey in English, the mean score of English-language ability was 4.36 (SD = 0.70) out of 5, and the age at which they reported beginning to learn English was 7.4 years old (SD = 3.12). Among participants who completed the survey in Mandarin or Dutch, mean English-language ability was 3.95 (SD = 0.84) and age was 9.45 years old (SD = 3.94). Independent-sample t-tests revealed no significant differences between reported English-language ability (t(40.98) = 1.77, p = 0.082) or the age at which participants began learning English (t(39.89) = -1.96, p = 0.057) at the ≤ 0.05 significance level.

As the focus of this paper is on the natures of and relations between ethical reasoning, moral intuitions, and foreign language among engineering students across different cultural groups, only the results from the ESIT, MFQ, and demographics items are reported here.

2.2.1 ESIT

The ESIT is an engineering- and science-specific variant of the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2), a neo-Kohlbergian instrument used to assess ethical reasoning and the prevalence of different “schemas” in normative decision-making (Borenstein et al., 2010; Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, et al., 1999). The ESIT presents participants with 6 engineering- and science-related ethical dilemmas. For each dilemma, participants rate and rank considerations relevant to their decision-making. Considerations correspond to one of the three schemas, as well as a “nonsense” category to ensure participants are answering questions in earnest. Scores on the ratings and rankings are used to calculate the prevalence of different schemas in decision-making. P and N2 scores are the most widely used and reported scores to date: P scores measure the prevalence of postconventional reasoning; N2 scores measure the prevalence of postconventional relative to the absence of preconventional reasoning.

2.2.2 MFQ

The MFQ is a measure of ethical judgments belonging to MFT (Graham et al., 2011). The MFQ presents participants with statements associated with each of the moral foundations – as well as two “check” items to ensure participants are paying attention/answering in earnest – which they rank on a 6-point Likert scale. These statements comprise a “relevance” and “judgment” subscale: The relevance subscale asks participants to rate how important different considerations are to their decisions about right and wrong; the judgments subscale asks participants to rate the extent to which they agree or disagree with the statements. Ratings given to each statement are averaged across the foundations to which they belong, and these represent the moral intuitions – or ethical dispositions – of participants.

2.3 Hypotheses and Planned Analyses

ESIT and MFQ study variables were treated as outcome variables, and language and demographic information were treated as input variables. Based on the results of previous research and questions motivating this study, the following hypotheses were posed and analyses planned:

(1) It was hypothesized that participants studying outside the US would receive lower N2 scores than those in the US. This is because previous research has found that non-US participants received lower N2 scores than their US counterparts (Borenstein et al., 2010; Canary et al., 2012; Rockwell Franklin Clancy, 2020a, 2021a).

(2) Since research has found that students with previous ethics education received higher N2 and postconventional reasoning scores (Borenstein et al., 2010), it was hypothesized that participants in this study who had received previous ethics education would receive higher N2 and postconventional reasoning scores than those who had not.

(3) It was hypothesized that higher mean scores on the individualizing foundations – and lower mean scores on the binding foundations – would be associated with higher N2 and postconventional reasoning scores. This is because research has found evidence of these relations in studies using the MFQ and DIT2 (Baril & Wright, 2012; Glover et al., 2014), and the DIT2 is another neo-Kohlbergian instrument like the ESIT.

(4) Since research has found that individuals from non-Western cultures tend to prioritize all the foundations (Graham et al., 2011; Kim, Kang, & Yun, 2012; Zhang & Li, 2015), it was hypothesized that participants from China would score higher on items associated with the binding foundations than their US and Dutch counterparts.

(5) It was hypothesized that participants would score higher on N2 and postconventional reasoning scores, and lower on measures of purity, in a native than a foreign language. This is based on (1) the claim that reflective processes play a larger role, and intuitive processes play a smaller role, in a foreign than a native language (Hayakawa et al., 2017), and ethical reasoning is driven by reflective processes, and (2) the finding that people are more likely to endorse disgusting behaviors in a native versus a foreign language (Geipel et al., 2018), and purity measures are inversely related to those of disgust (Graham et al., 2011). No hypotheses were made about the effects of foreign language on other ESIT and MFQ variables, although this was a point of interest.

2.5 Analyses

All analyses were carried out using RStudio version 2023.06. To compare differences in group means in testing hypotheses, Welch independent-sample t-tests were performed. The Welch t-test was used, since it does not assume equal sample sizes or homogeneity of variance. Although it assumes the normal distribution of population data, the distribution of data was not tested for normality, because of the central limit theorem and the fact the sample sizes used in this study are large by convention (n ≥ 30) (Fischer, 2011). Cohen’s D (d) were calculated to assess the size of effects between groups. The reporting of these effect sizes as small (d = 0.2), medium (d = 0.5), or large (d = 0.8) follows convention (Cohen, 1988). ANOVA was used to compare means between more than two groups. Since ANOVA assumes equality of variance between groups, Levene’s test was used to compare variance. When using ANOVA, the effect size reported is omega squared (ω²), and the reporting of these as small (ω² = 0.01), medium (ω² = 0.06), or large (ω² = 0.14) follows convention (Kirk, 1996). When ANOVAs were significant, Tukey’s HSD post hoc tests were used. To compare the strength of relations between study variables, Spearman rank-order correlations (ρ) were calculated. Spearman’s rho (ρ) was used, since the data collected and analyzed are ordinal in nature. To control for the effects of multiple comparisons and reduce the chance of making type I errors, a Bonferroni correction was applied to the significance of correlations.

3.1 Relations between country and ESIT variables

To test hypothesis 1, mean N2 scores between US participants (n = 335) and non-US participants (n = 178) were compared, using an independent-sample t-test and calculating the effect size. On average, US participants received higher N2 scores (M = 2.68, SD = 1.56) than non-US participants (M = 2.43, SD = 1.54). This difference approached significance at the ≤ 0.05 level, t(312.42) = 1.90, p = 0.058, and the effect size was small d = 0.16. These results do not support hypothesis 1.

To better understand this result, mean postconventional, conventional, and preconventional scores between US and non-US participants were compared. The results of these tests and calculations can be found in Table 1.

Table 1

Comparison of postconventional, conventional, and preconventional scores between US and non-US participants
	US	Non-US	T-tests		Effect size
	M (SD)	M (SD)	t	p	d
Postconventional	0.54 (0.14)	0.51 (0.14)	2.79	0.005**	0.24
Conventional	0.29 (0.11)	0.32 (0.11)	-2.07	0.038*	0.18
Preconventional	0.13 (0.10)	0.13 (0.11)	-0.18	0.852	0.01
significant at the ≤ 0.05 level, * ≤ 0.01 level, *** ≤ 0.001 level

These results indicate significant differences in postconventional and conventional reasoning scores between US and non-US participants. To locate the sources of these differences, one-way ANOVAs were performed, comparing postconventional and conventional scores, among participants in the US, Netherlands, and China. Since ANOVA assumes equality of variance, Levene’s tests were performed, comparing variance in postconventional and conventional scores between the US, Netherlands, and China. These were not significant for either postconventional (F(2, 510) = 0.51, p = 0.596) or conventional scores (F(2, 510) = 0.31, p = 0.729).

On postconventional reasoning scores, an ANOVA indicated there was a significant effect of country, F(2, 510) = 8.28, p < 0.001, ω2 = 0.02, but this effect was small. Post hoc tests revealed that this effect was being driven by a significant difference between participants in the US (M = 0.56, SD = 0.14) and China (M = 0.51, SD = 0.13), t(510) = -3.59, p = 0.001, and the US (M = 0.56, SD = 0.14) and Netherlands (M = 0.50, SD = 0.15), t(510) = -2.51, p = 0.032. In both cases, participants in the US scored higher on measures of postconventional reasoning than those in the Netherlands and China.

On conventional reasoning scores, an ANOVA also indicated there was a significant effect of country, F(2, 510) = 4.87, p = 0.008, ω2 = 0.01. However, this effect was also small. Post hoc tests revealed that this effect was driven by the fact that participants in the US (M = 0.29, SD = 0.11) scored significantly lower on measures of conventional reasoning than those in China (M = 0.31, SD = 0.11), t(510) = 2.67, p = 0.021.

3.2 Relations between ESIT variables and previous ethics education

To test hypothesis 2, mean N2 and postconventional reasoning scores between participants with previous ethics education (n = 321) and without previous ethics education (n = 192) were compared, using independent-sample t-tests and calculating effect sizes. The results of these tests can be found in Table 2.

Table 2

Comparison of N2 and postconventional reasoning scores among participants with and without previous ethics education
	Ethics education	No ethics education	T-tests		Effect size
	M (SD)	M (SD)	t	p	d
N2	2.76 (1.53)	2.56 (1.60)	1.39	0.162	0.12
Postconventional	0.55 (0.14)	0.53 (0.14)	1.46	0.145	0.13
significant at the ≤ 0.05 level, * ≤ 0.01 level, *** ≤ 0.001 level

These results provide no support for hypothesis 2. Although N2 and postconventional reasoning scores were higher among participants with previous ethics education than those without, these differences were not significant, and the effect sizes were small.

To better understand and further explore these results, the conventional and preconventional reasoning scores of participants with and without previous ethics education were compared. The results of these comparisons can be found in Table 3.

Table 3

Comparison of conventional and preconventional reasoning scores among participants with and without previous ethics education
	Ethics education	No ethics education	T-tests		Effect size
	M (SD)	M (SD)	t	p	d
Conventional	0.30 (0.11)	0.29 (0.11)	0.12	0.90	0.01
Preconventional	0.12 (0.10)	0.14 (0.10)	-2.14	0.03*	0.19
significant at the ≤ 0.05 level, * ≤ 0.01 level, *** ≤ 0.001 level

These results show that ethics education is related to ethical reasoning. Preconventional reasoning was lower at ≤ 0.05-level of significance among participants who had previous ethics education, although the effect of this education was small.

To further explore this result, the scores of all ESIT study variables of participants with different kinds of previous ethics education – standalone courses in engineering or technical ethics (n = 17), general ethics or philosophy courses (n = 113), ethics education integrated into another course (n = 235), or other type of ethics education (n = 30)[2] – were compared.

Table 4

Comparison of ESIT scores among participants with different kinds of previous ethics education
	Engineering or technical ethics	General ethics or philosophy	Integrated ethics	Other
	M (SD)	M (SD)	M (SD)	M (SD)
N2	2.08 (1.62)	2.76 (1.64)	2.78 (1.44)	2.78 (1.56)
Postconventional	0.47 (0.12)	0.53 (0.15)	0.56 (0.13)	0.53 (0.14)
Conventional	0.31 (0.11)	0.30 (0.12)	0.29 (0.11)	0.33 (0.12)
Preconventional	0.15 (0.13)	0.13 (0.11)	0.11 (0.09)	0.09 (0.08)

One-way ANOVAs were performed, comparing ESIT scores among participants with different kinds of previous ethics education. Levene’s tests were not significant for N2 (F(3, 391) = 1.062, p = 0.364), postconventional (F(3, 391) = 1.907, p = 0.127), conventional (F(3, 391) = 1.160, p = 0.324), or preconventional (F(3, 391) = 2.205, p = 0.086) reasoning scores.

Among these, there was only a significant effect of type of previous ethics education on postconventional reasoning scores, F(3, 391) = 3.007, p = 0.030, ω2 = 0.025.[3] This represents a small effect. Post hoc tests revealed that this difference was driven, in part, by the fact that participants whose previous ethics education consisted in integrated ethics modules scored higher than those whose education consisted in a standalone technical ethics course (Table 4). However, this difference only approached significance (t(391) = 2.399, p = 0.078) at the ≤ 0.05-level.

3.3 Relations between MFQ and ESIT study variables

To test hypothesis 3, correlations between mean individualizing and binding foundation scores on the MFQ, and mean N2 and postconventional reasoning scores on the ESIT were calculated. The results of these calculations and their significance can be found in Table 5.

Table 5

Correlations between individualizing and binding foundations, and P and N2 scores
	N2	P
Individualizing	0.22 (≤ 0.001)***	0.21 (≤ 0.001)***
Binding	-0.18 (≤ 0.001)***	-0.17 (≤ 0.001)***
significant at the ≤ 0.05 level, * ≤ 0.01 level, *** ≤ 0.001 level

These results provide support for hypothesis 3. Mean scores on the individualizing foundations were significantly positively related to N2 and postconventional reasoning scores, and means scores on the binding foundations were significantly negatively related to N2 and postconventional reasoning scores. To better understand and further explore these results, correlations between all MFQ variables scores and all ESIT variable scores were calculated. The results of these calculations can be found in Table 6.

Table 6

Correlations between all MFQ and ESIT variable scores
	N2	Post	Con	Pre
Fairness	0.19 (≤ 0.001)***	0.16 (≤ 0.001)***	-0.07 (0.140)	-0.07 (0.095)
Care	0.19 (≤ 0.001)***	0.20 (≤ 0.001)***	-0.13 (0.003)**	-0.04 (0.421)
Loyalty	-0.17 (≤ 0.001)***	-0.16 (≤ 0.001)***	0.10 (0.020)*	0.03 (0.551)
Authority	-0.18 (≤ 0.001)***	-0.16 (≤ 0.001)***	0.15 (0.001)***	0.02 (0.641)
Sanctity	-0.12 (0.006)**	-0.14 (0.002)**	0.05 (0.228)	0.06 (0.148)
significant at the ≤ 0.05 level, * ≤ 0.01 level, *** ≤ 0.001 level

Since the N2 score is calculated using postconventional and preconventional reasoning scores, these results indicate that the main driver of significant relations between ESIT and MFQ study variables was postconventional reasoning. Postconventional reasoning was significantly positively related to fairness and care (the individualizing foundations), and significantly negatively related to loyalty, authority, and sanctity (the binding foundations).

Conventional reasoning is significantly positively related to loyalty and authority, and significantly negatively related to care, but none of these relations is as strong as the relations between postconventional reasoning scores and MFQ variable scores. By contrast, preconventional reasoning is not significantly related to any of the foundations. Hence, relations between MFQ variable and N2 scores were driven by the prevalence of postconventional reasoning rather than the absence of preconventional reasoning.

3.4 Relations between country and MFQ variables

To test hypothesis 4, mean MFQ variable scores between participants in China (n = 137) and outside of China (n = 376) were compared using independent-sample t-tests and calculating effect sizes. The results of these tests can be found in Table 7.

Table 7

Comparison of MFQ variables between participants studying inside and outside of China
	China	Non-China	T-test		Effect size
	M (SD)	M (SD)	t	p	d
Fairness	3.23 (0.67)	3.68 (0.63)	-6.73	≤ 0.001***	0.69
Care	2.89 (0.66)	3.53 (0.72)	-9.46	≤ 0.001***	0.90
Loyalty	3.16 (0.66)	2.30 (0.82)	11.99	≤ 0.001***	1.08
Authority	2.69 (0.67)	2.33 (0.82)	4.95	≤ 0.001***	0.45
Sanctity	2.54 (0.68)	2.26 (0.95)	3.67	≤ 0.001***	0.31
Individualizing	3.06 (0.58)	3.60 (0.59)	-9.23	≤ 0.001***	0.91
Binding	2.79 (0.55)	2.30 (0.75)	8.14	≤ 0.001***	0.70
significant at the ≤ 0.05 level, * ≤ 0.01 level, *** ≤ 0.001 level

These results provide support for hypothesis 4. Mean scores on the individualizing foundation variables were all significantly lower among participants in China that those studying in the US and Netherlands, and those on the binding foundations were all significantly higher. Although differences between mean MFQ scores were all significant, effects sizes varied by foundation type. The biggest differences concerned loyalty and care, while sanctity and authority were the least affected.

3.5 Relations between foreign language, ESIT, and MFQ variables

To examine the effects of foreign language on ethical reasoning and moral intuitions, mean scores on ESIT and MFQ variables among participants in the Netherlands and China who completed the survey in Dutch or Mandarin (n = 22), respectively, and English (n = 25) were compared, using independent-sample t-tests and calculating effect sizes. The results of these comparisons can be found in Table 8.

Table 8

Comparison of ESIT and MFQ scores between by native language versus English
	Native	English	T-test		Effect size
	M (SD)	M (SD)	t	p	d
N2	2.08 (1.32)	2.97 (1.84)	1.91	0.062	0.54
Postconventional	0.47 (0.16)	0.51 (0.15)	0.85	0.397	0.25
Conventional	0.34 (0.13)	0.33 (0.11)	-0.26	0.791	0.07
Preconventional	0.16 (0.13)	0.12 (0.10)	-0.97	0.332	0.29
Fairness	3.38 (0.61)	3.56 (0.70)	0.93	0.353	0.27
Care	3.03 (0.71)	3.15 (0.83)	0.51	0.611	0.14
Loyalty	2.36 (0.67)	2.34 (0.82)	-0.10	0.914	0.03
Authority	2.57 (0.57)	2.26 (0.80)	-1.55	0.126	0.44
Sanctity	2.53 (0.90)	1.96 (0.83)	-2.26	0.028*	0.66
Individualizing	3.21 (0.60)	3.36 (0.62)	0.82	0.412	0.24
Binding	2.49 (0.629)	2.18 (0.692)	-1.58	0.119	0.46
significant at the ≤ 0.05 level, * ≤ 0.01 level, *** ≤ 0.001 level

These results provide partial support for hypothesis 5. First, the difference between the mean N2 scores of the two groups approached significance at the ≤ 0.05 level, and the effect size was medium. Since the N2 score is based on post- and pre-conventional reasoning, this effect is driven by the fact that participants scored higher on postconventional reasoning in English and lower on preconventional reasoning in Dutch and Mandarin. Next, mean scores on the sanctity foundation were significantly higher at the ≤ 0.05 level in participants’ native language than English, and the effect size was medium. The difference between mean scores on the authority foundation approached significance at the ≤ 0.10 level, and the effect size was medium. Participants scored higher on the binding foundation in their native language than English.

These results have potential implications for engineering ethics education across national and cultural boundaries. The following discusses some of these implications, followed by shortcomings of the present study and directions for future research.

4.1 Findings and implications

The US might be an anomaly on ethical reasoning about engineering and science, so that future work must further focus on non-US populations.

These results provide support for participants in the US being outliers/anomalies on ethical reasoning about engineering and science. Previous studies found that non-US participants scored lower on ESIT study measures than their US counterparts (Borenstein et al., 2010; Canary et al., 2012), but these studies did not include samples of participants studying outside the US or the use of non-English-language study measures.

This study found that while US participants scored higher on postconventional reasoning than their non-US counterparts, there were no significant differences between participant samples in the Netherlands and China. Despite both the US and Netherlands being considered WEIRD cultures and outliers on various psycho-social measures relative to global populations, they remain distinct regarding ethical reasoning about engineering and science. This result matched previous findings that the US is especially WEIRD (Muthukrishna et al., 2020).

Finally, although participants in the US scored lower on measures of conventional reasoning than those in China, meaning they relied less on social conventions and law when making decisions – in line with previous research (Buchtel et al., 2015; Dranseika, Berniūnas, & Silius, 2018) – there were no differences in rates of preconventional reasoning across the different groups. This means that participants in the US, Netherlands, and China were equally “selfish.” There were no differences in the rates at which different national groups made decisions based on how those decisions affects themselves alone. This finding has bearing on the second finding/recommendation.

Education does not necessarily improve ethical reasoning about engineering and science, such that the goals of engineering ethics education should be reconsidered.

Study results show that engineering ethics education is not an unqualified good. If it can be said to “work,” then it does so by making people less selfish rather than more cognizant of others. These results should be incorporated into considerations of the goals of engineering ethics education.

Previous research has found that students receive higher N2 and postconventional reasoning scores after ethics education (Borenstein et al., 2010), but that was not the case here. In this study, students with previous ethics education did not receive statistically higher N2 or postconventional reasoning scores after ethics education. Further, previous ethics education was unrelated to conventional reasoning scores, although it was associated with lower preconventional reasoning scores. This means that participants with previous ethics education were no more likely to refer to universal principles of justice or care (postconventional reasoning) or law or social conventional (conventional) when making decisions about right and wrong. This was true regardless of the kinds of ethics education participants had.

Further, analyses found no evidence of a relationship between more, specialized ethics education and ethical reasoning. Rather, the opposite was the case: Those who received ethics education in the forms of integrated modules scored higher on postconventional reasoning than participants who received ethics education in the form of standalone engineering or technical ethics courses. However, this does not mean that engineering ethics education was entirely ineffective.

Relative to participants without ethics education, participants with ethics education were less likely to engage in preconventional reasoning. They were less “selfish” than those without previous ethics education. If ethics education can be said to “work,” then it works by making people less selfish – thinking less about themselves alone – rather than by caring more about others, reasoning based on ethical principles of justice and care, or social and legal conventions. This could appear odd, since one might suppose the two are inversely related, that the less one cares about oneself the more one cares about others. However, current study results do not support this assumption. As such, the goals of engineering ethics education should be reconsidered. Since the two are different, educators should consider whether the goals of engineering ethics education should be caring more about others or less about themselves. Depending on an answer to this question, different approaches and courses of action might be taken.

Moral intuitions are reliably related to ethical reasoning about engineering and science across national groups, but these intuitions vary, so education must better address cultural diversity in engineering ethics.

In line with previous research about ethical reasoning, this study found that N2 and postconventional reasoning scores were positively related to intuitions about care and fairness and negative related to intuitions about loyalty, authority, and sanctity (Baril & Wright, 2012; Rockwell Franklin Clancy, 2020a, 2021b; Glover et al., 2014). Unlike previous research, this study confirmed these relations between ethical reasoning and moral intuitions across different national groups, and about ethical reasoning regarding engineering and science specifically. These intuitions were unrelated to preconventional reasoning, but conventional reasoning was negatively related care and positively related to loyalty and authority. Finally, this study found that participants in China moralized loyalty, authority, and sanctity to a greater extent than participants in US and Netherlands.

It cannot be assumed that engineering students from different cultural traditions share the same moral intuitions. A failure to recognize this fact could result in a failure to achieve educational outcomes and constitute a subtle form of cultural imperialism. Different approaches might be necessary, to ensure that all students achieve the same educational outcomes. Engineering ethics education has typically used professional codes of ethics and normative ethical theories that prioritize public safety and professional conduct (Hess & Fore, 2018). Central to these priorities are care and fairness. However, as this study shows, care and fairness are moralized to a greater extent in Western than non-Western populations. Significantly, a commitment to loyalty and adherence to authority could be at odds with the goals and contents of engineering ethics education, including public safety and professional conduct.

For example, whistleblowing is often framed in terms of a professional duty to public safety at odds with loyalty to an employer or adherence to a manager (Luegenbiehl, 2005; Luegenbiehl & Clancy, 2017). As a result, whistleblowing might be perceived as a greater challenge to Chinese engineering students, where intuitions regarding loyalty and authority are stronger than among US or Dutch students. Similarly, concerns regarding public safety and professional conduct could appear as less significant to Chinese engineering students than to their US or Dutch counterparts, since the latter moralize care and fairness to a lesser extent than the former. In all cases, however, these results show that preconventional reasoning, reasoning based on oneself alone, was distinct from moral intuitions. This provides further support for the claim that the goals of engineering ethics education should be reconsidered, and that it should aim at engineers caring less about themselves than more about others. If a concern with oneself is reliably distinct from moral intuitions across cultural groups, then highlighting this shared commonality/distinction could provide for a shared understanding of ethics, even if and where other differences exist.

Foreign language affects ethical reasoning about engineering/science and moral intuitions, such that the effects of foreign language must be further studied and considered in research and education on global engineering ethics.

The present study supports previous findings that people rely on reflective, cognitive processes when making decisions in a foreign versus a native language (Circi et al., 2021), and that they tend to moralize behaviors associated with disgust to a lesser extent (Geipel et al., 2018). It also provides novel insights: While researchers have tended to use hypothetical thought experiments such as trolley-car and footbridge dilemmas to study the foreign language effect, this is the first study of which the authors are aware to explore this effect on ethical reasoning about engineering and science. It shows that foreign language affects ethical reasoning about not only hypothetical thought experiments but also engineering and science, concerning dilemmas closer to real world experiences. The immediate implications of these results are unclear. Additional work is needed to understand the causes of this effect, as well as its import for education. This is urgent, given the increasing numbers of individuals using a foreign language to study engineering and work as engineers.

4.2 Shortcomings and Future Directions

This study suffers from several shortcomings, some of which will be addressed in future work. First, of the non-US universities included in this study, only one university was in the Netherlands. Also, in China, the number of responses ultimately included from Jiao Tong was only 6, effectively limiting the number of Chinese universities to 1. Given the small number of participants from Jiao Tong – and the fact that the Mandarin-/English-language version of the survey was only administered there – conclusions about the effects of foreign language are based almost exclusively on Dutch participants.

Second, aside from whether ethics interventions were standalone engineering/technical ethics course, general philosophy courses, and so on, nothing was known about these. Depending on the institution and instructor, for example, two standalone courses in engineering or technical ethics could be radically different. To assess the effects of different kinds of ethics interventions, a great deal of information is needed, much more than that collected in the surveys used in this study. Unfortunately, that is not unique to this research. Studies assessing engineering ethics education tend not to include much detailed information about the nature of interventions. These circumstances are problematic and will be addressed in future research.

First, subsequent waves of data collection will occur, offering opportunities to collect additional responses from more bilingual Mandarin-/English-speaking participants, to better further explore and better understand the effects of foreign language. Second, going forward, this project will collect and analyze much more information about ethics interventions at the universities included in this study. We will conduct a series of cases studies at the universities participating in this project, collecting syllabi, lesson plans, course slides, and class assignments, as well as conducting interviews with instructors and students (anonymized for peer review). These case studies will provide important additional information, helping to better contextualize the results reported here.

Measures of ethical reasoning are often used to assess the effectiveness of engineering ethics education. Such measures have been developed by researchers and with participants from mostly the US. However, individuals from the US are global outliers on numerous psychological and social characteristics, including ethical reasoning. In addition to the fact that engineering is increasingly global in nature, it is unclear that ethical reasoning results in more ethical judgments or behaviors. To address these issues, this study sought to better understand the relations between ethical reasoning and moral intuitions among more diverse engineering student bodies.

To do so, researchers administered the ESIT and MFQ to groups of engineering students in the US, Netherlands, and China, exploring relations between study variables, previous education, and demographic information. Results indicate that engineering students in the US are likely outliers on measures of ethical reasoning about engineering and science, and that previous ethics education was not associated with higher rates of ethical reasoning. Across all three groups, ethical reasoning was positively related to moral intuitions about care and fairness, and negatively related to ones about loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Versus students in the US and Netherlands, students in China cared more about loyalty, authority, and sanctity, and they cared less about care and fairness. Finally, foreign language was associated with an increase in ethical reasoning and a decreased concern with sanctity. These results reinforce the importance of including more nationally, culturally, and linguistically diverse samples in studies of engineering ethics, as well as rethinking the goals and nature of engineering ethics education.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments (anonymized for peer review)

Availability of data and materials

The dataset supporting the conclusions of this article are included with the supplementary materials.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Funding

This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation (grant # 2124984 and grant # 2316634) and 4VA.

Authors’ contributions

RC contributed to the conceptualization and design of this study, translation and administration of study materials, collection of data, analysis of data, and writing of the manuscript. QZ contributed to the conceptualization and design of this study, translation and administration of study materials, and writing of the manuscript. SS contributed to the conceptualization and design of this study, administration of study materials, collection of data, and writing of the manuscript. AG contributed to the translation of study materials, collection of data, and writing of the manuscript. RT contributed to the collection of data and writing of the manuscript.

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Fortunately, this is increasingly less the case, with researchers carrying out work on ethical reasoning among engineering students in Australia (Staehr & Byrne, 2003), Argentina (Monzon, Ariasgago, & Monzon-Wyngaard, 2010), Chile (Murrugarra & Wallace, 2015), Malaysia and Japan (Balakrishnan et al., 2018, 2021), and China (Rockwell Franklin Clancy, 2020c; Rockwell Franklin Clancy et al., 2022).
Since some participants had taken more than one type of ethics education, the total number here is greater than that of participants with previous ethics education reported above.
The results of non-significant ANOVAs can be found in the Supplementary Information, in section 3.3 Results, Table 2.

The authors declare no competing interests.

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The Relations between Ethical Reasoning, Moral Intuitions, and Foreign Language among Engineering Students in the US, Netherlands, and China

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Abstract

1 Introduction

1.1 Approaches to Global Engineering Ethics Education

1.2 Theoretical Frameworks

2 Methods

2.1 Participants

2.2 Procedures and Materials

2.2.1 ESIT

2.2.2 MFQ

2.3 Hypotheses and Planned Analyses

2.5 Analyses

3 Results

3.1 Relations between country and ESIT variables

3.2 Relations between ESIT variables and previous ethics education

3.3 Relations between MFQ and ESIT study variables

3.4 Relations between country and MFQ variables

3.5 Relations between foreign language, ESIT, and MFQ variables

4 Discussion

4.1 Findings and implications

4.2 Shortcomings and Future Directions

5 Conclusions

Declarations

References

Footnotes

Additional Declarations

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