Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Is Empathy The Missing Link In Teaching Business Ethics? A Course-Based Educational Intervention With Undergraduate Business Students, Christopher P. Adkins

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Past approaches to teaching ethics have been rooted primarily within the cognitive developmental tradition, with the focus on developing moral reasoning. Recent studies in cognitive neuroscience and social psychology have challenged this emphasis, highlighting the primacy of the emotion in driving moral decision-making. This study proposed that empathy may be an appropriate construct for integrating both processes, and that an moral education intervention that focused on empathetic perspective-taking based on Martin Hoffman's work may prove effective in both advancing moral reasoning and empathy. This approach was applied using a quasi-experimental design with undergraduate business students (N = 181) within a …