Abstract
Psychology, as a science and professional practice, contributes to the well-being of a society, including in areas of ethical reflection and behaviour. Ethical values are not universal. Cultural norms and social realities result in differences in ethical beliefs and thinking. To examine such differences, we have created a virtual context that provides college students with opportunities for developing shared views on stakeholders, cultural differences and interdisciplinary solutions and reflection on ethical solutions involving technological and economic dilemmas. The Ethical Engineer website (www.ethicalengineer.ttu.edu) has drawn users from nearly one-hundred countries and has accumulated thousands of website visits. The present chapter focuses on (i) a psychological foundation for the development of ethical action, (ii) the virtual context and tools that we are developing on the website to promote ethical reflection in students, (iii) analyses of cognitive and affective similarities and differences in U.S. and Indian students in their website responses to ethical dilemmas, using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC2015) software, and iv) a pedagogical model for providing ethical exchange and opportunities for reflection to students worldwide. These findings are considered in terms of their implications for college training and professional practice in the U.S.A. and India with the goal of promoting human values, social understanding and cooperation.
Having a global perspective is becoming a vital characteristic of informed citizens, productive employees, and members of diverse communities. (Gross et al., 2016, p. 3).
Currently at the Biocomplexity Institute at the University of Virginia.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
References
Ahmadian, S., Azarshahi, S., & Paulhus, D. L. (2017). Explaining Donald Trump via communication style: Grandiosity, informality, and dynamism. Personality and Individual Differences, 107, 49–53.
Amato, P. R. (2009). Institutional, companionate, and individualistic marriage: A social psychological perspective on marital change. In H. Peters & C. Kamp Dush (Eds.), Marriage and family: Perspectives and complexities (pp. 75–90). Columbia University Press.
An, S., Ji, L. J., Marks, M., & Zhang, Z. (2017). Two sides of emotion: Exploring positivity and negativity in six basic emotions across cultures. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 610.
American Psychological Association. (2007). APA guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/about/psymajor-guidelines.pdf.
American Psychological Association. (2013). APA guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/about/learning-goals.pdf.
Ashokkumar, A., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2020, May). Turning inward during crises: How COVID is changing our social ties. https://trackingsociallife.wordpress.com/2020/05/05/turning-inward-during-crises-how-covid-is-changing-our-social-ties/.
Bhullar, N. (2019). Beliefs about the meaning of life in American and Indian college students: Similar or different? Psychological Studies, 64(4), 420–428.
Boyd, R., Wilson, S., Pennebaker, J., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., & Mihalcea, R. (2015). Values in words: Using language to evaluate and understand personal values. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media.
Campbell, R. C., Nguyen, N. T. T., Kim, J-H., Duke, L. A., Taraban, R., & Reible, D. D. (2021). Visual thinking strategies (VTS) for promoting reflection in engineering education: Graduate student perceptions. In Proceedings of the 2021 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference.
Carroll, D. W. (2007). Patterns of student writing in a critical thinking course: A quantitative analysis. Assessing Writing, 12(3), 213–227.
Center for Global Communication (2021). Teaching without borders: A faculty workshop. Texas Tech University.
Chung, C. K., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2008). Revealing dimensions of thinking in open-ended self-descriptions: An automated meaning extraction method for natural language. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(1), 96–132.
Chung, C. K., Rentfrow, P. J., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2014). Finding values in words: Using natural language to detect regional variations in personal concerns. In P. J. Rentfrow (Ed.), Geographical psychology: Exploring the interaction of environment and behavior (pp. 195–216). American Psychological Association.
Clark, J. C., Jacobs, B., & MacCallum, J. (2020). Solidarity and community: Collaborative learning in times of crisis. Human Arenas, 1–9.
Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology. Harvard University Press.
DeWall, C. N., Pond, R. S., Jr., Campbell, W. K., & Twenge, J. M. (2011). Tuning in to psychological change: Linguistic markers of psychological traits and emotions over time in popular U.S. song lyrics. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 5, 200–207. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023195
Dreyfus, A., Jungwirth, E., & Eliovitch, R. (1990). Applying the “cognitive conflict” strategy for conceptual change—Some implications, difficulties and problems. Science Education, 74, 555–569.
Gross, D. E., Abrams, K. E., & Enns, C. Z. E. (2016). The case for internationalizing the undergraduate psychology curriculum. In D. Gross, K. Abrams, & C. Z. Enns (Eds.), Internationalizing the undergraduate psychology curriculum: American Psychological Association.
Harris, C. E., Jr., Davis, M., Pritchard, M. S., & Rabins, M. J. (1996). Engineering ethics: What? Why? How? And When? Journal of Engineering Education, 85(2), 93–96.
Hill, C. A. (1987). Affiliation motivation: People who need people…but in different ways. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 1008–1018.
IBM (2020). SPSS statistical software (Version 27). IBM.
Jeannotte, M. S., & Stanley, D. (2002). How will we live together? Canadian Journal of Communication, 27(2/3), 133–140.
Jobin, A., Ienca, M., & Vayena, E. (2019). The global landscape of AI ethics guidelines. Nature Machine Intelligence, 1(9), 389–399.
Khatib, S. J., Taraban, R., Lawson, W. D. (2020). Student confidence and metacognitive reflection with correlations to exam performance in a FE review course in chemical engineering. In Proceedings of the 2020 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.
Lee, A. Y., Aaker, J. L., & Gardner, W. L. (2000). The pleasures and pains of distinct self-construals: The role of interdependence in regulatory focus. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 1122–1134.
Lehman, D. R., Chiu, C., & Schaller, M. (2004). Psychology and culture. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 689–714.
Limón, M. (2001). On the cognitive conflict as an instructional strategy for conceptual change: A critical appraisal. Learning and Instruction, 11(4–5), 357–380.
Loui, M. C. (2005). Ethics and the development of professional identities of engineering students. Journal of Engineering Education, 94(4), 383–390.
Marginson, S., & Yang, L. (2021). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1–31.
Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2003). The social dynamics of a cultural upheaval: Social interactions surrounding September 11, 2001. Psychological Science, 14(6), 579–585. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.0956-7976.2003.psci_1468.x.
Miller, J. G. (1984). Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 961–978.
Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality: A clinical and experimental study of fifty men of college age. Oxford University Press.
Nisbett, R. E., & Norenzayan, A. (2002). Culture and cognition. In D. Medin (Ed.), Stevens’ handbook of experimental psychology, Volume 2: Memory and cognitive processes (3rd ed., pp. 561–597). Wiley.
Palincsar, A. S. (2005). Social constructivist perspectives on teaching and learning. In H. Daniels (Ed.), An introduction to Vygotsky (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Pandey, G. (2021). India Covid-19: AI shows Pakistani Twitter prayed for neighbour. BBC News, Delhi. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57683808.
Peng, K., & Nisbett, R. E. (1999). Culture, dialectics, and reasoning about contradiction. American Psychologist, 54, 741–754.
Pennebaker, J. W., & Lay, T. C. (2002). Language use and personality during crises: Analyses of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s press conferences. Journal of Research in Personality, 36(3), 271–282.
Pennebaker, J. W., Boyd, R. L., Jordan, K., & Blackburn, K. (2015). The development and psychometric properties of LIWC2015. University of Texas.
Pfatteicher, S. (2001). Teaching vs. preaching: EC2000 and the engineering ethics dilemma. Journal of Engineering Education, 90(1), 137–142.
Piaget, J. (1975). L’e´quilibration des structures cognitives. Proble`me central du de´velopment [The development of thought: equilibration of cognitive structures]. Paris: PUF (Eng. trans. New York: Viking Press).
Ramírez-Esparza, N., Chung, C. K., Sierra-Otero, G., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2012). Cross-cultural constructions of self-schemas: Americans and Mexicans. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 43(2), 233–250.
Rokeach, M. (1973). The nature of human values. Free Press.
Scott, S., & Palincsar, A. (2013). Sociocultural theory. Retrieved from www.education.com.
Slatcher, R. B., Chung, C. K., Pennebaker, J. W., & Stone, L. D. (2007). Winning words: Individual differences in linguistic style among US presidential and vice presidential candidates. Journal of Research in Personality, 41(1), 63–75.
Taraban, R., & Abusal, K. (2019). Analyzing topic differences, writing quality, and rhetorical context in college students’ essays using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. East European Journal of Psycholinguistics, 6(2), 107–118.
Taraban, R., Iserman, M., Pittman, J. C., Yeo, N., Campbell, R. C., Kim, J-H., & Reible, D. D. (2021). Assessment of reflective thinking in graduate engineering students: Human and machine methods. In Proceedings of the 2021 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference.
Tausczik, Y. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2010). The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29(1), 24–54.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.
Wehner, P. (2020). The forgotten radicalism of Jesus Christ. New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/opinion/jesus-christ-christmas-incarnation.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage.
Wertsch, J. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Harvard University Press.
Zhu, Q., & Jesiek, B. K. (2017). Engineering ethics in global context: Four fundamental approaches. In Proceedings of the 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.
Acknowledgements
This material is based on work partially supported by a grant from the Centre for Global Communication at Texas Tech University.
The Texas Tech University Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects (IRB) complies with the Federal wide Assurance registration guidelines through the Office for Human Research Protections of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulated by 45 CFR 46 under number FWA00001568.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Taraban, R., Saraff, S., Iserman, M., Biswal, R., Marcy, W.M. (2022). Developing a Global Context for Ethical Reflection. In: Sia, S.K., Crane, L.S., Jain, A.K., Bano, S. (eds) Understanding Psychology in the Context of Relationship, Community, Workplace and Culture. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2693-8_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2693-8_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-19-2692-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-19-2693-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)