AN EMPIRICAL-STUDY OF ETHICAL PREDISPOSITIONS

Using a two-part instrument consisting of eight vignettes and twenty c haracter traits, the study sampled 141 employees of a mid-west financi al firm regarding their predispositions to prefer utilitarian or forma list forms of ethical reasoning. In contrast with earlier studies, we found that these respondents did not prefer utilitarian reasoning. Sev eral other hypotheses were tested involving the relationship between ( 1) people's preferences for certain types of solutions to issues and ( 2) the forms of reasoning they use to arrive at those solutions; the n ature of the relationship between utilitarian and formalist categories ; and the possibility of measuring ethical predispositions using diffe rent methods.