Good Computing
"... we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, butin order to become good, sinceotherwise our inquiry wouldhave been ofno use." Aristotle,Nicomachean Ethics, Book II.
Moral Exemplars inthe Computing Profession
CHUCK HUFF ANDLAURA BARNARD
01,1101 Ob)«r Idtfll/fttr 10./I09IMT5.2009.9)4/j8
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EXplicit attention tocomputer ethics beganwith Norbert Weiner's(1950) groundbreaking book, The Hu
man Use of Human Beings [33].The teaching of computer ethicsarguably started in the 1970s withthe distribution of Walter Maner'sStarter Kit in Computer Ethics andthe publication of Deborah Johnson's seminal text Computer Ethics[18], [19J(see Bynum [4] for a shorthistory). Since that time, many excellent scholars have entered thefield and much work has been done.Work on the philosophical groundwork for computing ethics [9], [31],the policy difficulties associatedwith computing [22], [24], [30],and professional ethics in computing [IOJ, [11] has multiplied andborne much fruit.
Yet oddly, we still know very1ittle about how computer professionals manage to be ethical intheir everyday lives. What skillsand strategies do they use tonavigate the normal (and theunusual) stresses, the conflictingdemands, and the multiple possibilities and difficulties of theircareers? In psychological terms,we are interested in understanding how individuals achieve continued successful performanceof ethical behavior in the field ofcomputing. In philosophical termswe might cast the question ashow individuals attain and practice the virtues of the computingprofession. Certainly if we couldlearn something about this, itmight influence the way we teachcomputer ethics to those who willbecome computer professionals.
One way to begin this inquiryis to follow the life stories of computer scientists who are known fortheir ethical commitment. We havedocumented 24 of these life storiesin a series of interviews with moral exemplars in computing in theUnited Kingdom and Scandjnavia,people who are successfully integrating ethical concern into their
practice of computing [17]. This isexploratory work. but it still gives usa multifaceted picture of how moralexemplar in compuring structuretheir lives, make their choices, andimplement their plans.
Interviewing Exemplarsin Computing
SamplingWe followed the sampling methodof one of the classic moral exemplar stud.ies [6]: recruiting a panelof experts, establishing criteria,and then beginning the samplefrom nominations provided by thepanel and asking approved nominees themselves to suggest others.The panel consisted of recognizedexperts in computer ethics whowould also be able to nominateindividuals from the cultures wewanted to target:
• Prof. Don Gotterbarn, EastTennessee State University,U.S.
• Dr. Alison Adams, University of Salford, U.K.
• Prof. Goran Collste, LinkopingUniversity, Sweden
• Dr. Barbara Begier, Polytechnic University, Poland
• Prof. Barrie Thompson, University of Sunderland, U.K.
• Prof. Jeroen van den Hoven,Erasmus University, TheNetherlands.
The selection criteria werebased on those used by Colby andDamon [6J. The panel convened toestablish criteria at the November,2002, meeting of ETHICOMP inLisbon. Several months before, wecirculated a white paper among Ihepanel members to propose criteriafor selection, and moderated anemail djscussion of those criteria.The panel dropped Colby and Damon's [6] final criterion requiring"a sense of realistic humility." Several panel members persuasivelyargued that the necessity for selfpromotion in many areas of industry and academia might disallow
promlsJllg candidates. l Thus, thefinal criteria were:
I) Either a) a sustained commitment to moral ideals or ethicalprincipl~s in computing thatinclude a generalized respectfor humanity, or b) sustainedevidence of moral virtue in thepractice of computing.
2) A disposition to make computing decisions in accord withone's moral ideals or ethical principles, implying alsoa consistency between one'sactions and intentions and between the means and ends ofonc's actions.
3) A willingness to risk one'sself-interest for the sake ofone's moral values.
4) A tendency to be inspiring toother computing professionalsand thereby to move them tomoral action.
Within a month after the meeting of the panel, panel membershad sent in their initial nominations of exemplars. As these accumulated, they were circulatedback to the panel for approval.The panel received the names anda short explanatory biographicalsummary. Significant concernabout any nominee from any panel member was cause for removalof the name. Only one nomineewas removed for this reason.
This method provides nothinglike a random sample of exemplars(an impossible criterion) or of allcomputer professionals (since wewanted to concentrate on the exemplary). But it does provide abeginning selection of individuals who are likely extraordinaryin their ethjcal commitment in theprofession, as judged by the paneland the criteria above. Thus· we
IA recent qualitative analysis of personolityChlll'aCteriSlics of Ihe interviewees [II shows Infllhumility emerges /IS II theme in the interviews (If
alllhe exemplars, Thus the cltcludco 5th criterionwas also fulfilled.
48 I IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE I FALL 2009
Different approaches to moralcareers are driven by differentvalues, or visions of the good.
can make conclusions about thesimilarities and variations that exist among these individuals who3re exemplars in the profession.Some validation of their exemplar status is provided by the factthat most panel members knew atleast some of the nominees of others, and several nominees receivedmore than one nomination (indeedmany nominees knew each other,though sometimes as opponenLS onan issue). We believe this sampleprovides a good beginning for understanding excellence in elhicalcommitment in the profession,
We were careful to construct asample with significant chance forvariation based on background. Inthe end, 36 exemplars were nominated in the U.K., and 27 in Scandinavia. Thirty-five of the 63 werecontacled ba ed on Our desire forrepresentation in important categories. Half the sample was to be fromthe U.K. and half from Scandinavia.We included this distinction beeau e of work by Hofstede [12]that suggested these culture hadsignificantly different workplaceenvironments, We tried to recruit asmany women as possible (7 in theU.K. sample and 2 in the Scandinavian sample), We wanted to interview exemplars with experience inacademia and industry, and to getperspective from a few governmentpolicy exemplars. These categoriesoverlapped, with seven exemplarshaving significant experience inmore than one area, In the end, 13exemplars had significant experience in academia, 15 had significant experience in industry, and 3had significant experience in gov·emment policy. Given the nature ofthe criteria, it is not surprising thatII of the 24 exemplar were in thefinal decades of their careers and 4were retired. But we were able tofind 4 exemplars in the first decadeof their career and 5 exemplars inthe middle of their careers.
Of the 35 exemplars chosenfrom the nomination set, 3 refusedafter some conversation, 7 never
re ponded to initial contacts, andI responded affirmatively, but toolate to be included in the sample.Thus we conducted interviews with24 exemplars out of 35 contacted,a response rale of 71.43%. This isa quite successful response ratefor interviewing what Odendahl &Shaw [25] have called "elites," andit is much higher than the 27% rateobtained by Colby & Damon [6].Representative exemplars include:
• Simon. Rogerson: The firstProfe sor of Computer Ethicsin a university and the founder of EthiCOMP, a premierEuropean conference on ethics and computing (also mycollaborator and host duringthe project).
• Eli<.abelh France: The firstData Protection Registrar inthe UK Her policies helpedsel the agenda for Europeanprivacy law,
• James Towell: Early careerprivate software consultant,with a business profile basedin ethical software design.
• Sreve Shirley: Changed hername from Stephanie to geteI ients for her software designcompany, the first companyin England to concentrate onsoftware alone. She has beena major force in encouragingwomen to adopt cnreers incomputing (several of our exemplars cite her influence).
• Ellid Mumford: A member ofthe Tavistock social researchgroup in Britain. and an early pioneer in socia-technicalsystems (her work is extensively cited in Scandinavianuser-centered design work).
• Francis Grundy: A pioneerin encouraging women in
computing who has written severaI books on genderand computing and lecturedwidely on the continent.
• Alan Newell: A pioneer indeveloping systems to helpthe deaf, the blind, and thephysically handicapped tointeract with computers, butmore importantly, to interact with other people. Hisresearch team pioneeredthe word completion spelling system now used oncell phones.
• Alan Cox: A LINUX Pioneer, and a pioneer in theopen source software movement. He is head of securityprogramming for Red Hat,and an international spokesperson against restrictive intelleclual property law.
• Jail Holvasr: A sociologyprofessor in Amsterdam and
a pioneer in privacy advocacyin that country. Now aconsultant to companies on privacylaw and ystem design.
• Ove Ivarsen: Started his career as a furniture builder inthe Swedish blue-collar union,LO. He moved up in the unionas a trainer and eventuallyfounded and now administersthe influential Swedish USERAward for software that supports workers.
Interview and PersonalityQuestionnaireThe 3 hour interview, ba ed onMcAdam's life story protocol[21], asked the exemplars to tellstories from their professionallives. There were stories of in·fluential others, of low and highpoints, from early in their career
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Moral exemplars scored higher onextrov r ion, agreeablE'ne ,andopenness to experience.
and from recent event . The inter·view was held in two sessions onconsecutive days and digitally audio-recorded. The recordings weretranscribed and the transcripts sentback to the exemplar for approval.Interviewees made only minor revisions in their transcripts.
Exemplars were also asked tocomplete a short version of a standard personality inventory, theBFl-44 (Big Five Inventory-44).This is a 44-item self-report instrument [20] with reasonable reliability and cross-cultural validity.It was chosen because of it wellestablished reliability in researchprograms and its breviry. Tn addition, norms for European populations are available from Srivastavael al. [29]. The BFl-44 measuresfive dimensions of per onalitywidely agreed to be important andstable personality dispositions: I)imroversion-e.xtraversion, a measure of social vitaHty and social
dominance; 2) conscientiousness,a measure of impulse control andachievemcm orientation; 3) neuroticism, a measure of negative emotional reactivity; 4) agreeableness,a measure of social adaptabilityand altruism, and 5) openness toexperience, a measure of intellectual openness and creativity.
Tnformal Analysisof TranscriptsThe first author read the transcripts closely looking for themesthat might emerge from the stories. This informal analysis suggested that most of the exemplarsconsciously cultivated networksof support for their activities andcited multiple people as positiveinfluences. In common with otherwork on exemplars, they did not
think of themselves as morallyextraordinary. However, all wereactive problem solvers and sawthe challenges in their projectsas a mix of the moral, technical,and social. In response, they usedboth social and technical skills inalmost all their work, often explicitly claiming that thc two weremutually supporting in determin~
ing their success.There appeared to be at least two
different a'pproaches to our exem~
plars' moral careers. This is simi·lar to a finding in other exemplarstudies [6] of social service workers, in which some concentrated ondirect ervice (helpers) and othersconcentrated on reforming socialsystems (reformers). Tn the computing context, we have labeledthese approaches craftsperson andreformer. Craflspersons tendedto focus on their clients or usersand to draw on pre-existing values in computing (e.g., user focus,
customer need, software quality)to define the goals of their work.Thus, they tended to view themselves as a provider of a serviceor product (e.g., computing for thehandicapped) and to view difficultie or disagreements as problemsto be solved. Reformers tended tobe crusaders who were attemptingto change the values in social systems (organizations, professions.national cultures). They tended toview individuals as victims of injustice and to attempt to remedythat injustice.
Coding the TranscriptsWe designed a coding systembased on the informal analysis(the coding manual is availableat http://www.stolaf.edulpeople/huff/misc/exemplar). 1\vo inde-
pendent coders coded each storyfrom each exemplar for the presence or absence of 12 items: I)social support and 2) antagonism,use of 3) technical or 4) social expertise, 5) the description of harmto victims or 6) need for reform,7) action taken toward reform,8) design undertaken for users orclients, 9) cffectivenes and 10)ineffectiveness of action, and II)negative and 12) positive emotion.One can compute 288 rater agreement scores (one for each of 12codings for each of 24 exemplars).The average rater agreement showssubstantial agreement among raters: 90.70%, with SD = 8.7.Disagreements between coderswere averaged.
Items 3 and 8 were averaged tocreate an index of a Crafl theme ineach exemplar's stories, and items5, 6, and 7 were averaged to createan index of a Reform theme in theeach exemplar's stories,2
Results
Correlations from the CodingsAs expected, technical and social expertise tended to co-occurin stories (r = 0.339, p = 0.10),'and social expertise predicted effectiveness and positive emotionin exemplars' stories (r = 0.415;r = 0.602, respectively). Interestingly, those who talked moreabout technical expertise tendedto also mention more instances ofineffectiveness (r = 0.447). Thismay be because stories of difficulties often involved struggles to gettechnical details right. Thus, thismore quantitative analysis substantiates the mixing of social andtechnical expertise in the work ofmoral exemplars.
2The items for tnch index were sufficiently rell\lcdto justify combining .hem (Cronbnch alpha (or
crrtfl • 0.4$ and for Reform - 0.76). Cronbach'salpha. hen: measures how intem:llllcd the mUltiplemeasures are thaI one wants to combine into an
index (7).
lSignificance levds (or all correlations art: p <0.0.5 or smaller. unless otherwise noted.
so I IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE I PAI.L 2009
Stephen Engberg.
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! .Jan Hotvast j j ~1 .Sleve Shirley ~ ij • 1 ~ Simon Rogerson :
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Other Personality ResultsCan the exemplars be collectivelycharacterized as having a particularkind of personality? In short, moralexemplars score higher than theircountry's norm on extroversion,
members that extraversion containsa component of social dominance(a desire to influence others) in addition to gregariousness, it makessense that those high in extraver·sion might be attracted to reform.Alternatively, those who seore highon craft, tend also to score high onopenness to experience (r = 0.393,p = 0.057). Again, the connectionof openness to creativity makesthis association reasonable.
agreeableness, and openness to experience. They score, on average, lowerOn neuroticism (less negative emotional reactivity) than their country'snorm. And they seem nOt to differfrom the nann on conscientiousness.
Table I provides five one sample,2-tailed, t-tests, each testing the hypothesi that the exemplars are different from their respective countrynorms on the relevant personali tydimension. Scores on each dimension are difference scores, where thedifference is for the relevant countrynorm for each exemplar. Thus, theNonvegian nonn for extroversion issubtracted from each Norwegian'sextroversion score to get the amounttheir scores are higher (a positive
2
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.000
.011
2.893
5.226
1.162-4.647
2.784
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.530
.670
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.457
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Table I
Personalily Dimension
ExtroversionAgreeablenessConscientiousnessNeuroticismOpenness to Experience
Craft and Reform ResultsThe most surprising result camefrom the two indexes of approachesto mora) careers: reform and craft.Whcn these two indexes are plottedagainst each other (see Fig. I), onecan see that several groups of people clearly emerge. The indexes aretransformed into standard scores(a score of I means the individualis I standard deviation above lhemean of the exemplars, a scoreof -I means the exemplar is I standard deviation below the mean). Aclear group of reformers emerges inthe plot and though the discontinuityis not so clear, there is still a groupof craft person who score aboveaverage on craft and below on thereform. 1\vo interestjng individualsscore high on both indexes, eachwith life stories lhat make sense ofthese scores. Simon Rogerson hashad two careers, first a quite technical software development careerand then a career in academia as areformer (where he started the EthiCOMP conference series). StephanEngberg has combined the designof privacy-enhancing technologieswith a desire to reform privacypolicy and practice in Denmark.Finally, a group of exemplars thatis "undifferentiated" on these dimensions emerges, suggesting thatthere may be more approaches to amoral career in computing than thecraft and reform indexes track.
Personality scores add someinteresting complexity to this picture. Exemplars who score high onreform, tend also to score high onextraversion (r = 0.466). If one re-
Not surprisingly, exemplars whoreported more instances of socialsupport were mllch more Ii kely toreport effectiveness in their stories(r = 0.553) and similarly, thosewho reponed social antagonismwere more likely to report ineffectiveness (r = 0.393). Thus, theprofile of moral exemplars as thosewho depend on their social environment for effective problem solving is replicated with this analysis.
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Craftspersons tended to focuson their clients or users and todraw on pre-existing values.
number) or lower (a negative num~
ber) than the Norwegian norm.Before being averaged, the scoreswere expressed in z-scores basedon the population means and standard deviations for each exemplar'scountry (provided by Sam Gosling,based on data from [29)). Thus, the0.53 mean for extroversion can beinterpreted as the exemplars scoringabout 1/2 of a tandard deviationhigher on extroversion (or more ex·troverted than 67% of individuals intheir country of origin).
Striking Preliminary FindingsSeveralstrikingfindingsemergefromthis exploratory work. Hrst, there isclearly more than one profile of theway compuLing moral exemplars didtheir work. There were, at least, twotypes: refonners who tried to changesocial systems and craftspersonswho designed systems to help individuals. There likely are many moretypes, but this finding opens the doorto search for, and teach toward, variety in moral careers, We need not en·vision the goal of computing ethicscourse a imposing a uniformity ofvalues, represented by ethics codesor other norms of the profession. Inany healthy profession, one mightexpect a range of shared values [2],with some commanding more adherence (e.g., safety) than others (e.g..intellectual property), and some being topics of lively dcbate (e.g., privacy vs. national security tradeoffs).This value-pluralism [27], [32] is anarural slate of affairs and allowsthe sort of moral diversity that canproduce craftsperson and reformers pur uing different goals, all withthe betterment of the profession andsociety in mind. We do not have toadopt philosophicnl relativism torecognize that different individualswill emphasize and care nbout dif-
ferent aspects of the many valuesthat arc shared among computingprofessionals. Indeed moral diversity may be a good thing, with individuals devoting time to the valuesthat are the most important to them.
Second, different approaches tomoral careers are driven by different values, or visions of the good,that are central to the individualswho adopt them. Each of the exemplar is attempting to achieve goodsthat are central to them and central[0 their conception of who they areas a computing professional. This isobliquely hown at the beginning ofeach interview when each exemplarinvariably claims that they do notsee themselves as special but haveinstead simply been doing "the rightthing" or "what I love," In p ychological terms this is evidence of significant integration of moral goalsinto their professional self·concept[3]. In philosophical terms it is oneaspect of character [28].
Third, personaLity characteristics correlated with these approaches to good computing. Thesample i far too small and arbitrary to conclude that certain personal ity characteristics make onemore likely to be a moral exemplar.There surely are significant differences from country norms on fourof the five dimensions. But it maywell be, for instance, that certainpersonality characteristics (e.g.,extroversion) make a moral exemplar more likely to be sampled byour particular method. Our samplearguably consists of moral exemplars, but there are cenainly manymore that we may have overlookedbecause they were 0 retiring. Itmakes much more sense to saythat personality might well shapethe way one is a moral exemplarin computing. EXlraversion and
social dominance fit with the social requirements for a career oftrying to bring abom reform in aprofession or in the larger society.It is likely that personality influences choices in a moral Careerand that choices made in a moralcareer influence personality in return [26]. As professional playto their strengths, it is likely thattheir slrengths increase. To understand the variety of ways in whichcomputer professionals chart theirmoral careers, we will clearlyneed to take into account personality characteristics.
Fourth, exemplars consistentlyspoke of both social skills (e.g.,understanding people, navigatingorganizations) and technical skills(e.g.. understanding database structures and software processes) as influential in successful moral actionin computing, and as crucial evenfor good design. For many of thecrartsper ons, the center of theircraft was recognizing the organizational or personal needs of usersand using their technical expertiseto reframe those needs into thingsthat computing could help them do.But for all the exemplars the skillsof constnlcting functioning, COm
mitted work groups, navigating organizations, and influencing otherswere part of their success.
This centrality of kills is goodnews to educators, for this is onecontributor to moral action in com·puting that can surely be taught.It also integrates well with recentwork in moral psychology that treatsmoral action as a kind of expertise[23] with skill sets and competencies that can be learned. An implication of this finding is that it is thecombination of social and technicalskills that leads to the successfulperformance of the virtues in computing, and that it would be moreeffective to teach this combinationthan to teach the two in isolation(or to only teach the technical). 1bdo this will require some understanding of the complex social andtechnical skill and knowledge base
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4 - _WM
fig. 2.
Influence This
matters (e.g., the business and organizational imperatives that governconcern for privacy). A we identify these skills and knowledge, thismodel suggests that courses in computer ethics should engage studentsin extensive use of the knowledgeand practice of the skills. Doing sowould make the clas more like alaboratory or project-based coursewith extensive work on cases andprojecls. These kinds of skill andknowledge also help prepare thestudent for the various Moral Ecologies they will enc unter in theircareer. Recognizing that there aredifferent moral ecologies [8] canhelp students in choosing carccrpaths and in reacting skillfully to
places on the dimensions are mattersfor empirical inquiries.
Thus, as Fig: 2 suggests andwork by Narvaez & Lapsley [23]documents, One can teach the skillsand knowledge associated withmoral expertise, though it requiresconsiderable practice to reach expert level . As our work suggests,these skills and knowledge arc bothabout technical matters (e.g., datastruclures for privacy) and social
Moral Ecologies
Integration ofMorality into the
Self·System
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Retormers tended to be crusaderswho were attempting to change thevalues in social systems.
vide a detailed review of this modeland its implications for pedagogyin computer ethics in a recent twopart theoretical paper [15], [16].
The model allows us to arrangethe components along two dimensions. One i that of malleability.Because of individual differences,Moral Sk.ilI Sets are not perfectlymalleable, but they are the mostteachable component. Moral Ecology and the Integration of Morality
into the Self System are both somewhat malleable, while core Personality is the least likely to change. Sincethe personal appropriation of morality is a decision the individual alonecan make, the Integration of Morality into the Self System is most underthe comrol of the self. We have arranged the other components on thissecond dimension accordingly, withthe individual having the least control over Moral Ecology. None of thecomponents are placed at an extremeend of a dimension: even core personality can change over time [26]The components are placed on thedimensions mostly to suggest whereinstruction, coaching, and guidancewill be most effective. Their actual
our exemplars used to olve theproblems that confronted them andto achieve the goals they set.
Finally, the social ecology within which moral action occurredclearly haped the ability of exemplars to do good work. The effectsof social support or antagonism andthe importance of social skills tosuccess are markers of this impor·tance. Compared to those just beginning their careers, senior-levelexemplars told strikingly differenttales of their freedom to make moral choices, based in part on theirpower in and value to their organizations. Almo t all the exemplarstold stories of building networksof support within and across organizations to facilitate the achievement of their goals. Exemplars alsorecognized that some organizationsmade moral action more a part ofthe job, rather than isolating suchconcerns. The importance of variation in organizational climate isalso attested to in work by MichaelDavis [8] who in extensive interviews found organizations to differin predictable ways that affectedthe abi lity of engineers to pursueethical goals in their design work.The powerful influence of socialecology speaks to the need for education in the social kills requiredto navigate these ecologies.
These preliminary results suggest four components of a model ofsucces fut moral action in computing: I) personality, which shapesbut does not determine choices inmoral careers, 2) moral commitment, or integration of moralityimo the self, which influences themoral goals the computer professional attempts to achieve, 3) morally relevant skills and knowledgethat provide the competency toactually perform the good that isenvisioned, and 4) a moral ecol·ogy that either supports or hinders(sometimes both) the computer professional. These components willlikely interact with each other (e.g.,some skills will be morc relevantin some moral ecologies). We pro-
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the Moral Ecologies in which theyfind themselves [13]. Influencingmoral commitment is already listedas one of the Hastings Center goalsof a course in ethics (5]. but rethinking it as Integration of Morality intothe Self System helps us both better"to measure it (see the suggestions in[15]) and to see how aspiring computing professionals might welcome guidance that allows them toconstruct their ethical commiunents[14]. FinaUy. recognizing the variety of ways of being ethical thatcomputer professionals might adopt(e.g., craft or reform) gives us roomto allow for individual expressionof Personality in moral careers.
Identifying these componentsallows us to begin to construct oradapt measures that would allow uSto track them and their interactionsacross the careers of computer professionals. Understanding how thesecomponents influence computerprofessional's choices, successes,and failures in moral careers, andhow they are integrated into the everyday projects of computer professionals. will take us a long way tobeing able to better prepare them toconstruct their moral careers.
This understanding. admittedlya monumental undertaking, wouldstill only be one aspect of the fieldof computer ethics. But it is a crucial aspect. and one we may well beready to undertake.
Author InformationChuck Huff is Professor of Psychology at St. Olaf College. 1520St. Olaf Avenue. Northfield, Minnesota 55057.
Laura Barnard is a Clinical Psychology student at Duke University.Box 90086. Durham. NC 27708.
AcknowledgmentThanks to Sam Gosling for countrynOrms for the BFI-44 (see [29] forthe methodology). We also thank theNational Science Foundation (SES0217298 & SVS-0822640) for theircontinuing support and Simon Rogerson and DeMontfort University
for support during the planning anddata collection. Thanks to studentsKriStyn Aasen. Craig Enlund, JennyIngebritsen, Joe Stewart, and NicoleGilbertsen for their heroic work indesigning and implementing thecoding system. Finally, thanks to theexcmplars who selflessly gave significant time to this projecl so we couldlearn something from them.
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