essay on ethics norms and values

Essay on Ethics and Values for Students in 1000 Words

In this article, we have published an Essay on Ethics and Values for students. You will also read its definitions, sources, importance and uses in this essay. This essay is written in 1000 Words for school and college children.

So, Let’s start the Essay on Ethics and Values for Students…

Table of Contents

Importance of Values and Ethics

The human being as a social animal has to follow certain social norms. Truth, non-violence, benevolence, humility, and truthfulness are many qualities in these limits of society. Ethics and values are very crucial for a human being when it comes to personal and professional success .

The ways an individual or any groups discusses with others express their real character because actions always speak louder than words. Those who have strong values and ethical standards of the highest degree are easily remarkable by their actions.

Ethics and values come and develop from the place, family, beliefs, and school; professional values and ethics are bare developments of what one learns prior to joining the personnel. So, the attitude and habits one picks up early in his life follow into the experienced world and show an impact either a positive, or negative over career success.

Definitions of Ethics and Values

1. ethics definition.

The word ethics is derived from an ancient Greek word ethos which means habit, custom or character. That is morality in the real sense. The habits and character of a person talk about the moral values ​​he/she holds. In other words, a person’s moral values ​​define his character. We are all told what is good and what is bad based on moral norms set by society.

Ethics and morality are usually stated in relation to values, as they are the moral and social idealogy and application of one’s values. Professional or personal ethical codes renders the ability to understand what is right, fair, honorable and righteous. Misc. organizations and businesses have established codes of ethics and having an ethics committee also by which they conduct business.

The code of ethics or rules of ethics is the standards to which employees are expected to abide and follow the same.

2. Values Definition

Values are of extreme importance to a person. This is because they determine their behavior, temperament and overall behavior towards life and other people. The decisions we make in our lives are largely based on our values. A value or ethics is, according to Ozment, “an enduring belief or trust that a specific mode of conduct and dealing or end-state of its existence is personally or socially likable to an opposite or converse mode of dealing or end-state of existence”.

Further, we see, a value system is all these beliefs placed and used to precedence, serving as a guide for everything from choice-making to dispute resolution. Skillful values are the same as explained above but in the reference of a company, any organization, or group and what they would want their expected end-state to be.

The efficient value system of group entities is shown in their business practices and habits; from their communication with other companies to how well taken care of the old and new employees are.

Sources of Values and Ethics

The first and important source of professional values and ethics are parents or guardians. Grand p arents and Parents teach their kids right from wrong, not to have false or steal, and may explain them to a particular religion where values are reinforced.

These are the moral rules that stay with someone always; not only does the individual use these social ethics as guidelines in their lives, but they also teach their children the same values.   Besides moral values, families teach their children to do the job ethic. They provide children with few chores to do, such as cleaning their room, taking out the trash, and generally serving around the home.

If they finish the tasks on time, they will receive money for this service. These regular jobs not only show kids the value of earning money but also show them that hard work with honesty is always rewarded.

After home or parents, another source of values and ethics in the school. Children learn in the school on time, complete their homework, and study hard to earn good grades. Just as with chores and allowances at residence, schoolwork teaches that by studying and working hard, one can get a success good category and get into good schools and colleges.

Being on time for school regularly is the beginning of one’s time on management skills. They should learn the importance of discipline in life and budget them after school activities, parent’s time and homework time teaches one to prioritize what he or she values.

Uses of Ethics and Values in Life

Currently, everyone knows the value of ethics and values. Every individual should have manners and ethical principles to live a life, and in all the areas ethics and values are being used to work smoothly.

A sample of the value as can be seen if one wants to make a friend with another they must have values with them they should be a hard worker and honest with one another and forever be truthful with them.

Also, ethics can be said as if someone has stolen someone’s things so we should help the people whose things have been stolen and not to run away from the situation. Ethics and values are very important and necessary in our lives, and we should always follow them all through our lives.

Expert values and ethics are bare extensions of the values and ethics which a person learned from family, spiritual leaders and teachers. Whatever is taught in school and colleges to value growing up will carry over in the professional world.

Experienced with upstanding values and ethical or moral standards are easy to recognize, as is the company that employs them. Values-based business decisions and ethical guidelines adhered to by all are the benchmarks for success. Those who agree to accept less can have an adverse effect on their company and maybe, the rest of society.

The Final Thought

If we want to evaluate a social community that has a no or very less corruption rate and where all persons can live happily, we all have to look into the social values and the ethics that our carve and religious masters preach.

We should take ownership of making our society and in turn our planet a beautiful world where all persons can live a life with respect and dignity without any fears in their mind. Once we all start following the rules of ethics and values the world will be a great place to live long. I hope you like this Essay on Ethics and Values.

2 thoughts on “Essay on Ethics and Values for Students in 1000 Words”

Great speech btw loved some of the concepts like the sources of ethics: school and home. ????☺️

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Norms and Values In Sociology: Definition & Examples

Charlotte Nickerson

Research Assistant at Harvard University

Undergraduate at Harvard University

Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

Societies work or function because each individual member of that society plays particular roles and each role carries a status and norms which are informed by the values and beliefs of the culture of that society. The process of learning these roles and the norms and values appropriate to them from those around us is called socialisation .

How Are Norms and Values Different?

Values are the basic beliefs that guide the actions of individuals, while norms are the expectations that society has for people’s behavior. In other words, values tell individuals what is right or wrong, while norms tell individuals what is acceptable or not.

Values are more abstract and universal than norms, meaning they exist independently of any specific culture or society. Norms, on the other hand, are specific to a particular culture or society, and are essentially action-guiding rules, specifying concretely the things that must be done or omitted.

Additionally, values tend to be passed down from generation to generation, while norms can change relatively quickly.

In short, the values we hold are general behavioral guidelines. They tell us what we believe is right or wrong, for example, but that does not tell us how we should behave appropriately in any given social situation. This is the part played by norms in the overall structure of our social behavior.

However, there is often a lot of overlap between norms and values. For example, one of most of society’s norms is that one should not kill other people.

This norm is also a value, it is something that societies believe is morally wrong (McAdams, 2001).

What Are Norms?

Social norms are specific rules dictating how people should act in a particular situation, values are general ideas that support the norm”. There are four types of norm we can distinguish:

1. Folkways

Folkways are norms related to everyday social behavior that are followed out of custom, tradition, or routine. They are less strictly enforced than mores or laws, and violations are typically met with mild social disapproval rather than serious punishment.

Examples of folkways include etiquette and manners, such as holding a door open for someone, saying “please” and “thank you,” or not talking loudly in a library.

They contribute to the social order by facilitating smooth, predictable social interactions.

Folkways are fairly weak kinds of norm. For example, when you meet someone you know on the street, you probably say ”hello” and expect them to respond in a kind way.

If they ignore you, they have broken a friendship norm, which might lead you to reassess your relationship with them.

Mores are much stronger norms, and a failure to conform to them will result in a much stronger social response from the person or people who resent your failure to behave appropriately.

Mores refer to the norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance in a society. These norms are often seen as critical for the proper functioning of a group or society, and violations are typically met with serious societal disapproval or sanctions.

Mores often dictate ethical and moral standards in social behavior, such as honesty, respect for human life, and laws against theft or murder.

Taboos refer to those behaviors, practices, or topics considered profoundly offensive, repugnant, and unacceptable by a society or cultural group.

Societal sanctions, penalties, or ostracism often back these prohibitions.

The origin of taboos can be traced to religious beliefs, societal customs, or moral codes, and they usually touch on areas such as sex, death, dietary habits, and social relations.

The violation of these taboos can lead to severe consequences, which might include social exclusion, legal repercussions, or even physical harm in extreme cases.

4. Laws (legal norms)

A law is an expression of a very strong moral norm that exists to control people’s behavior explicitly.

Punishment for the infraction of legal norms will depend on the norm that has been broken and the culture in which the legal norm develops.

Norms shape attitudes, afford guidelines for actions and establish boundaries for behavior. Moreover, norms regulate character, engender societal cohesion, and aid individuals in striving toward cultural goals.

Conversely, the violation of norms may elicit disapprobation, ridicule, or even ostracization. For instance, while the Klu Klux Klan is legally permitted in the United States, norms pervading many academic, cultural, and religious institutions barely countenance any association with it or any espousal of its racist and antisemitic propaganda.

Consequently, we see the potency of a norm condemning certain viewpoints being promoted through informal means even in the absence of any equivalent formal counterparts.

What Are Values?

Values are beliefs that we have about what is important, both to us and to society as a whole. A value, therefore, is a belief (right or wrong) about the way something should be.

Values are essential in validating norms; normative rules without reference to underlying values lack motivation and justification. Meanwhile, without corresponding norms, values lack concrete direction and execution (McAdams, 2001).

While the common values of societies can change overtime, this process is usually slow. This means these values tend to be appropriate for their historical period (Merton, 1994).

There are still commonly shared values within societies, but they become generalized, a more general underpinning for social practices.

Durkheim notes that value consensus continues to exist in modern societies but in a weaker form because industrialization has resulted in people having greater access to a greater variety of knowledge and ideas, e.g., through the mass media and science.

Barnard, A., & Burgess, T. (1996).  Sociology explained . Cambridge University Press.

Berkowitz, A. D. (2005). An overview of the social norms approach. Changing the culture of college drinking: A socially situated health communication campaign, 1, 193-214.

Bicchieri, C. (2011). Social Norms . Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Boudon, R. (2017). The origin of values: Sociology and philosophy of beliefs. Routledge.

Carter, P. M., Bingham, C. R., Zakrajsek, J. S., Shope, J. T., & Sayer, T. B. (2014). Social norms and risk perception: Predictors of distracted driving behavior among novice adolescent drivers. Journal of Adolescent Health, 54 (5), S32-S41.

Chung, A., & Rimal, R. N. (2016). Social norms : A review.  Review of Communication Research, 4, 1-28.

Frese, M. (2015). Cultural practices, norms, and values .  Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 46 (10), 1327-1330.

Hechter, M., & Opp, K. D. (Eds.). (2001). Social norms .

Lapinski, M. K., & Rimal, R. N. (2005). An explication of social norms .  Communication theory, 15 (2), 127-147.

Merton, R. K. (1994, March). Durkheim”s division of labor in society. In Sociological Forum (Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 17-25). Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers.

Moi, T. (2001). What is a woman?: and other essays. Oxford University Press on Demand.

Reno, R. R., Cialdini, R. B., & Kallgren, C. A. (1993). The transsituational influence of social norms. Journal of personality and social psychology, 64 (1), 104.

Sunstein, C. R. (1996). Social norms and social roles . Colum. L. Rev., 96, 903.

Young, H. P. (2007). Social Norms .

• Essay On Values

Essay on Moral Values

500+ words essay on moral values.

Moral values are considered an essential aspect of human life. Moral values determine one’s nature, behaviour and overall attitude towards life and other people. In our lives, our decisions are primarily based on our values. The choices we make in our lives impact us and our society, organisation and nation. It is believed that a person with good values makes wise decisions that benefit everyone. On the contrary, people who have no moral values think only of themselves. They don’t care about others’ needs or society and make choices based solely on their needs. They create an unfriendly and sometimes unsafe environment around themselves.

Importance of Moral Values

The value of a person reflects their personality. Moral values help us understand the difference between right and wrong, good and evil and make the right decisions and judgements. They empower and drive a person to be a better human being and work for the betterment of society. Some moral values a person can inculcate in themselves are: dedication, honesty, optimism, commitment, patience, courtesy, forgiveness, compassion, respect, unity, self-control, cooperation, care and love. A person becomes humble and dependable with good values. Everyone looks up to a person with good values, whether personally or professionally.

If a person has good values, he spreads love, joy, and positive vibes. A person with good values works for the upliftment of society, along with taking care of their life. Such people are always considerate of the needs of others and understand the importance of unity and teamwork. They don’t lose their temper very easily and forgive others. People with good values are an asset to the organisation they work in and the society they live in.

Values Must Be Imbibed

We need to imbibe good values to function as humans and live in a society. Good values include dedication towards work, honesty, respect, commitment, love, helping others, taking responsibility for others’ deeds and acting responsibly. All these values are essential for the positive growth of an individual.

If you want to become a true leader and inspire others, you need to have good values. People always show respect and love to a person with good values. Additionally, they’ll trust and depend on a person of good values because they get proper advice and opinion from such a person.

Ethics Must Be Followed

A person with good values behaves ethically. We often hear of an ethical code of conduct. These are a set of rules or codes an individual is expected to follow. For example, talking politely with others, respecting elders/co-workers, handling difficult situations calmly, maintaining discipline and acting responsibly. Following these ethics helps create a healthy and safe work environment. So, it is essential for everyone to follow the ethical code of conduct.

The Role of Parents and Teachers

Moral values are not just born in a person but must be taught and inculcated right from childhood. When we talk about raising or nurturing children with good values, the credit goes to parents and teachers. It is their responsibility to teach children good values and should make them understand why it’s necessary to follow ethical behaviour. Schools should also take the responsibility to have a separate class dedicated to teaching ethics and moral values from the beginning. They should also train the students so that they imbibe these values.

An individual should imbibe good moral values to do well both in their professional and personal lives. A person with good values is also recognised among the crowd and is always appreciated for his behaviour and attitude towards others. On the contrary, people who lack good values often get into trouble and are not accepted in society. So, we should make sure that we teach our children good values and ethical behaviour from an early age. It is our responsibility to make our future generation learn moral values and ethics. This will help them become good human beings and upstanding citizens of the world. Additionally, it will give them the strength and courage to achieve great things in their lives.

The importance of moral values cannot be overstated. A nation with a high proportion of good values will undoubtedly progress and develop more rapidly than where people lack values. Moral values nurture us individually, build strong character and help create a better world around us.

We hope you found this essay on moral values useful. Find more CBSE Essays on various topics at BYJU’S. Also, get access to interactive videos and study material to ace the exams.

• Share Share

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Register with byju's & watch live videos.

Counselling

Ethics, Morals, and Values: How Do They Relate?

arturbo/E+/Getty Images

• Belief Systems
• Key Figures in Atheism
• M.A., Princeton University
• B.A., University of Pennsylvania

One of the most important characteristics of moral judgments is that they express our values . Not all expressions of values are also moral judgments, but all moral judgments do express something about what we value. Thus, understanding morality requires investigating what people value and why.

There are three principal types of values which humans can have: preferential values, instrumental values, and intrinsic values. Each plays an important role in our lives, but they don't all play equal roles in the formation of moral standards and moral norms.

Preference Value

The expression of preference is the expression of some value we hold. When we say that we prefer to play sports, we are saying that we value that activity. When we say that we prefer relaxing at home over being at work, we are saying that we hold our leisure time more highly than our work time.

Most ethical theories do not place much emphasis on this type of value when constructing arguments for particular actions being moral or immoral. The one exception would be ethical theories which explicitly place such preferences at the center of moral consideration. Such systems argue that those situations or activities which make us happiest are, in fact, the ones we should morally choose.

Instrumental Value

When something is valued instrumentally, that means we only value it as a means to achieve some other end which is, in turn, more important. Thus, if my car is of instrumental value, that means that I only value it insofar as it allows me to accomplish other tasks, such as getting to work or the store. In contrast, some people value their cars as works of art or technological engineering.

Instrumental values play an important role in teleological moral systems - theories of morality which argue that the moral choices are those which lead to the best possible consequences (such as human happiness). Thus, the choice to feed a homeless person might be considered a moral choice and is valued not simply for its own sake but, rather, because it leads to some other good - the well-being of another person.

Intrinsic Value

Something which has intrinsic value is valued purely for itself - it isn't used simply as a means to some other end and it isn't simply "preferred" above other possible options. This sort of value is the source of a great deal of debate in moral philosophy because not all agree that intrinsic values actually exist, much less what they are.

If intrinsic values do exist, how is it that they occur? Are they like color or mass, a characteristic which we can detect so long as we use the right tools? We can explain what produces the characteristics like mass and color, but what would produce the characteristic of value? If people are unable to reach any sort of agreement about the value of some object or event, does that mean that its value, whatever it is, can't be intrinsic?

Instrumental vs. Intrinsic Values

One problem in ethics is, assuming that intrinsic values really do exist, how do we differentiate them from instrumental values? That may seem simple at first, but it isn't. Take, for example, the question of good health - that is something which just about everyone values, but is it an intrinsic value?

Some might be inclined to answer "yes," but in fact, people tend to value good health because it allows them to engage in activities they like. So, that would make good health an instrumental value. But are those pleasurable activities intrinsically valuable? People often perform them for a variety of reasons - social bonding, learning, to test their abilities, etc. Some even engage in such activities for the sake of their health!

So, perhaps those activities are also instrumental rather than intrinsic values - but what about the reasons for those activities? We could keep going on like this for quite a long time. It seems that everything we value is something which leads to some other value, suggesting that all of our values are, at least in part, instrumental values. Perhaps there is no "final" value or set of values and we are caught in a constant feedback loop where things we value continually lead to other things we value.

Values: Subjective or Objective?

Another debate in the field of ethics is the role humans play when it comes to creating or assessing value. Some argue that value is a purely human construction - or at least, the construction of any being with sufficiently advanced cognitive functions. Should all such beings disappear from the universe, then some things like mass would not change, but other things like value would also disappear.

Others argue, however, that at least some forms of value (intrinsic values) exist objectively and independently of any observer. Thus, our only role is in recognizing the intrinsic value which certain objects of goods hold. We might deny that they have value, but in such a situation we are either deceiving ourselves or we are simply mistaken. Indeed, some ethical theorists have argued that many moral problems could be resolved if we could simply learn to better recognize those things which have true value and dispense with artificially created values which distract us.

• Beliefs and Choices: Do You Choose Your Religion?
• Ethics and Morality FAQ: Teleology and Ethics
• History of American Religion:1600 to 2017
• History of Humanism With Ancient Greek Philosophers
• Is Astrology a Pseudoscience?
• Defining the Characteristics of Religion
• What Is the Difference Between Denotation and Connotation?
• 3 Types of Ethical Systems
• Einstein Quotes on Ethics and Morality
• Types of Truths
• Friedrich Nietzsche on Justice & Equality
• Are There Any Atheistic Religions?
• What Does it Mean to Say "I Believe" Something Is True?
• Top Conversation Killers for Atheists
• 7 Reasons People Believe in God
• Religion vs. Religious

Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Values of Life — My Personal Values in Life

My Personal Values in Life

• Categories: Values of Life

About this sample

Words: 773 |

Published: Jan 31, 2024

Words: 773 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, body paragraph 1: personal value 1, body paragraph 2: personal value 2, body paragraph 3: personal value 3, counterargument.

• Adler, M. J. (2000). The four dimensions of philosophy: Metaphysical, moral, objective, categorical. Routledge.
• Miller, W. R., & Thoresen, C. E. (2003). Spirituality, religion, and health: An emerging research field. American Psychologist, 58(1), 24-35.
• Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford University Press.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr Jacklynne

Verified writer

• Expert in: Philosophy

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 888 words

6 pages / 2770 words

2 pages / 1012 words

3 pages / 1219 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Values of Life

Ethics and values are foundational principles that guide human behavior and shape the moral fabric of society. They define what is right and wrong, influence decision-making, and determine the standards by which individuals and [...]

Living an ethical life is a pursuit that transcends time and culture, as individuals across the world strive to make choices that align with their values and principles. In this essay, we delve into the concept of ethical [...]

Kim, H.-S. (2001). ​Organizational Structure and Ethics Attitudes of Public Officials: An Examination of State Agencies. Public Integrity, 3(1), 69–86.Foster, G. D. (1981). ​Law, Morality, and the Public Servant. Public [...]

Core values are fundamental beliefs that guide and influence a person's behavior and attitudes. They serve as the foundation for decision making, relationships, and overall life satisfaction. Understanding and embracing core [...]

Many of the values and beliefs I possess, I actually developed at very early age. And as I have grown, my values have also changed or gone through numerous tests. And though I have held onto most of my values and beliefs, I [...]

The "This I Believe" essay series has provided a platform for individuals to share their deeply held beliefs, values, and reflections on life. These essays offer a glimpse into the diverse perspectives and convictions that shape [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Search Menu
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access
• About International Studies Review
• About the International Studies Association
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

Introduction, overview of moral foundations theory, what's in a norm integrating mft with conceptual work on norm content and norm meaning, how moral values can influence normative interactions, modeling moral distance and its relationship to norm processes and outcomes, contributions and directions for future research, acknowledgments.

• < Previous

What's in a Norm? Centering the Study of Moral Values in Scholarship on Norm Interactions

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Kathryn Quissell, What's in a Norm? Centering the Study of Moral Values in Scholarship on Norm Interactions, International Studies Review , Volume 24, Issue 4, December 2022, viac049, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac049

• Permissions Icon Permissions

Some norms go through long contested periods, resulting in norm change, rejection, or persisting conflict. Others are adopted quite quickly, with little resistance across diverse societies. An underlying and unanswered theoretical question is why? A foundational characteristic of a norm as a concept, and a key aspect of constructivist scholarship on norms, is the role of values and moral principles in giving norms meaning and in motivating global policy change. For a field placing significant emphasis on the importance of ideas, the limited theorizing around the value-based content of these ideas is a notable shortcoming. Emphasizing the importance of moral values as among the most deeply held beliefs, I outline a theory of how moral values and moral distance can help explain why certain normative processes and outcomes occur. Building from constructivist work on norms and social psychology scholarship on morality, I propose that moral distance, the degree of alignment, overlap, or separation in moral values between actors can help to explain the type of contestation, the intensity and duration of contestation, and what processes or outcomes are more likely to transpire. The shorter the moral distance, the more likely persuasion or adaptations will occur, leading to the eventual adoption of a norm. The greater the moral distance, the more likely prolonged and heated contestation will occur, leading to rejection or enduring contestation. I argue that centering the analysis of moral values and moral distance in research on normative agreement and disagreement can therefore contribute to understanding why or under what circumstances conflict is more or less likely to happen.

Algunas normas pasan por largos periodos de cuestionamiento, que dan lugar a un cambio normativo, a un rechazo o a un conflicto persistente. Otras se adoptan con bastante rapidez, con poca resistencia en diversas sociedades. Una pregunta teórica subyacente y sin respuesta es ¿por qué? El papel que desempeñan los valores y los principios morales a la hora de dar significado a las normas y de motivar el cambio político global es una característica fundamental de una norma como concepto, y un aspecto clave de los estudios constructivistas sobre las normas. Para un área que pone un énfasis significativo en la importancia de las ideas, la limitada teorización en torno al contenido basado en los valores de estas ideas es una carencia notable. Subrayando la importancia de los valores morales como una de las creencias más arraigadas, esbozamos una teoría sobre cómo los valores morales y la distancia moral pueden ayudar a explicar por qué se producen determinados procesos y resultados normativos. Basándonos en el trabajo constructivista sobre las normas y en los estudios de psicología social sobre la moralidad, proponemos que la distancia moral, el grado de alineación, solapamiento o separación de los valores morales entre los agentes, puede ayudar a explicar el tipo de cuestionamiento, la intensidad y la duración de la misma, y qué procesos o resultados son más probables. Cuanto más corta sea la distancia moral, más probable será que se produzca la persuasión o las adaptaciones que conduzcan a la adopción ulterior de una norma. Cuanto mayor sea la distancia moral, más probable será que se produzca un cuestionamiento prolongado y acalorado, que conduzca al rechazo o a un cuestionamiento duradero. Argumentamos que centrar el análisis de los valores morales y la distancia moral en la investigación sobre el acuerdo y el desacuerdo normativo puede, por tanto, contribuir a la comprensión de por qué, o en qué circunstancias, es más o menos probable que se produzca un conflicto.

Certaines normes traversent de longues périodes de contestation, qui entraînent soit leur évolution, soit leur rejet, ou encore la persistance de tensions. D'autres, en revanche, sont adoptées plus rapidement, et rencontrent peu de résistance au sein de diverses sociétés. La raison de ce contraste demeure une interrogation théorique sous-jacente et non élucidée. Le rôle des valeurs et des principes moraux dans la détermination des normes et dans l’évolution des politiques à l’échelle mondiale constitue une caractéristique fondamentale de la norme en tant que concept, ainsi qu'un élément central des travaux constructivistes portant sur les normes. Dans un champ de recherche accordant autant d'importance aux idées, le manque d'attention théorique prêtée au rôle des valeurs constitue un écueil notable. En mettant en lumière l'importance des valeurs morales en tant que croyances parmi les plus profondément ancrées, j'avance que les valeurs et la distance morales contribuent à expliquer la raison d’être de certains mécanismes et impacts normatifs. M'appuyant sur des travaux constructivistes relatifs aux normes et sur la littérature en psychologie sociale traitant de moralité, je suggère que la distance morale, le degré d'alignement, les affinités ou les désaccords entre différents acteurs en matière de valeurs morales contribuent à expliquer la nature, l'intensité et la durée des contestations, ainsi que les mécanismes et effets les plus susceptibles d’être observés. Plus la distance morale est courte, plus un effet de persuasion ou d'adaptation a des chances de voir le jour, aboutissant à l'adoption d'une nouvelle norme. À l'inverse, plus la distance morale est importante, plus les risques d'une contestation longue et houleuse sont élevés, ce qui entraîne soit le rejet de la norme, soit la persistance de la contestation. Par conséquent, je soutiens que centrer l'analyse des valeurs et de la distance morales sur les consensus et les différends en matière de normes permet de comprendre pourquoi, ou dans quelles circonstances, un conflit est susceptible d’émerger.

Some norms go through long contested periods, resulting in norm change, rejection, or persisting conflict (see, e.g., Zimmerman 2016 ; Niemann and Schillinger 2017 ). Others are adopted quite quickly, with little resistance across diverse societies ( Traven 2015 ). An underlying and unanswered theoretical question is why? Constructivist norms research has made notable contributions to understandings of how norms and policies spread, fail to spread, or change along the way ( Hoffmann 2010 ). Early constructivist scholarship provides frameworks for understanding global norm promotion strategies and processes, as well as conditions and processes through which norm diffusion occurs. More recent work on norm contestation addresses many of the earlier work's shortcomings, by, for example, challenging the conceptualization of norms as static and of norm promotion as the unidirectional socialization of state actors. This latest phase of constructivism builds knowledge of more iterative and interactive engagement around norms, strengthening the nuance and specificity of explanations and developing better understandings of norms themselves and the complexities and varieties of normative change processes.

While scholars are achieving greater conceptual clarity and developing nuanced insights into a variety of normative processes and outcomes, much of this work focuses on identifying and labeling ways of resisting and changing norms that go beyond the simple accept-or-reject framework of early research. For example, recent work on contestation has identified a range of ways actors can resist norms, such as through signaling, transgression, denial, neglect, disregard, avoidance, backlash, and immunization ( Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999 ; Dixon 2017 ; Evers 2017 ; Nuñez-Mietz and Iommi 2017 ; Stimmer 2019 ). Similarly, this research has discerned a diversity of ways norms can change, offering processes of adaptation, modification, localization, translation, transformation, decoupling, interpretation, clarification, decay, disintegration, or de-internalization ( Acharya 2004 ; Chorev 2012 ; McKeown 2009 ; Panke and Petersohn 2012 ; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 2013 ; Zimmerman 2016 , 2017 ; Dixon 2017 ; Stimmer 2019 ). These terms are useful in laying out various scenarios that expand and complicate our understanding of how norms work. However, they are also proliferating in the absence of attempts to synthesize or identify patterns in what is known about norm contestation. What results in the body of work is a sense that all norms and norm processes are relative, with contestation of one kind or another as the only known likelihood. This is inaccurate and presents an obstacle to theory development.

The limited attention in the literature to generalizable patterns exists for both conceptual and theoretical reasons. To begin, there are still inconsistent conceptualizations of what is in a norm ( Winston 2018 ; Stimmer 2019 ; Jurkovich 2020 ). Scholars often use multiple terms for similar components. More importantly, a consequential aspect of norm content has been relatively neglected: the moral values used to justify the behavior change the norm is seeking. In considering this justificatory component, scholars typically identify specific rules, principles, legal precedents, or desired goals that justify action, but they stop short of identifying and assessing the underlying values that motivate and provide meaning for these arguments. Neglecting values, particularly moral values, in the study of norm content leaves out crucial information about why actors care that a problem be addressed in the first place. Values provide the “oughtness” for why a particular action or outcome is good or bad, with moral values as a distinctly significant subset of values, given that they are often the most deeply held ( Haidt 2001 ). Moral values motivate action. If they are not clearly defined in the justificatory part of a norm, we might miss norm components that stay stable or change; in doing so, we might overlook important drivers of contestation or agreement or misunderstand all that is at stake in a conflict over meaning. Without more clearly defining the moral value–based content of a norm, the comprehensive study of norm meaning, normative interactions, and norm change becomes a challenge.

Overlooking moral values can lead to identifying a process or outcome without fully understanding why it happened, constraining the development of deeper or more generalizable explanations for why and how norms do or do not change or diffuse. For a field placing significant emphasis on ideas, the limited theorizing around the content of these ideas is a notable shortcoming. Norm content is typically treated as an outcome or the entity affected by actors, their strategies, the communicative environment, and local structures. It is not examined as a factor that can affect the contestation process. There are important and practical reasons to pay more attention to the influence of moral content on normative interactions, not only because differences in the perceived validity or application of norms driving conflict could be due in part to different moral values, but also because these moral values can affect perceptions of actors and actor identities, the effectiveness of advocacy strategies, and the degree of contentiousness in the communicative environment during normative interactions. I suggest that the moral values in the justificatory part of the norm can have direct effects on the process and outcomes of contestation. Theorizing moral values in normative interactions could therefore explain why certain processes or outcomes occur.

Some norms are more controversial: this controversy might be due to the actors, strategies, and environment of the conflict, or it could be driven in part by the moral content of the norm as it collides or competes with other norms. In a normative interaction, identifying the moral content of the norm in question, and of other relevant norms actors hold, can illuminate how aligned or misaligned core beliefs are surrounding the issue in question. I refer to the degree of alignment, overlap, or separation in moral values as moral distance. Moral distance can help explain the type of contestation, predict the intensity and duration of contestation, and suggest what processes or outcomes are more likely to transpire. As the moral distance shortens, persuasion or adaptation becomes more likely, leading to the eventual adoption of a norm. As the moral distance grows, prolonged and heated contestation becomes more likely, leading to rejection or enduring contestation. In the most extreme circumstances, moral conflict can become sacralized, creating some of the most difficult contentious dynamics. These dynamics require strategies of de-escalation, a type of politics I call destigmatization, which has not been fully considered in international relations (IR).

In summary, addressing the underlying question of why some norms are adopted quickly while others go through longer periods of contestation, adaptation, or rejection requires greater attention to the moral content of norms and how moral distance can shape interactions. Centering the analysis of moral values and moral distance in research on normative agreement and disagreement can therefore contribute to understanding why, or under what circumstances, conflict is more or less likely to happen, an issue many scholars have suggested for future research ( Dixon 2017 ; Evers 2017 ; Kukkonen et al. 2018 ). In this paper, I integrate some of social psychology's most developed theoretical work on morality, specifically moral foundations theory (MFT), with the most recent IR work on norms. Building from this scholarship, I introduce the concept of moral distance and illustrate what it adds to constructivist theory in several steps. First, I introduce MFT and show how attention to moral values can help to better specify norm content. Next, I describe the new construct of moral distance and illustrate how it helps to better understand the relationships among norm content, actors, strategies, and the environments of normative interaction. I then bring together these ideas to model and advance theoretical propositions on what these relationships would predict about normative processes and outcomes, illustrating how moral content and moral distance can help explain underlying patterns in contestation. Finally, I conclude by discussing the contributions of the paper and articulating directions for future research.

Morality is frequently referenced in IR research, but it is often neglected or used superficially in theoretical work. Norms entail a position of “oughtness,” what Finnemore and Sikkink (1998 , 891) refer to as “shared moral assessment.” However, the oughtness of why someone should or should not do something, or why a particular action or outcome is good or bad, is not necessarily moral. “Values” is the concept closest to Finnemore and Sikkink's statement of oughtness. The field of social psychology has extensively theorized and explored how values shape human judgment. Values in this discipline are defined as the judgments humans make of what is good or important in life, which are then used as criteria for evaluating actions, people, and events ( Schwartz 2012 , 3). Values are beliefs tied to affect, and they motivate goal attainment. They can be both individual and collective, and they serve as the standards from which rules, laws, and principles are derived ( Schwartz 2012 ). Individuals also order and prioritize their values based on importance. Moral values are other-oriented ( Haidt 2008 ), working to constrain selfishness ( Haidt 2008 , 70) and provide guidance on how to treat other people ( Yudkin et al. 2021 , 2). Importantly, moral values are also the most deeply held ( Haidt 2001 ), typically outranking self-oriented values in priority ( Schwartz and Bardi 2001 ).

In making decisions, people often face trade-offs among competing values. As moral values tend to be prioritized and play a particularly important role in human judgment, I propose focusing on moral values as a jumping-off point for greater theorizing around values in constructivist work on norms. MFT scholars have identified and verified five main moral values as key areas of concern in diverse societies: (1) caring for and protecting others from harm, (2) maintaining fairness and reciprocity, (3) in-group loyalty, (4) respecting authority, and (5) protecting one's purity and sanctity ( Haidt 2001 ; Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009 ; Horberg et al. 2009 ). Many norms in the IR literature have moral content, particularly in human rights ( Price and Sikkink 2021 ), security ( Rathbun and Pomeroy 2021 ), and culture war issues.

Some norms have little to no moral content, such as those related to maritime zones or fishing rights where the “oughtness” might be tied to concerns for financial gain or other self-oriented values. Moral values are not relevant to the study of all norms. However, when considering situations typically seen as a clash between ideas of right and wrong and rational self-interest, it might be more accurate to categorize them as conflicts between different moral foundations. For example, in the case of torture, the moral values of in-group loyalty and protection might conflict with a more universal moral duty to protect all people from harm ( Price and Sikkink 2021 , 5). The value-based content of a normative interaction should be assessed, and while norms with moral content are only a subset of the broader universe of norms, there is a wide range of cases to consider.

A large body of interdisciplinary scholarship contributes to MFT based in theories of motivated reasoning and the dual-processing brain ( Haidt and Joseph 2004 ; Kahneman 2011 ). The basic idea is that human cognition has evolved such that the first reaction to stimuli in the broader environment is an automatic, intuitive emotional response. This intuitive response informs a post-hoc process of rationalization or deliberative reasoning. These ideas are consistent with IR work on emotions and psychology ( Crawford 2000 , 2014 ; McDermott 2004 ; Mercer 2005 , 2010 ; Hutchinson and Bleiker 2014 ; Kertzer et al. 2014 ). As an evolved characteristic of human information processing, morality is akin to other universally human activities. Haidt (2012, xii–xiii) argues that “the human mind is designed to ‘do’ morality, just as it's designed to do language, sexuality, music, and many other things.” Other research in neuroscience and anthropology supports the premise that cognitive moral systems are universal ( Oxley et al. 2008 ; Sinnott-Armstrong 2008 ; Jost et al. 2014 ), indicating that all societies contain the five foundational moral values. However, humans construct moral virtues, meanings, and institutions in variable ways related to the salience of these five innate psychological systems ( Koleva et al. 2012 ). Societies and individuals build moralities based on how much emphasis they give each foundational value and in response to feedback from the social environment. Morality is not only intrinsic and systematic, but also malleable and varied. Similar moral building blocks can be arranged in different ways to create diverse moral orders, providing a set of constructs that can explain both similarity and variation.

Each of the five primary moral foundations is descriptive of moral concerns identified across cultures, and each includes a particular virtue and related violation. First, drawn from work on the evolution of empathy, the widespread concern for caring, nurturing, and protecting vulnerable individuals from harm is referred to as the care/harm foundation ( Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009 , 1031). Scholarship on the evolution of reciprocal altruism, evidence for cross-cultural punishment for cheating or free-riding, and moral philosophy's focus on justice, fairness, and proportionality inform the second category, often called the fairness/inequity foundation ( Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009 , 1030–31). Recognizing these first two categories as key constructs of Western liberalism, MFT scholars identified three other categories of moral values that are more communitarian. Drawing from coalitional psychology, the virtues of loyalty, patriotism, vigilance against traitors, and self-sacrifice for the group are categorized under what they call the in-group loyalty/betrayal foundation ( Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009 , 1031). Studies of primate and human hierarchy identified virtues of obedience, respect for authority, maintaining traditions, and the importance of leadership in what they refer to as the authority/subversion foundation ( Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009 , 1031). Last, many world religions extol the virtues of purity and sanctity, which serve evolutionary hygienic functions as well as the social and cultural functions of regulating greed and carnality, suppressing selfishness, and cultivating spirituality, in what MFT scholars call the purity/degradation foundation ( Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009 , 1031). Many of the issues IR researchers have studied, particularly in human rights, draw upon the care/harm and fairness/inequity foundations, but these studies have in large part neglected analysis of these moral concerns and have not recognized the diverse moral concerns of advocacy targets that might stem from more communitarian moral principles.

Social psychologists have primarily used MFT to study politics in the United States, at the level of individuals, through lab-based psychological experiments and media analyses, demonstrating the strong influence of moral values on political positions and persuasion in debates around issues such as climate change ( Feinberg and Willer 2013 ), same-sex marriage ( Haidt and Hersh 2001 ), and stem-cell research ( Clifford and Jerit 2013 ). These studies found that people often see the same issue differently, depending on which of the five moral values are most salient for them ( Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009 ). For example, in one study of homosexuality in the United States, conservatives rated homosexual sex as more offensive than progressives did due to conservatives’ much stronger moral intuitions regarding traditional sexual purity ( Haidt and Hersh 2001 ). In this and other studies ( Haidt and Graham 2007 ; Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009 ; Graham et al. 2011 ; Clifford and Jerit 2013 ; Feinberg and Willer 2015 ), purity—as well as in-group loyalty and respecting authority—were more salient for political conservatives than for progressives, who tended to find the values of protection from harm and ensuring equity to be most salient ( Feinberg and Willer 2015 ). There might also be differences in which issues are moralized. Conservatives tend not to moralize harm to the environment, which is one reason they are less likely to prioritize environmental concerns ( Feinberg and Willer 2013 ). Each foundation might also be interpreted in different ways. For example, conservatives tend to see fairness as getting what you deserve, whereas liberals are inclined to see it as greater equality ( Haidt 2012 ). In this way, conservatives are more likely to accept the trade-off of benefiting in-group members over out-group welfare ( Feinberg and Willer 2015 ). Speaking to global applicability, another study investigating whether these political distinctions hold across world regions found that regardless of region, political progressives put comparatively greater emphasis on the harm and fairness foundations while conservatives tend to emphasize the in-group loyalty, authority, and purity foundations ( Graham et al. 2011 ).

MFT therefore provides a framework for identifying key concerns of individuals in diverse contexts. Incorporating this framework and the insights of MFT literature on political conflict and persuasion into IR constructivist scholarship can help researchers understand what norms mean to different people in different places, giving norm content and norm meaning greater clarity and thereby strengthening norm conceptual work. Additionally, the insights into what happens when individuals with similar or different moral values interact provide a theoretical foundation for understanding norm processes and outcomes. In the following section, I outline the conceptual and theoretical benefits of incorporating morality into work on norms, beginning with a discussion of what makes up a norm.

Norms in IR are conceptualized as collective expectations or shared understandings of the proper behavior of a specific group of actors ( Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 ; Checkel 1999 ). The latest stage of norm research has clarified the concept of a norm and developed better means of distinguishing norms from other constructs (such as moral principles, supererogatory standards, and formal law) ( Jurkovich 2020 ), identified the components of norm content ( Winston 2018 ; Stimmer 2019 ), and described what happens to norm content and strength over time as norms change through contestation processes ( Deitelhoff and Zimmermann 2020 ; Ben-Josef Hirsch and Dixon 2021 ). While this work has helped improve conceptual clarity, there are still multiple terms for similar norm components, suggesting general agreement but limited synthesis.

There is general agreement that norms contain two primary pieces. One is a behavior modification request ( Winston 2018 ; Jurkovich 2020 ) or claim ( Stimmer 2019 ) and the other is variously described as the underlying values ( Winston 2018 ), “oughtness” ( Jurkovich 2020 ), frames ( Stimmer 2019 ), or overall purpose for these behaviors. I refer to these two pieces as the behavioral and justificatory components of a norm, respectively. Additionally, several scholars argue that these norm components must be linked to a specific problem ( Winston 2018 ) and to specific actors responsible for carrying out the behaviors ( Jurkovich 2020 ). Improved conceptual clarity on norm content facilitates identification of what is or is not a norm, a norm's specific content in a particular moment and place, which components of a norm are being contested, and how norm content does or does not change over time. However, the values content of norms is underspecified even in literature highlighting the dearth of IR work on values ( Sucharov 2011 ). For example, in the justificatory component, scholars typically identify specific rules, principles, legal precedents, or desired goals that justify action, but they do not identify or assess the underlying values that motivate and provide meaning for these arguments. Winston (2018) even refers to this justificatory component as the “value” of the norm but does not actually assess values. For example, when she maps out the content of the nuclear nonproliferation norm cluster, the value she states is “nuclear war is undesirable” (Winston 2018, 650). This is a desired goal or outcome deriving from values individuals hold, such as the harm moral value, which emphasizes protecting the welfare of all people. It is an outcome based on something we value, but not a value itself.

Without greater attention to moral values in norms, important information about the norm's meaning is lost—information useful for identifying and explaining why a norm is important and what links norm components together. Moral values will most likely be present in a norm's justificatory component, as this component helps to explain why the issue is a problem, why certain actions should be taken, and why particular actors are responsible for carrying out these actions. The justificatory component can therefore help hold the other pieces of the norm together. As such, the justificatory component requires more thorough analysis than it generally receives, and one means of doing this analysis is through greater attention to the presence or absence of moral values. For example, using Winston's (2018 , 651) anti-plastic-bag norm cluster, there could be different values motivating why plastic shopping bags are seen as a problem. As the MFT literature suggests, there are political and cultural differences in why people do or do not moralize the environment ( Feinberg and Willer 2013 ). The South African emphasis on preserving and protecting the natural environment suggests that the harm moral value underlies South Africans’ justification for addressing the plastic bag problem. On the other hand, in India, the goal of preserving sacred cows suggests a purity concern. These moral values provide different justifications for why this problem is important. There is not necessarily a conflict between these moral values, and both countries might agree to ban plastic bags, but they would do so for different reasons. In this case, these different justifications can still hang together in a norm cluster because they are not contradictory, and they link to the same behavioral outcome.

However, for other norms, differing justifications may lead to different ways of prioritizing behaviors or to behaviors that are in conflict. For example, a broad community of global actors agree that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a problem, but they differ as to why FGM is a problem and to what behaviors they suggest as remedies ( Winterbottom, Koomen, and Burford 2009 ; Cloward 2016 ). Within this community, there is overlapping agreement that FGM is problematic because it can physically harm women and girls, making them more vulnerable to infection, chronic morbidity, and mortality. Harm is one of the primary moral values used to justify action. Some actors in this community also place significant emphasis on how FGM violates the rights of women through coercion, violence, and restrictions on bodily autonomy, in ways that male circumcision or other cultural practices do not; this is an argument based in the value of fairness. Advocates who place greater or exclusive emphasis on harm could support the abolition of the practice, but they might also support harm-reduction strategies, such as medicalizing the practice to prevent HIV transmission or encouraging communities to practice less invasive forms of FGM. To advocates who care deeply about fairness, harm-reduction behaviors are inadequate, as they do not completely eradicate the harm or the rights violations of FGM ( Leye et al. 2019 ). These advocates instead seek full abandonment of the practice, sometimes through criminalization, which could drive the practice underground and make it more dangerous in the short term. FGM normative conflict could be an indicator of ongoing contestation over the behavioral component of the norm, but it also demonstrates tensions in the justificatory component with contestation over which moral value is most important. In this example, the advocates have overlapping concerns, but they place different salience on harm versus fairness, contributing to conflict. Analyzing the justificatory component of a norm and how it links to the other components is therefore important for understanding norm development, conflict, and change.

Moral value–based information is useful for identifying what is in a norm, what norms mean to different actors, and what holds norm components together for these actors, aiding in the study of norms as non-static but discrete entities. Additionally, moral value–based information is useful for examining what happens during normative interactions and how and why norms change. It can help clarify what is being contested, and it can shape the processes and outcomes of contestation in more generalizable ways, providing a theoretical foundation for explaining why some norms go through longer processes of contestation with variable outcomes, while others are adopted more easily.

Explaining Moral Distance

Fundamentally, normative interactions are about why a particular new practice should or should not be adopted, or to what extent the norm needs to be modified to work appropriately for a given problem in each context. Even with all the ways actors can resist or change norms, there is a basic spectrum of interactions, ranging from complete agreement on a norm to reconcilable disagreements, to intractable disagreements. As the contestation literature has also demonstrated, any outcome, such as adoption or rejection, is not necessarily stable and should not be considered permanent. However, many of the identified processes can be mapped onto this spectrum of agreement, as illustrated in  figure 1 . The extent of agreement or disagreement on the components making up a norm, and why this level of agreement is present, is an early indicator of what processes and outcomes are most likely for a new norm. Disagreements on the behavioral component, as well as which actors or which problem a norm applies to—all types of application contestation—are more likely to lead to adaptation or changing norm content ( Deitelhoff and Zimmermann 2020 ). Disagreements over a norm's validity are likely to be more contentious ( Deitelhoff and Zimmermann 2020 ), as these disagreements are over the justificatory component of the norm and therefore may be based on moral values. If actors align, overlap, or can be brought closer together on a norm's justificatory component, then adaptation or adoption of the norm can occur. If actors are far apart or are driven further apart on the justificatory component, then rejection of the norm becomes more likely. The degree of contentiousness at the beginning of an interaction, along with what takes place during an interaction, can also anticipate likely outcomes. It is therefore important to investigate and theorize what contributes to these varying degrees of agreement and the intensity of contestation.

Spectrum of agreement.

I suggest that if moral values are present in the justificatory component of a norm, in norm promotion efforts, and in the normative concerns of potential norm adopters, these concerns will likely contribute to the degree of agreement or disagreement along this spectrum. How aligned, overlapping, or disparate the moral concerns are—what I refer to together as moral distance—is an important factor for understanding the extent of agreement and intensity of contestation, with greater moral distance contributing to greater disagreement and contentiousness. MFT provides initial insight into which moral values are more or less likely to lead to misalignment and conflict. In Graham et al.’s (2011) cross-national work, they found that greater alignment on moral concerns was possible when certain moral foundations were in use, whereas misalignment was more likely when others were heavily emphasized. They found the strongest correlations between political conservatism and the authority and purity domains, whereas the harm foundation was weakly associated with political progressivism. In other words, there was more overlap between progressives and conservatives on concern for harm and the greatest disconnect on authority and purity concerns. Graham et al. (2011 , 379) argue that this indicates that the most intractable political debates worldwide are likely to involve concerns related to respect for traditions, authority, and physical and spiritual purity, whereas the greatest degree of moral commonality may be found in issues related to harm and care. Therefore, moral commonality or overlap is more likely if the harm foundation is agreed upon and if the authority or purity domains are less salient. The fairness and in-group foundations have some shared salience across conservatives and progressives, but fairness tends to have greater salience to progressives and in-group loyalty to conservatives. The positions suggested through MFT are illustrated in  figure 2 , with the foundations with greater potential to overlap toward the center of the spectrum and the foundations with less overlapping salience toward the poles. Distance here is conceptual rather than numeric. The figure demonstrates that certain values tend to cluster depending on how liberal or conservative an individual is, along with which moral values are more likely to be held in common across the political spectrum (adapted from Graham et al. 2011 ).

The political spectrum of moral distance.

In terms of moral distance, actors are aligned when they share the same moral concerns. If they share some moral concerns but not others, this is termed moral overlap. If the actors differ on which moral concerns are salient, there can be different degrees of separation depending on which moral foundations are most salient, and on how congruous these concerns are with each other. For example, on the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights, purity concerns supporting discrimination against LGBTQ individuals are incongruous with concerns about harm to these individuals, which creates greater moral distance. In the example of plastic bag bans, concerns about contaminating the environment (a purity violation) are congruous with concerns about harm, which shortens moral distance. Individuals may also have more than one salient moral concern. Through normative interactions, individuals can move closer together or further apart based on changing salience.

The argument that moral values and moral distance matter is consistent with prior constructivist work on issue characteristics, norm alignment, and cultural match; however, it provides greater specificity and can be useful in explaining both successful and unsuccessful norm adoption. In their early work, Keck and Sikkink (1998) proposed that certain types of issues were more likely to emerge and see successful norm promotion, creating norm alignment and policy change. These issues are characterized by their ability to cause bodily harm to individuals, short and clear causal chains assigning responsibility for harm, or the degree to which they infringe on legal equality of opportunity ( Keck and Sikkink 1998 , 27). This description of issue attention emphasizes the harm and fairness moral foundations. While many studies support this generalization, these issue characteristics can be present with issues that do not emerge as priorities, such as concern for harm to children conceived through wartime rape ( Carpenter 2007 ), or for those issues with unsuccessful or uneven rights campaigns (e.g., LGBTQ rights) that do not see norm alignment or policy adoption ( Symons and Altman 2015 ; Nuñez-Mietz and Iommi 2017 ). The original hypotheses about harm and equality of opportunity have not been thoroughly developed, tested, or refined ( Price and Sikkink 2021 , 38) to explain these different outcomes. Identifying and examining the salient moral values and the variation in moral distance between different actors in these norm interactions could provide more specific and generalizable insights into cases of attention, neglect, or resistance.

As Symons and Altman (2015) suggest, norms requiring the national regulation of particular behaviors, such as those tied to gender, sexuality, race, drug use, and some forms of environmental protection, are more likely to be resisted because they are often salient to group and individual identities ( Symons and Altman 2015 , 67) and therefore can trigger status or identity threat—either directly, among state decision-makers, or indirectly, through broader cultural norms and public opinion influencing policy choices ( Symons and Altman 2015 , 71–74). Underlying many of the issues Symons and Altman examine are conservative purity concerns, the moral foundation furthest from the center on the moral distance spectrum. For the groups these scholars identify, promotion of rights and protection from harm frequently confront perceptions of immoral purity violations tied to the policy target groups, which contradict concerns for fairness or care. While bodily harm, rights violations, and clear causal chains matter in a general sense, moral distance can moderate the response to norms with these characteristics. This helps to explain why problems with these issue characteristics can experience different processes and outcomes. Issues with highly salient purity concerns among target actors are more strongly resisted due to the difference in moral concerns between norm entrepreneurs and targets.

Moral distance also fits with scholarship on norm alignment, but it adds a specific dimension to how norm alignment is assessed. Additionally, moral distance can help to better differentiate normative agreement from policy change, a long-standing challenge in the field. Normative agreement or alignment is often conflated with policy outcomes, making it difficult to know what role it plays in the policy process ( Ferree 2003 ). For example, if a new policy is adopted, norms are thought to be in alignment. Normative agreement is rarely assessed directly, even though it should theoretically precede policy change. Without clearly identifying and assessing the content of global and domestic norms and where norms overlap or diverge in important ways between actors, it is difficult to discern whether agreement is occurring, if advocacy influences agreement, or if agreement is less important than other factors in a particular case of policy change. Social movement scholarship has not reached this level of precision, and there have been calls for greater specificity in defining norm alignment and identifying when it is or is not occurring ( Snow et al. 2014 ). Identifying the moral values–based positions of all those involved and the moral distance between key actors can be useful for assessing the degree of agreement, while also distinguishing normative agreement from policy outcomes.

Further, the concept of moral distance contributes to our understanding of culture, cultural match, and intercultural relations ( Checkel 1999 ; Acharya 2011 ; Wiener 2014 ). Actors in the global south may resist norms from the global north, defending their opposition as a means of preventing further colonial interference, maintaining cultural boundaries, and safeguarding sovereignty ( Acharya 2011 ). In doing so, these actors often highlight moral concerns and moral differences, such as in the backlash against LGBTQ rights in East Africa ( Nuñez-Mietz and Iommi 2017 ; Dreier 2018 ), as a defense of culture. Culture, generally defined as the beliefs and practices of particular people and communities, almost always has moral dimensions. Culture shapes the preferences of gatekeepers and the public, with both direct and indirect consequences for discourse and the potential congruence of beliefs and practices between actors ( Checkel 1999 ; Symons and Altman 2015 ). Constructivist work on cultural match ( Checkel 1999 ), matchmaking ( Acharya 2004 ), and cultural background knowledge and validation ( Wiener 2014 ) has long emphasized the importance of domestic norms in norm adoption and contestation, suggesting that the processes of matchmaking and validation create alignment and facilitate the adoption of new norms. However, the understanding of culture incorporated into this work has been narrow. For example, Checkel (1999 , 87) defines cultural match as “a situation where the prescriptions embodied in an international norm are convergent with domestic norms, as reflected in discourse, and legal systems, and bureaucratic agencies.” More weight is given here to legal and public administration structures (fit with rules and institutions) than to other elements of culture, such as values and beliefs. Likewise, Acharya (2004) places more emphasis on the local behavioral preferences and rules already in place than on the justifications or meanings of the different interacting norms. The work of Antje Wiener (2008 , 2009 , 2014 , 2018 ) goes the furthest in exploring culture, norm meaning, and meaning-making processes; however, she is largely concerned with normative and ethical questions surrounding access to sites of contestation, defending multiculturalism, and describing how contestation can lead to greater legitimacy in norms (higher quality norms) as opposed to theorizing how culture and norm content can influence these processes of contestation. Moral concerns and moral distance add rigor to our analysis of culture in IR and inform how we should study normative interactions when moral concerns are present.

Here I have argued that moral distance is consistent with many ideas in constructivist work, while also deepening our understanding of concepts such as issue characteristics, norm alignment, and cultural match. Moral distance can also help to explain which processes and outcomes are more likely in normative interactions. As moral distance is not static, what happens during normative interactions can shape how far apart actors are from each other. Moral concerns can be brought closer together or be pushed further apart. The actors, the strategies used, and the communicative environment of the exchange will all influence and be influenced by the moral concerns that are present. They are mutually constituting in somewhat predictable ways. In the next section, I further explain how moral distance strengthens existing explanations of norm processes and outcomes and discuss what it adds to these understandings.

Moral Distance in Normative Interactions: Integration and Contribution to Existing Literature on Norm Processes and Outcomes

Much of the scholarship examining normative interactions and norm change emphasizes the role of actors and their strategies ( Keck and Sikkink 1998 ; Acharya 2004 ; Wiener 2008 ), the communicative environment ( Payne 2001 ; Wiener 2008 , 2014 , 2018 ), and the local structures shaping political possibilities ( Checkel 1997 ; Acharya 2004 ; Zimmermann 2016 ), with change in norm content as an outcome of contestation. Even as contestation scholarship challenges the conceptualization of norms as facts ( Niemann and Schillinger 2017 ), arguing instead that norms are processes ( Krook and True 2012 ), norm content is still treated as the object shaped by contestation dynamics, not as a factor that can also influence what occurs. While the other factors emphasized in the literature are important for understanding normative processes, they do not provide a complete picture. I argue that the content of the ideas themselves also matters. If moral values are present in normative interactions, they are likely influencing these other factors and the subsequent processes and outcomes. As moral distance suggests, differences in the perceived validity or application of norms driving conflict could be due in part to different moral values. Additionally, I suggest that moral distance can affect perceptions of actors and actor identities, the effectiveness of advocacy strategies, and the degree of contentiousness in the communicative environment during normative interactions. I begin by discussing actor characteristics and identity and exploring how moral distance can shape perceptions, relationships, and identities. Then I discuss the main types of politics and advocacy strategies studied in constructivism, outlining how moral distance can moderate the effectiveness of these strategies. I also introduce a new type of politics stemming from moral conflict that constructivism has not fully considered, which I call destigmatization politics. Finally, I summarize other factors structuring the communicative exchange and examine how moral distance could affect these factors. These basic relationships are illustrated in  figure 3 and are explained in further detail below.

Factors shaping normative interactions.

It has been well established that the actors involved in normative interactions—both the norm entrepreneurs (advocates, messengers) and the targets of new norms (policy gatekeepers, powerful nodes within issue networks)—have attributes that shape whether norm promotion will be successful (see, e.g., Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 ; Busby 2010 ; Carpenter 2014 ). Busby identified specific messenger attributes, such as similarity between messengers and policy gatekeepers, on a range of characteristics that make policy change more likely. Carpenter's work further broadens conceptions of actor attributes beyond the characteristics of individuals to the characteristics of advocacy networks. Her scholarship adds the dimension of intranetwork relations to the study of advocacy, meaning that the relational ties among issues, organizations, and activists shape discursive processes, how issues are seen, and which issues get picked up ( Carpenter 2014 , 51). Norm entrepreneurs are shaped and sometimes constrained by social networks and the interests and values of those they are connected to, particularly powerful central hubs. Both scholars highlight characteristics shaping actor and network relationships and effectiveness.

While some actor characteristics appear fixed for individuals (race, age), some are more mutable (partisanship, ideology, organizational mission). Actor characteristics or attributes signal identity and group membership, which actors can shape as they present themselves to others in interactions, and which targets also perceive and interpret. Forming relational ties within actor networks and between advocates and targets relies on underlying mechanisms of trust, prestige, power, and a desire for what some security scholars call “ontological security,” or the creation of a coherent sense of self ( Mitzen 2006 ; Steele 2008 ; Flockhart 2016 ). Individuals need to feel secure in their identities, and these identities are formed and sustained through relationships ( Mitzen 2006 ). Actor identities are therefore relational and social. Actors also have needs related to identity coherence, such as a positive sense of self and group esteem or status ( Flockhart 2006 ). Actors’ identities and how they fulfill their identity needs will influence why certain norms are discussed or discarded between actors, as actors are more likely to accept norms that fit, and not contradict, their identities. As argued in the prior section, moral values will influence agreement and how a normative interaction unfolds.

As some of the most deeply held beliefs, moral values are a strong aspect of identity ( Aquino and Reed II 2002 ). They are central to how actors define and sustain a coherent sense of self and to the cultural background knowledge actors bring to an interaction. The degree to which these values align between norm entrepreneurs and targets can shape perceptions of similarity, trust, prestige, and group membership. Where values are misaligned, distrust and status and identity threat are more likely. When deeply held beliefs are challenged, people often feel threatened or defensive ( Branscombe et al. 1999 ; Effron 2014 ). As self and other categorizations are a fundamental part of identity construction ( Flockhart 2006 ), actors are likely to reject values they see as contradicting their core beliefs to preserve a coherent and positive sense of self. This suggests that the moral values in use and the moral distance between actors will shape perceptions of each other and perceptions of self, which will have consequences for the normative exchange.

Alignment on moral values is therefore one factor potentially influencing the effectiveness of norm entrepreneurs. In Busby's (2010) case study of the campaign for debt relief, he tells the story of the Irish rock star Bono meeting with US Senator Jesse Helms, a conservative from North Carolina who had previously disparaged foreign assistance as “throwing money down ratholes” ( Busby 2010 , 70), and convincing him to support debt relief by appealing to their shared Christian faith. Senator Helms's initial position, which demonstrated a lack of concern for outgroup members, shifted when Bono emphasized the Christian traditions of care and charity. Bono established in-group membership and appealed to the authority moral foundation (respect for traditions) and to the harm/care moral foundation (virtues of kindness and charity). He was able to do so effectively because of overlapping moral concerns. This is an example of what can occur when actors share moral values that reaffirm positive identities.

If messengers and targets are misaligned on moral values, moral distance will matter for how actors are perceived and for what should happen next in a normative exchange. Actors who diverge on moral values but overlap on other identity characteristics, or who hold in esteem other characteristics of each other, might garner greater trust and recognition than actors who diverge in multiple ways, but for norm adaptation or adoption to occur, they will still need to work toward bringing moral concerns closer together. If actors are seen as coming from very different moral communities, meaning their moral distance is great, interactions are likely to be contentious. Feinberg and Willer (2015) found that as the salience of different moral values to individuals gets stronger, the less likely those individuals are to try to find a middle ground or to adopt an entirely new position on the issue of concern. Other recent studies in social psychology support this point. For example, heavily moralized conflict undermines the ability of people on opposite sides to deliberate or compromise ( Marietta 2008 ; Ryan 2017 ). The greater the moralized attitude an individual has toward a particular issue, the more likely they are to reject compromises, to punish compromising politicians, and to forsake individual material gain ( Ryan 2017 ). At their most extreme, moralized issues can reach sacred status, where people treat their concern as having infinite or transcendent value, precluding any trade-offs ( Tetlock et al. 2000 ). This suggests that if moral distance between actors is great and becomes sacralized, then norm adoption or modification is unlikely, making rejection—or even embracing the position of a norm transgressor—more likely. Sacralization of moral values can occur before a normative interaction begins, if actors bring these positions into an interaction; sacralization can also be created through the interaction in response to actors, their rhetoric and their actions, and other factors structuring the communicative environment. Processes of sacralization will intensify the salience of diverging moral concerns, which can maintain or even widen moral distance. De-escalating sacralization by reducing the salience of the sacralized moral concern can shorten the moral distance, creating space for shared moral concerns, but this will be difficult to accomplish and could lead to prolonged conflict. If sacralization remains, norm rejection will be a more stable outcome. Actor characteristics—such as their identities and background knowledge as well as their strategies of engagement and the structure of the exchange—will be important for shaping what occurs in all these circumstances.

The strategies of norm entrepreneurs have also been studied extensively in constructivist scholarship, but the influence of moral values and moral distance on advocacy effectiveness has not been examined. Moral distance can shape the outcome of each of the main strategies norm entrepreneurs can employ, influencing whether it successfully engages or changes the concerns of the target. First, most of the advocacy strategies transnational advocacy scholars have identified either rely on or are facilitated by the creation of agreement on norms between entrepreneurs and targets. Although agreement is not necessary for policy change, since coercive pressures could also create this outcome, persuasion toward agreement with a norm is often a goal of advocacy and social movements. In Keck and Sikkink's framework ( Keck and Sikkink 1998 , 18–25), each type of politics engages with agreement. In information politics, advocates move politically usable information quickly and credibly to where it will have the most impact ( Keck and Sikkink 1998 , 18). Information and data not conforming to the target's previously held notions or cultural background knowledge are less likely to be accepted ( Nickerson 1998 ), making agreement one of the mechanisms for accepting new information. Symbolic politics relies on the ability to call upon symbols, actions, or stories to make sense of a situation ( Keck and Sikkink 1998 , 22); without agreement on the significance of the symbols, this strategy will not be effective. In leverage politics, the ability to call upon powerful actors to change a situation using material leverage (usually money or goods) or normative leverage (such as shaming and praise) ( Keck and Sikkink 1998 , 23) often requires achieving normative agreement with those powerful actors. Last, in accountability politics, the effort to compel targets of advocacy to act using policies, positions, or systems already in place ( Keck and Sikkink 1998 , 24) can require venue shopping for more receptive audiences, identifying other entities within the system that align with advocates, and then convincing these entities to act. One common example of this process is when executive or legislative actors reject or contest a norm, and as a consequence advocates turn to the judicial system to enforce norm adoption. For the judicial system to engage in accountability politics, it must agree with the advocates’ normative position. If norm agreement is a goal of advocacy work, moral concerns and moral distance should be considered, as they can shape receptivity to information, symbolic references, and normative or material leverage. As mentioned in the discussion of actors, how strongly individuals hold their moral concerns and how far apart they are from other actors can make these specific strategies more or less effective.

To illustrate using a couple of specific examples within information, symbolic, leverage, and accountability politics, advocates may use framing to emphasize different aspects of norms ( Benford and Snow 2000 ), such as framing arguments to fit a target's values ( Busby 2010 ) or domestic cultural norms ( Checkel 1999 ) to better match the interests and values of policy gatekeepers. Advocates can also graft or prune norms ( Price 1998 ; Acharya 2004 ), with the immediate or long-term goal of aligning with the norms held by targets. Framing can also be used to highlight similar actor attributes through building in-group recognition or using positive peer pressure tied to in-group identities, potentially making advocacy more effective. MFT studies support the importance of framing and strategically matching a problem to salient moral values. Several studies have found that effectively matching key moral values through strategic framing can build support for policies that would otherwise be rejected. For example, when advocates for climate change mitigation policies talked about climate change using harm as the main value, they did not find support from political conservatives who prioritize purity, in-group, and authority values ( Feinberg and Willer 2013 ). Reframing the problem to highlight pollution and the importance of preserving the purity of the environment increased conservatives’ willingness to adopt mitigation policies. However, many advocates frame issues according to the moral values that are most salient for them, and those with the strongest moral convictions have less motivation and less capacity to employ strategic framing because they are less willing to compromise on core beliefs ( Feinberg and Willer 2015 ). While it may be challenging for advocates, framing issues according to target moral beliefs will likely be more effective.

Framing can appeal to salient moral values or change their salience, but it does not necessarily challenge, question, or change a moral concern. Challenging and changing a deeply held belief is much harder to do than reframing an issue. Unlike in the environmental example, advocates for LGBTQ rights cannot reframe the issue to appeal to purity, as purity moral values are used to justify homophobia and are less congruous with equity-based arguments. In this scenario, norm entrepreneurs and conservative targets of LGBTQ rights advocacy are very far apart in terms of which moral values are most salient, and framing is not the best strategy for taking on purity concerns. As LGBTQ advocates in many high-income countries have found, appealing to authority moral values around tradition, such as traditional family structures, can be a successful strategy in the fight for marriage equality (e.g., “gay couples are just like straight couples who value marriage and family”). This framing strategy might secure a change in marriage laws in more liberal polities where purity concerns are less culturally dominant, and over time the normalizing of gay relationships might make existing purity concerns less salient, but it dances around the fundamental disagreement. In other countries where the backlash against LGBTQ rights and the criminalization of gay sex have continued or strengthened, reducing the salience of purity concerns might have to occur before appeals to tradition can succeed. Moral distance will therefore influence the effectiveness of framing strategies.

Naming and shaming is another tactic that has received significant attention in the literature, with studies finding variable effects on state and individual behavior, often due to factors or conditions related to the issue, the actors, and other state incentives ( Hafner-Burton 2008 ; Krain 2012 ; Murdie and Davis 2012 ). Moral distance is also likely to influence the effectiveness of this form of advocacy. Naming and shaming might not work, or might lead to worse human rights violations, when the capacity of countries to implement reforms is low and those in power are more concerned with maintaining political control ( Hafner-Burton 2008 ). Snyder (2020) proposes that shaming can also lead to backlash, particularly when the shamers are outsiders targeting widespread cultural practices. However, there is also evidence that naming and shaming can reduce human rights violations, such as in campaigns targeting the most extreme instances of genocide or politicide ( Krain 2012 ), or when campaigns from human rights organizations are supported by additional pressure from other actors in intergovernmental and domestic organizations ( Murdie and Davis 2012 ).

The reasons actors may accept new norms and change their behavior in response to naming and shaming are normative and instrumental. Perpetrators might be more likely to change their behavior if they cannot risk the loss of power, resources, allies, or legitimacy that inaction would bring, particularly if there are significant differences in the material power of the advocates and targets ( Krain 2012 ; Payne 2001 ). Keck and Sikkink (1998 , 29) also argue that countries are most susceptible to normative leverage such as naming and shaming when they “aspire to belong to a normative community of nations.” Reputational concerns and the desire to be a member of an esteemed community can make actors more vulnerable to moral pressures ( Risse et al. 1999 , 245). Shame is also a threat to ontological security, representing an insecurity in self-identity ( Steele 2008 ). If shame leads to remorse, it could change behavior; however, shame can also lead to defensiveness and the desire to resist the recognition of wrongdoing to preserve a coherent and positive sense of self. Moral distance could therefore explain some of the variation in how actors respond to naming and shaming. Greater moral distance between entrepreneurs and targets could contribute to unsuccessful naming and shaming. If actors see themselves as aligned with very different moral concerns, this can affect their identities vis-à-vis each other. If a target actor feels strongly about the rightness of their position (e.g., certain actors in African states in response to LGBTQ rights promotion), and they do not identify with the positions of the norm entrepreneurs, reputational issues will not be a concern. These actors do not want to be included in what they see as an opposing moral community. This reaction is more likely to occur when a new norm challenges important traditions, local respected authorities, or purity concerns, and when the entrepreneur is a cultural out-group member. These violations can lead to feelings of anger and resentment ( Snyder 2020 ) and threaten individuals’ or a group's status. In these circumstances, moral distance creates distinct in-groups and out-groups, potentially exacerbating the in-group moral foundation, and naming and shaming will be less likely to work. The target actors may willfully transgress the new norm, immunize themselves against it, or react through another form of backlash, such as forgoing material gain when moralized attitudes become sacralized ( Evers 2017 ; Nuñez-Mietz and Iommi 2017 ; Ryan 2017 ; Snyder 2020 ). As Adler-Nissen argues (2014, 171 ), shaming is not likely to lead to norm compliance unless the moral authority of the stigmatizer is accepted. On the other hand, if there are shared moral concerns, naming and shaming will be more likely to work, absent other political or resource-based concerns.

While there may be ways to shame effectively when the moral distance is great, more deliberative processes of normative exchange focused on reducing intergroup conflict might be better tactics for engaging in difficult moral discussions and creating conditions that are less threatening to core beliefs and identities. Deliberative processes may not work in all conflicts, particularly those that have been sacralized—and the beliefs of parties in conflict might be irreconcilable until an exogenous event such as a regime change, a crisis, or a stronger moral imperative emerges and shifts the actors or priorities. However, interactive deliberation can help to illuminate shared moral concerns and be persuasive in ways other means of communication cannot. The MFT literature has examined persuasion through the reframing of moral concerns, which can happen during deliberation, but for insight into deeper forms of persuasion, such as changing someone's mind in a more fundamental way, scholarship from psychology and political science on mitigating intergroup conflict is useful in extending MFT and work in IR on contact theory ( Cuhadar and Dayton 2011 ) and agonistic institutions ( Wiener 2014 , 2018) . Integrating this work into IR also introduces a new form of politics, which I call destigmatization politics.

Stigmatization, the negative labeling of an identity, attribute, or behavior ( Goffman [1963] 2014 ), underlies many moral conflicts. It is a fundamental driver of discrimination and inequality, and it plays an important role in the politics surrounding culture war issues, where calls for rights advancements encounter beliefs justifying discrimination. Additionally, stigmatization can occur within a normative interaction when actors are seen as very different from each other and are judged harshly for these differences, or when naming and shaming is used, which can lead to various outcomes. As Zarakol (2014 , 317) argues, when stigma is present in an interaction, “the response is much more likely to be failed attempts at correction, overcompensation or a stubborn denial that a problem exists.” The drivers of stigma are often emotional and moral, such as fear of difference (protection of the in-group), disgust (purity), and other forms of harsh moral judgment, such as around harm and fairness violations ( Herek and Capitanio 1998 ).

Many human rights and culture war issues involve concern for population groups so severely stigmatized that they are treated as less than fully human. Discrimination, violence, and genocide are documented consequences of this dehumanization. Recent experimental evidence on mitigating intergroup conflict points to multiple strategies to effectively reduce significant stigmatization. Some of these strategies are perspective taking, intergroup contact, and in-group descriptive norm setting, which I am grouping under destigmatization politics. Perspective taking typically asks individuals to imagine being in the shoes of a member of the out-group by reading a written narrative or having a personal conversation with an advocate ( Simonovits, Kézdi, and Kardos 2018 ). Intergroup contact theory facilitates interactions between members of in-groups and out-groups to increase understanding and dialogue ( Pettigrew and Tropp 2006 ; Broockman and Kalla 2016 ). In-group descriptive norm setting designates as spokespersons in-group members who have changed their minds and committed to a new norm or way of acting. These spokespersons then communicate to other in-group members why they changed, why changing has been important, and why others should change as well ( Smith and Louis 2008 ). These types of interventions have been found to strengthen persuasion, such as through durably reducing transphobia in the United States ( Broockman and Kalla 2016 ), anti-Roma sentiments in Hungary ( Simonovits, Kézdi, and Kardos 2018 ), and exclusionary attitudes toward unauthorized immigrants ( Kalla and Broockman 2020 ).

These approaches could also be used to lessen conflict within the normative exchange. As discussed earlier, stigmatization as a strategy can be effective under some conditions, but when moral distance is great it is unlikely to work. Not only is naming and shaming less likely to be effective, but stigmatization can also make the communicative environment increasingly contentious. Diverging salient moral concerns are also likely to lead to reciprocal stigmatization of actors, exacerbating conflict. To engage in deliberation and persuasion requires reducing stigmatization. If normative interactions are highly contentious or even hostile, these strategies could help reduce tensions.

Factors Structuring the Communicative Environment

The literature has demonstrated that the design of multinational and regional institutions, and treaty- and other policy-making processes, is important in shaping who is involved and to what extent they have influence over the global norm-creation process ( Acharya 2004 , 2011 ; Wiener 2018 ). It is proposed that norms created through more participatory processes may see broader diffusion as normative debates may have worked themselves into a compromise position. If people do not have access to sites of discourse where compromise, bargaining, or meaningful discussion is possible, they might also be more resistant to a new norm ( Snyder 2020 ). The location and means of the interaction—such as whether it is public, private, face-to-face, virtual, direct, indirect, in global forums, or in domestic venues—can influence what happens during the exchange. For example, there is evidence that the benefits of intergroup contact theory can be brought about in person and over the phone, but not through Twitter ( Yardi and Boyd 2010 ; Broockman and Kalla 2016 ; Kalla and Broockman 2020 ). Twitter and other rapid, reactive platforms might exacerbate moral distance rather than shortening it. As Wiener and others argue, the communicative process, particularly in terms of the degree of trust, threat, and willingness to engage with normative perspectives, is influenced by a range of factors. These include where normative interactions take place, who has access to sites of contestation, who is present during the interaction, procedural justice, other rules in use, and the means through which interactions occur.

In summary, examining the moral values used to justify a norm or resistance to a norm can help identify what is most at stake in an interaction. Additionally, when moral values provide the primary justifications for or disapproval of a norm, moral distance can shape what happens in normative interactions, how norms change, and what the eventual outcome is for norm diffusion. Moral distance can influence actor identities and the contentiousness of disagreement, and it can shape which strategies are more or less likely to lead to alignment, modification, or continued rejection of a norm. The content of the norm, the actors, the strategies, and the communicative environment of the exchange all influence each other.

In the prior section, I argued for the contributions of moral values and moral distance to constructivist understandings of normative interactions. Here I draw together and extend these arguments in a model of how moral distance might influence normative processes and outcomes. I then lay out propositions for what is likely to happen with differing degrees of moral distance, using the case of FGM as an illustration. Beginning with the overarching model represented in  figure 4 , the degree of moral distance between actors, in interaction with the strategies used and the factors structuring the communicative exchange, influences the type and intensity of contestation. By type of contestation, I mean whether the disagreement is about the validity or application of a norm, and by intensity, I mean how tranquil or contentious an interaction is, with mistrust or status and identity threat increasing the intensity of the exchange. The type and intensity of contestation will then influence the duration or time frame of contestation and whether or how contestation can be resolved. The possible outcomes include adoption of the new norm, rejection, or persisting contestation. The degree of salience of moral values when they align, overlap, or diverge will also influence what occurs during the interaction and how stable or insecure a norm outcome is.

Model of moral distance and norm processes and outcomes.

The following propositions could apply to any level of interaction, from norm entrepreneurs interacting with policy gatekeepers at the international or national level to implementation gatekeepers or community members interacting at the local level. To help illustrate the propositions, I am using the case of an anti-FGM norm as an example of what is most likely to occur given different degrees of moral distance, and how the likely processes and outcomes are conditioned by the other key factors. For the purposes of the case, I am defining the justificatory content of the anti-FGM norm as prioritizing the harm moral foundation with the fairness moral foundation present but less salient. This justification is linked to the behavior change request of abolishing the practice and is targeted at local officials in communities where FGM prevalence is high.

Moral Alignment

One of the more straightforward processes is likely to occur when actors promoting this anti-FGM norm interact with target actors who hold similar justificatory beliefs associated with FGM. In situations with moral alignment, the matching of moral values is consistent with actor identities and background knowledge and is likely to contribute to less intense interactions. Under these circumstances, information or symbolic politics is likely to be sufficient, with data and narratives framed according to harm and fairness. Other approaches will be less necessary, as greater coercion is not required. The structure of the exchange, such as the location, means, and rules of the interaction, is also more flexible since the risk of mistrust and identity and status threat are lower. Therefore, in this interaction, norm adoption is the likely outcome. Additionally, if the moral values are agreed upon and highly salient, potentially even sacralized, norm adoption will be a more stable outcome.

Proposition 1a: Moral alignment is more likely to lead to norm adoption

Proposition 1b: Norm adoption will be a more stable outcome if the aligned moral values are highly salient

Moral Overlap

When moral values overlap but are not fully aligned, there will be more contingencies. The actors, their strategies, and the structure of the interaction can lead to several different possible processes and outcomes. For example, if the anti-FGM norm entrepreneur interacts with someone who also sees the harm of FGM and holds this moral value as salient, but at the same time values tradition and maintains the salience of the authority foundation, these actors will overlap on harm but diverge on the importance of authority and fairness moral concerns. Moral overlap could lead to several possible processes and outcomes. First, if the target places significantly more emphasis on the harm of FGM or if the salience of this value is increased over the course of the interaction, this might be sufficient for norm adoption. However, if the salience of the authority foundation is close to that of the target's concern for harm, they will be less likely to agree with abolition. This might lead to a process of application contestation surrounding the suggested behavior change. Additionally, the salience of the relevant moral values and their prioritization is up for discussion. This process is less contentious than validity contestation as the actors disagree on how much to prioritize the harm moral foundation but agree that it is a valid moral value in this case. The quickest potential outcome will be to change the behavior request from abolition to harm reduction, by maintaining a tradition but converting it into a different ritual or to a less invasive form of FGM. This process could lead to norm adaptation, and the adoption of a changed norm. A medium-term possibility would be to maintain discussion and work toward persuading the target to place greater value on harm than on authority. If this is successful, adoption of the original anti-FGM norm becomes more likely as this interaction would progress toward moral alignment.

In either the adaptation scenario or the persuasion scenario, the strategies and structure of the interaction can influence the process and outcome to a greater degree than in the scenario where moral alignment occurs at the beginning. When there is moral overlap, norm entrepreneurs should maintain a shared moral identity with the target to facilitate trust and diminish the possibility of status or identity threat. To most effectively do so, they can use information, symbolic, and leverage politics to appeal to the shared moral concern. Accountability and destigmatization politics will be less necessary in a situation of shared moral ground. Maintaining trust and shared identity should also be considered in the structure of the exchange, which might favor face-to-face or direct interactions with attention to access and participation. If the interactions go poorly, leading to mistrust or identity or status threat, moral distance could increase. For example, if advocates do not take authority concerns seriously and alienate target actors, the salience of targets’ authority concerns could grow while the salience of their concern for harm could diminish, leading to more significant moral distance.

Proposition 2a: Moral overlap is more likely to lead to adaptation and adoption of a modified norm in the short term

Proposition 2b: Moral overlap could lead to adoption of the original norm under favorable strategic and structural conditions in the medium term

Proposition 2c: Moral overlap could lead to shorter moral distance under unfavorable strategic and structural conditions

Shorter Moral Distance

With shorter moral distance, the possible scenarios for processes and outcomes are more uncertain and influenced to a greater extent by what occurs in the interaction. Actors can begin an interaction with differing moral concerns, or negative interactions can move actors from moral overlap to more significant moral distance. With shorter moral distance, actors hold different moral values as highly salient. They might have multiple moral concerns, but they give clear priority to differing values. As compared to actors with greater moral distance, either their differing moral values are more congruous with each other or tensions between them are less extreme. In one example of shorter moral distance, a target actor places significant emphasis primarily on the authority foundation and has little or no concern for harm, while the norm entrepreneur prioritizes harm. Norm entrepreneurs could aim for moral overlap by creating or connecting on a shared concern for harm and then working toward increasing its salience in comparison to the authority foundation. Validity contestation is likely the main point of disagreement. With shorter moral distance, a longer period of contestation is therefore more likely than with moral overlap, as the conversion of the target actor to prioritizing harm will be more challenging. Information, symbolic, leverage, accountability, and destigmatization politics could all be useful, the latter two particularly so if there is no target actor concern for harm. For persuasion to be effective, the communicative process and structure of the exchange will matter quite a bit, as building trust and avoiding status and identity threat will facilitate increasing the salience of harm and decreasing the salience of authority, while eroding trust and threatening identities and status will lead to the opposite. If the strategy is to foster identification with each other and build trust, actor characteristics might matter more. Norm entrepreneurs with in-group characteristics will likely be more effective than those without. Finally, if short moral distance remains or if moral distance varies over time—meaning it contracts toward moral overlap or expands toward greater moral distance, without resolution—contestation could be ongoing. Shorter moral distance can be the crossroads or gateway condition to moral overlap or greater moral distance, or it could be where normative contestation could get stuck.

Proposition 3a: Shorter moral distance can lead to moral overlap under favorable strategic, structural, and actor conditions

Proposition 3b: Shorter moral distance can lead to greater moral distance under unfavorable strategic, structural, and actor conditions

Proposition 3c: If shorter moral distance persists, ongoing contestation is the likely outcome

Greater Moral Distance

If greater moral distance is present before an interaction or created through interactions, it will contribute to greater contentiousness, as it is a form of fundamental validity contestation. In the case of FGM, this could occur if norm entrepreneurs hold fairness concerns as significantly more salient than others and if targets hold purity concerns as significantly more salient. This could also occur if any of the opposing actor positions become sacralized. For example, tradition could become sacralized and therefore eliminate any concern for harm. If greater moral distance is maintained, norm rejection is the most likely outcome. Sacralization will make shortening moral distance significantly harder, making rejection a more stable outcome. Thus, shortening moral distance will take quite a bit of advocacy effort. The actors in these types of exchanges typically have very different identities, very different background knowledge, and very little trust. These conditions suggest that information, symbolic, and leverage politics are unlikely to work. Accountability and destigmatization politics provide the best opportunities for reducing intergroup conflict or locating more sympathetic actors with the power to act on the problem. Both strategies can be time consuming. Additionally, norm entrepreneurs should carefully consider actor characteristics and the factors structuring interactions to succeed in destigmatization, trust building, and de-intensifying the exchange, or in the best way to pursue accountability politics.

Proposition 4a: Greater moral distance is more likely to lead to norm rejection

Proposition 4b: Norm rejection will be a more stable outcome if the distant moral values are highly salient

Proposition 4c: Greater moral distance can lead to shorter moral distance under favorable strategic, structural, and actor conditions

The outcomes of these propositions and the factors influencing them are summarized in  table 1 .

Proposed contingencies and outcomes of moral distance in norm interactions

These propositions build from the literature on actors, strategies, and communicative environments in interaction with the new concept of moral distance. These interactions suggest that normative processes can move in patterns and somewhat predictable pathways that are linked to most likely outcomes. Together they help to explain why some norms are adopted more quickly, while others are rejected, are modified, or go through longer periods of contestation. This conceptualization of norm processes and outcomes sees norm content as central to what occurs, as it both shapes and is shaped by these other key factors.

Throughout this paper, I have positioned the important but neglected role of moral values within constructivist IR work on norms, arguing for what it contributes to understandings of norm content and normative interactions. Drawing attention to the justificatory component of norms, I suggest that more clearly defining and analyzing the values used in the rationales for why certain issues are problems, why particular behaviors should change, and who should be responsible can strengthen understandings of norm content and meaning. Additionally, this greater insight into what is in a norm can help to explain subsequent political processes. Through the concept of moral distance ( figure 2 ), I argue that pinpointing how close or how far apart actors are in their salient moral values can help to determine what processes and outcomes are most likely. I outline how this concept, in interaction with other key factors, can help explain why some norms are adopted quite quickly with little resistance, while others go through long contested periods resulting in norm change, rejection, or persisting conflict.

This theoretical contribution addresses fragmentation in the literature, key gaps in our understanding of how norms work, and what courses of action are most likely to be effective under different conditions. The spectrum of agreement illustrated in  figure 1 synthesizes different ways of contesting, rejecting, or adopting norms into a simplified framework for understanding possible processes and outcomes. When combined with my propositions on moral distance ( figure 4 and  table 1 ), it illustrates a model of the potential pathways an interaction can take, and predicts likely outcomes given moral distance, actor characteristics, strategies, and the structure of the interaction. This model thus provides a way to look for more generalizable patterns across individual cases; it is a tool scholars can use to better assess what part or parts of the norm are agreed upon, what is driving conflict, what impact various conditions have on conflict, and what this conflict is likely to mean for the norm in question.

Additionally, moral distance provides new insight into factors such as issue and actor characteristics, cultural match, and advocacy strategies, which have received a lot of attention in constructivist work and more recently in work on communicative environments. Examining moral distance can provide greater clarity on why problems with the characteristics of bodily harm, rights violations, and clear causal chains can experience different processes and outcomes—it can vary based on what moral values are salient and what the moral distance is between actors. Examining morality can also deepen the field's engagement with culture, which has been neglected in favor of a greater focus on legal rules and institutions. Ignoring values and beliefs underspecifies the content of a norm, and it contributes to “misdiagnosing” why norms resonate and diffuse, change, or are rejected. For example, much of the scholarship, including analyses of norm content in contestation processes, tends to focus on the vagueness ( Joachim and Schneiker 2012 ; Krook and True 2012 ), elusiveness ( Niemann and Schillinger 2017 ), or invisibility ( Wiener 2008 ) of norm content and meaning, with norm diffusion said to take place due to vagueness. Some norms might be vague, but this characteristic varies, and what scholars see as vagueness in some norms might simply be the result of underspecifying their components. Instead of different people seeing what they want in norms, these individuals might be interpreting the justification for a norm in different ways according to which moral values are most salient, given their cultural background knowledge and individual beliefs. The plastic bag ban might be one such example. Was the global norm vague or was the justification interpreted differently in India and South Africa? I think it could be the latter. There are potentially more patterns to be identified in what is currently seen as accidental, arbitrary, or intangible.

Integrated with work on actor characteristics, advocacy strategies, and communicative environments, moral distance points to potential explanations for when these factors are most likely to influence interactions, and why they will be more or less effective in creating alignment on a norm ( figure 3 and  table 1 ). Moral values shape actor identities and are likely considered when people assess how similar or different they are from those with whom they are interacting. Moral distance will also shape perceptions of trust among actors and status or identity threat. While actor similarity has been noted as important in advocacy ( Busby 2010 ), the role of moral distance in shaping interactions has not been explicitly investigated.

This gap extends to work on advocacy strategies. Price and Sikkink note in a recent piece on norms, moral psychology, and neuroscience that IR literature on “processes of persuasion and pressure” has largely neglected the role of moral intuitions, among other types of cognitive biases or filters, which “could help us understand the uptake of advocacy campaign techniques, including attempts to foster change” ( Price and Sikkink 2021 , 29). I agree with this assessment. Through moral distance, I describe how moral values can shape the effectiveness of different strategies, including receptivity to framing, naming, and shaming within information, symbolic, and leverage politics. While many of these strategies are understood as relying primarily on social sanctions or pressure ( Price and Sikkink 2021 , 37), moral distance suggests that social sanctions and pressure will work only under conditions of moral closeness. Greater moral distance could cause these mechanisms to backfire, by exacerbating intergroup conflict, status and identity threat, and mistrust. This argument points to another potential mechanism for norm promotion that does not rely on ostracism: destigmatization politics, a way of reducing conflict within a normative exchange and advancing rights for severely stigmatized groups. In destigmatization politics, the primary mechanism is to build relationships and understanding across groups. This mechanism is also normative and might be of particular interest to scholars concerned with dialogue, agonistic institutions, and rights promotion efforts.

Moving forward, there are several ways to investigate these ideas and propositions or otherwise use MFT in IR scholarship. MFT scholars have developed methods for identifying the presence and salience of various moral concerns through qualitative content analysis using the Moral Foundations Dictionary ( Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009 ), and through surveys using the Moral Foundations Questionnaire ( Graham et al. 2011 ). The Moral Foundations Dictionary requires refinement for specific normative debates and contexts, but it provides a starting point for examining the speeches, statements, and justifications in normative interactions. The Moral Foundations Dictionary could be adapted and used to code qualitative sources of data from past policy processes, or prospectively as events unfold. Future IR work can build from these resources to test one or more of the theoretical propositions discussed here through either retrospective or prospective data analysis. For example, the main propositions and proposed contingencies could be tested by a cross-sectional study comparing countries responding to a global norm at a specific time, or by using process tracing over a longer time frame.

Many of the proposed contingencies are logical extensions of the literature synthesis and theorizing of moral distance, but their specificity, including the relationship between the key factors and the intensity and duration of contestation, can be improved through empirical work. For example, research comparing the means of communication, a structuring factor, has only just begun. It is hard to know from existing work precisely how it will contribute to moral distance. IR scholars working on social media and advocacy could shed light on these dynamics. Likewise, research on actor attributes is still somewhat vague. Intergroup conflict scholars have started testing whether in-group or out-group messengers are more effective when it comes to persuasion through perspective taking, and the results are mixed ( Broockman and Kalla 2016 ; Kalla and Broockman 2020 ). Further work on how actor attributes, strategies, and factors structuring the interaction work in specific interactions could help to refine the general theory. There are still many unanswered questions about what will have the biggest impact in an interaction and about what is sufficient for achieving a desired outcome. These sorts of questions are useful for both scholars and practitioners, as better understanding of the relationship between the proposed factors can aid theory development and guide decision-making. Future research could also identify other moderating factors.

Additionally, the propositions and contingencies of the moral distance model could be used to establish conditions for advocacy field experiments, a methodology not typically used in constructivist scholarship. This methodology could be used to refine understandings of advocacy effectiveness. For example, field experiments could assess what happens if issues are or are not strategically framed according to the moral positions of advocacy targets, what happens in response to naming and shaming under different conditions of moral distance, and whether destigmatization politics can help defuse sacralization. The Moral Foundations Questionnaire survey could be used to assess general and issue-specific moral positions, as could interviews or analysis of other qualitative data sources, in advance of field experiments. This mixed-methods approach could improve our understanding of moral values among target actors, how advocacy strategies affect the salience of moral values, and whether changing moral distance influences norm outcomes.

In addition to destigmatization strategies as a means of mitigating moral conflict, there may be other ways to reduce moral salience and sacralization. Snyder (2020) proposes that by focusing on technical issues and capacity building in normative interactions, backlash could be avoided, but this has not been examined. It is hard to make moral issues into technical issues, but perhaps focusing on the technical dimensions of a problem and behavior change request can lessen the intensity of contestation. However, there are risks in ignoring morality or in reducing the salience of moral values overall. Ignoring moral concerns could lead to norm rejection or compliance issues later. Reducing the salience of moral concerns in favor of technical concerns could also reduce actors’ sense of an issue's importance or urgency to act, leading to stagnation. However, de-escalation of moral conflicts is an important area for additional research.

Next, the relationships between moral concerns, actors, strategies, and the discursive environment could be examined beyond just norm adoption. Moral distance and how it interacts with these other factors could also shape the processes of policy development and design, the likelihood a policy is enacted, and what happens during implementation. As I argued, the analysis of morality can be relevant at different political levels.

In a spin-off of what I am proposing, future work could also consider values more broadly. I chose to start with morality because it is a specific construct with empirically supported measures in many disciplines, it represents values relevant across cultures, and it is an indicator of values that are important and often highly salient in political discourse. However, there are also nonmoral values relevant to IR; these include, for example, self-oriented values found in libertarianism, in the desire for individual status or security as opposed to group status and security, and in individual political interests for dominance and control. MFT is considering the addition of a sixth foundation, the liberty/oppression foundation, but theoretically it is still unclear whether this foundation is other-oriented or self-oriented and therefore moral or nonmoral, and it is unclear how it differs from equity and fairness concerns under the fairness/cheating foundation. IR scholars can contribute to this conversation as it ties into political philosophy, political conflict, and power—areas missing from much of the work in MFT. Additionally, other values frameworks in social psychology could be adapted for use in IR; these include Schwartz's basic human values theory, which posits ten different values, most nonmoral, with motivational conflicts and congruities organizing the representation of value dimensions ( Schwartz 2012 ). This framework has not been used as much as MFT in the study of politics, but it could provide an initial structure for identifying and understanding nonmoral values in norm interactions.

There are also important unanswered questions about what happens when moral values and nonmoral values collide around a particular problem, and how this shapes norm processes and outcomes. For example, under what conditions are moral values more likely to win out? Some scholars may argue that material concerns will always take precedence, but the MFT literature and many current events argue otherwise. Currently in the United States, millions of people refuse to get vaccinated against a dangerous pathogen. For those motivated by partisan concerns, in-group loyalty takes priority over their own health, demonstrating a case where moral concerns trump material concerns. People can also use moral values insincerely as cover for material concerns ( Payne 2001 ; Acharya 2004 ), or late adopter targets can jump on the bandwagon of policy diffusion to avoid the stigma of backwardness, without becoming true believers ( Weyland 2009 , 41). Insincerity can be problematic if it is discovered, as that will affect trust, but these individuals are also likely behaving in a strategic manner to cover other interests or to appeal to constituencies for whom moral values matter a great deal. There are questions around what happens if people are insincere, if moral values are competing with nonmoral values for salience, and how these circumstances would affect the process I outlined above. My suggestion for future research is to identify which moral and/or nonmoral values are in use in normative interactions, to conceptualize these values in terms of congruence or noncongruence (alignment, overlap, distance), and to study what happens to norm processes and outcomes through testing and adding to the propositions I outline in this paper.

Centering the analysis of moral values and moral distance in work on normative processes and outcomes can provide a stronger theoretical basis for understanding why and how certain processes and outcomes occur. The study of moral distance fits with widely used qualitative approaches in IR scholarship on norms, and it provides avenues for less commonly used experimental methods. It provides a framework for investigating the role of morals—an often mentioned but undertheorized concept—in how different groups understand and create the meaning of norms, how normative agreement and disagreement happen, and what the possibilities are for changing the conditions or directions of normative interactions through actors, advocacy, and the structure of the exchange. With greater moral distance comes more intense contestation and fewer options for changing the direction of the discourse. With greater moral agreement, norm adoption or adaptation is more likely in the short or medium term. Integrating these ideas into IR constructivist work can therefore help to develop deeper theoretical understandings of norm content and normative interactions, reducing the fragmentation of current understandings and opening new directions for research.

I would like to acknowledge Hans Peter Schmitz for his mentorship, support, and friendly reviews as I worked on this project. His guidance has been extremely developmental, and I am very grateful. I would also like to thank Sean R. Martin for being my sounding board, copy editor, cheerleader, and partner. And finally, I would very much like to extend my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and the editorial team at International Studies Review . The experience of working on this manuscript with their constructive feedback has been wonderful, and the paper is stronger because of their suggestions.

Acharya Amitav . 2004 . “ How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism .” International Organization 58 ( 2 ): 239 – 75 .

Google Scholar

Acharya Amitav . 2011 . “ Norm Subsidiarity and Regional Orders: Sovereignty, Regionalism, and Rule-Making in the Third World .” International Studies Quarterly 55 ( 1 ): 95 – 123 .

Adler-Nissen Rebecca . 2014 . “ Stigma Management in International Relations: Transgressive Identities, Norms, and Order in International Society .” International Organization 68 ( 1 ): 143 – 76 .

Aquino Karl , Reed Americus II . 2002 . “ The Self-Importance of Moral Identity .” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 ( 6 ): 1423 – 40 .

Benford Robert D. , Snow David A. . 2000 . “ Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment .” Annual Review of Sociology 26 ( 2000 ): 611 – 39 .

Ben-Josef Hirsch Michal , Dixon Jennifer M. . 2021 . “ Rethinking Norm Change: Content and Strength in Norm Development .” Paper presented at International Studies Association Annual Meeting 2021 .

Branscombe Nyla R. , Ellemers Naomi , Spears Russell , Doosje Bertjan . 1999 . “ The Context and Content of Social Identity Threat .” In Social Identity: Context, Commitment, Content , edited by Ellemers Naomi , Spears Russell , Doosje Bertjan , 35 – 58 . Hoboken, NJ : Blackwell .

Google Preview

Broockman David , Kalla Joshua . 2016 . “ Durably Reducing Transphobia: A Field Experiment on Door-to-Door Canvassing .” Science 352 ( 6282 ): 220 – 24 .

Busby Joshua W. 2010 . Moral Movements and Foreign Policy , vol. 116 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

Carpenter R. Charli . 2007 . “ Setting the Advocacy Agenda: Theorizing Issue Emergence and Nonemergence in Transnational Advocacy Networks .” International Studies Quarterly 51 ( 1 ): 99 – 120 .

Carpenter R. Charli . 2014 . Lost Causes: Agenda Vetting in Global Issue Networks and the Shaping of Human Security . Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press .

Checkel Jeffrey T. 1997 . “ International Norms and Domestic Politics: Bridging the Rationalist—Constructivist Divide .” European Journal of International Relations 3 ( 4 ): 473 – 95 .

Checkel Jeffrey T. . 1999 . “ Norms, Institutions, and National Identity in Contemporary Europe .” International Studies Quarterly 43 ( 1 ): 83 – 114 .

Chorev Nitsan . 2012 . “ Changing Global Norms through Reactive Diffusion: The Case of Intellectual Property Protection of AIDS Drugs .” American Sociological Review 77 ( 5 ): 831 – 53

Clifford Scott , Jerit Jennifer . 2013 . “ How Words Do the Work of Politics: Moral Foundations Theory and the Debate over Stem Cell Research .” The Journal of Politics 75 ( 3 ): 659 – 71 .

Cloward Karisa . 2016 . When Norms Collide: Local Responses to Activism against Female Genital Mutilation and Early Marriage . New York : Oxford University Press .

Crawford Neta C. 2000 . “ The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and Emotional Relationships .” International Security 24 ( 4 ): 116 – 56 .

Crawford Neta C. . 2014 . “ Institutionalizing Passion in World Politics: Fear and Empathy .” International Theory 6 ( 3 ): 535 – 57 .

Cuhadar Esra , Dayton Bruce . 2011 . “ The Social Psychology of Identity and Inter-Group Conflict: From Theory to Practice .” International Studies Perspectives 12 ( 3 ): 273 – 93 .

Deitelhoff Nicole , Zimmermann Lisbeth . 2020 . “ Things We Lost in the Fire: How Different Types of Contestation Affect the Robustness of International Norms .” International Studies Review 22 ( 1 ): 51 – 76 .

Dixon Jennifer M. 2017 . “ Rhetorical Adaptation and Resistance to International Norms .” Perspectives on Politics 15 ( 1 ): 83 – 99 .

Dreier Sarah K. 2018 . “ Resisting Rights to Renounce Imperialism: East African Churches’ Strategic Symbolic Resistance to LGBTQ Inclusion .” International Studies Quarterly 62 : 423 – 36 .

Effron D.A. 2014 . “ Making Mountains of Morality from Molehills of Virtue: Threat Causes People to Overestimate Their Moral Credentials .” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40 ( 8 ): 972 – 85 .

Evers Miles . 2017 . “ On Transgression .” International Studies Quarterly 61 ( 4 ): 786 – 94 .

Feinberg Matthew , Willer Robb . 2013 . “ The Moral Roots of Environmental Attitudes .” Psychological Science 24 ( 1 ): 56 – 62 .

Feinberg Matthew , Willer Robb . 2015 . “ From Gulf to Bridge: When Do Moral Arguments Facilitate Political Influence? ” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 41 ( 12 ): 1665 – 81 .

Ferree Myra Marx . 2003 . “ Resonance and Radicalism: Feminist Framing in the Abortion Debates of the United States and Germany .” American Journal of Sociology 109 ( 2 ): 304 – 44 .

Finnemore Martha , Sikkink Kathryn . 1998 . “ International Norm Dynamics and Political Change .” International Organization 52 ( 4 ): 887 – 917 .

Flockhart Trine . 2006 . “ ‘Complex Socialization’: A Framework for the Study of State Socialization .” European Journal of International Relations 12 ( 1 ): 89 – 118 .

Flockhart Trine . 2016 . “ The Problem of Change in Constructivist Theory: Ontological Security Seeking and Agent Motivation .” Review of International Studies 42 ( 6 ): 799 – 820 .

Goffman Erving . 1963 . “ Stigma and Social Identity .” In Understanding Deviance: Connecting Classical and Contemporary Perspectives , edited by Anderson Tammy L. , 256 – 65 . New York : Routledge .

Graham Jesse , Nosek Brian A. , Haidt Jonathan , Iyer Ravi , Koleva Spassena , Ditto Peter H. . 2011 . “ Mapping the Moral Domain .” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101 ( 2 ): 366 – 85 .

Graham Jesse , Haidt Jonathan , Nosek Brian A. . 2009 . “ Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations .” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96 ( 5 ): 1029 – 46 .

Hafner-Burton Emilie M. 2008 . “ Sticks and Stones: Naming and Shaming the Human Rights Enforcement Problem .” International Organization 62 ( 4 ): 689 – 716 .

Haidt Jonathan . 2001 . “ The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment .” Psychological Review 108 ( 4 ): 814 – 34 .

Haidt Jonathan . 2008 . “ Morality .” Perspectives on Psychological Science 3 ( 1 ): 65 – 72 .

Haidt Jonathan . 2012 . The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion . New York : Pantheon Books .

Haidt Jonathan , Joseph Craig . 2004 . “ Intuitive Ethics: How Innately Prepared Intuitions Generate Culturally Variable Virtues .” Daedalus 133 : 55 – 66 .

Haidt Jonathan , Graham Jesse . 2007 . “ When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals May Not Recognize .” Social Justice Research 20 ( 1 ): 98 – 116 .

Haidt Jonathan , Hersh Matthew A. . 2001 . “ Sexual Morality: The Cultures and Emotions of Conservatives and Liberals .” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 31 ( 1 ): 191 – 221 .

Herek Gregory M. , Capitanio John P. . 1998 . “ Symbolic Prejudice or Fear of Infection? A Functional Analysis of AIDS-Related Stigma among Heterosexual Adults .” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 20 ( 3 ): 230 – 41 .

Hoffmann Matthew J. 2010 . “ Norms and Social Constructivism in International Relations .” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies , edited by Denemark Robert A. . Blackwell . Accessed September 12, 2022. https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acrefore-9780190846626-e-60 .

Horberg Elizabeth J. , Oveis Christopher , Keltner Dacher , Cohen Adam B. . 2009 . “ Disgust and the Moralization of Purity .” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97 ( 6 ): 963 – 76 .

Hutchinson Emma , Bleiker Roland . 2014 . “ Theorizing Emotions in World Politics .” International Theory 6 ( 3 ): 491 – 514 .

Joachim Jutta , Schneiker Andrea . 2012 . “ Changing Discourses, Changing Practices? Gender Mainstreaming and Security .” Comparative European Politics 10 ( 5 ): 528 – 63 .

Jost John T. , Nam H. Hannah , Amodio David M. , Van Bavel Jay J. . 2014 . “ Political Neuroscience: The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship .” Political Psychology 35 : 3 – 42 .

Jurkovich Michelle . 2020 . “ What Isn't a Norm? Redefining the Conceptual Boundaries of ‘Norms’ in the Human Rights Literature .” International Studies Review 22 ( 3 ): 693 – 711 .

Kahneman Daniel . 2011 . Thinking, Fast and Slow . New York : Farrar, Straus, and Giroux .

Kalla Joshua L. , Broockman David E. . 2020 . “ Reducing Exclusionary Attitudes through Interpersonal Conversation: Evidence from Three Field Experiments .” American Political Science Review 114 ( 2 ): 410 – 25 .

Keck Margaret , Sikkink Kathryn . 1998 . Activists without Borders: Transnational Advocacy Networks in International Politics . Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press .

Kertzer Joshua D. , Powers Kathleen E. , Rathbun Brian C. , Iyer Ravi . 2014 . “ Moral Support: How Moral Values Shape Foreign Policy Attitudes .” The Journal of Politics 76 ( 3 ): 825 – 40 .

Koleva Spassena P. , Graham Jesse , Iyer Ravi , Ditto Peter H. , Haidt Jonathan . 2012 . “ Tracing the Threads: How Five Moral Concerns (Especially Purity) Help Explain Culture War Attitudes .” Journal of Research in Personality 46 ( 2 ): 184 – 94 .

Krain Matthew . 2012 . “ J'accuse! Does Naming and Shaming Perpetrators Reduce the Severity of Genocides or Politicides? ” International Studies Quarterly 56 ( 3 ): 574 – 89 .

Krook Mona Lena , True Jacqui . 2012 . “ Rethinking the Life Cycles of International Norms: The United Nations and the Global Promotion of Gender Equality .” European Journal of International Relations 18 ( 1 ): 103 – 27 .

Kukkonen Anna , Ylä-Anttila Tuomas , Swarnakar Pradip , Broadbent Jeffrey , Lahsen Myanna , Stoddart Mark C.J. . 2018 . “ International Organizations, Advocacy Coalitions, and Domestication of Global Norms: Debates on Climate Change in Canada, the US, Brazil, and India .” Environmental Science & Policy 81 : 54 – 62 .

Leye Els , Van Eekert Nina , Shamu Simukai , Esho Tammary , Barrett Hazel , ANSER . 2019 . “ Debating Medicalization of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C): Learning from (Policy) Experiences across Countries .” Reproductive Health 16 : 158 . 3 .

Marietta Morgan . 2008 . “ From My Cold, Dead Hands: Democratic Consequences of Sacred Rhetoric .” The Journal of Politics 70 ( 3 ): 767 – 79 .

McDermott Rose . 2004 . “ The Feeling of Rationality: The Meaning of Neuroscientific Advances for Political Science .” Perspectives on Politics 2 ( 4 ): 691 – 706 .

McKeown Ryder . 2009 . “ Norm Regress: US Revisionism and the Slow Death of the Torture Norm .” International Relations 23 ( 1 ): 5 – 25 .

Mercer Jonathan . 2005 . “ Rationality and Psychology in International Politics .” International Organization 59 ( 1 ): 77 – 106 .

Mercer Jonathan . 2010 . “ Emotional Beliefs .” International Organization 64 ( 1 ): 1 – 31 .

Mitzen Jennifer . 2006 . “ Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma .” European Journal of International Relations 12 ( 3 ): 341 – 70 .

Murdie Amanda M. , Davis David R. . 2012 . “ Shaming and Blaming: Using Events Data to Assess the Impact of Human Rights INGOs .” International Studies Quarterly 56 ( 1 ): 1 – 16 .

Nickerson Raymond S. 1998 . “ Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises .” Review of General Psychology 2 ( 2 ): 175 – 220 .

Niemann Holger , Schillinger Henrik . 2017 . “ Contestation ‘All the Way Down’? The Grammar of Contestation in Norm Research .” Review of International Studies 43 ( 1 ): 29 – 49 .

Nuñez-Mietz Fernando G. , Iommi Lucrecia García . 2017 . “ Can Transnational Norm Advocacy Undermine Internalization? Explaining Immunization against LGBT Rights in Uganda. ” International Studies Quarterly 61 : 196 – 209 .

Oxley Douglas R. , Smith Kevin B. , Alford John R. , Hibbing Matthew V. , Miller Jennifer L. , Scalora Mario , Hatemi Peter K. , Hibbing John R. . 2008 . “ Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits .” Science 321 ( 5896 ): 1667 – 70 .

Panke Diana , Petersohn Ulrich . 2012 . “ Why International Norms Disappear Sometimes .” European Journal of International Relations 18 ( 4 ): 719 – 42 .

Payne Rodger A. 2001 . “ Persuasion, Frames and Norm Construction .” European Journal of International Relations 7 ( 1 ): 37 – 61 .

Pettigrew Thomas F. , Tropp Linda R. . 2006 . “ A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory .” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90 ( 5 ): 751 – 83 .

Price Richard . 1998 . “ Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines .” International Organization 52 ( 3 ): 613 – 44 .

Price Richard , Sikkink Kathryn . 2021 . International Norms, Moral Psychology, and Neuroscience . New York : Cambridge University Press .

Rathbun Brian C. , Pomeroy Caleb . 2021 . “ See No Evil, Speak No Evil? Morality, Evolutionary Psychology, and the Nature of International Relations .” International Organization 76 ( 3 ): 656 – 89 .

Risse Thomas , Ropp Stephen C. , Sikkink Kathryn , eds. 1999 . The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change , vol. 66 . New York : Cambridge University Press .

Risse Thomas , Ropp Stephen C. , Sikkink Kathryn . eds. 2013 . The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance . New York : Cambridge University Press .

Ryan Timothy J. 2017 . “ No Compromise: Political Consequences of Moralized Attitudes .” American Journal of Political Science 61 ( 2 ): 409 – 23 .

Schwartz Shalom H. 2012 . “ An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values .” Online Readings in Psychology and Culture 2 ( 1 ). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116 .

Schwartz Shalom H. , Bardi Anat . 2001 . “ Value Hierarchies across Cultures: Taking a Similarities Perspective .” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 32 ( 3 ): 268 – 90 .

Simonovits Gábor , Kézdi G. , Kardos Péter . 2018 . “ Seeing the World through the Other's Eye: An Online Intervention Reducing Ethnic Prejudice .” American Political Science Review 112 ( 1 ): 186 – 93 .

Sinnott-Armstrong Walter E. , ed. 2008 . Moral Psychology, Vol 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders, and Development . Cambridge, MA : MIT Press .

Smith Joanne R. , Louis W.R. . 2008 . “ Do as We Say and as We Do: The Interplay of Descriptive and Injunctive Group Norms in the Attitude–Behaviour Relationship .” British Journal of Social Psychology 47 ( 4 ): 647 – 66 .

Snow David , Benford Robert , McCammon Holly , Hewitt Lyndi , Fitzgerald Scott . 2014 . “ The Emergence, Development, and Future of the Framing Perspective: 25+ Years Since ‘Frame Alignment’ .” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 19 ( 1 ): 23 – 46 .

Snyder Jack . 2020 . “ Backlash against Naming and Shaming: The Politics of Status and Emotion .” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 22 ( 4 ): 644 – 53 .

Steele Brent J. 2008 . Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State . New York : Routledge .

Stimmer Anette . 2019 . “ Beyond Internalization: Alternate Endings of the Norm Life Cycle .” International Studies Quarterly 63 ( 2 ): 270 – 80 .

Sucharov Mira . 2011 . “ Values, Identity, and Israel Advocacy .” Foreign Policy Analysis 7 ( 4 ): 361 – 79 .

Symons Jonathan , Altman Dennis . 2015 . “ International Norm Polarization: Sexuality as a Subject of Human Rights Protection .” International Theory 7 ( 1 ): 61 – 95 .

Tetlock Philip E. , Kristel Orie V. , Beth Elson S. , Green Melanie C. , Lerner Jennifer S. . 2000 . “ The Psychology of the Unthinkable: Taboo Trade-Offs, Forbidden Base Rates, and Heretical Counterfactuals .” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78 ( 5 ): 853 – 70 .

Traven David . 2015 . “ Moral Cognition and the Law and the Ethics of Armed Conflict .” International Studies Review 17 ( 4 ): 556 – 87 .

Weyland Kurt . 2009 . Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Sector Reform in Latin America . Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Wiener Antje . 2008 . The Invisible Constitution of Politics: Contested Norms and International Encounters . New York : Cambridge University Press .

Wiener Antje . 2009 . “ Enacting Meaning-in-Use: Qualitative Research on Norms and International Relations .” Review of International Studies 35 ( 1 ): 175 – 93 .

Wiener Antje . 2014 . A Theory of Contestation . Heidelberg : Springer .

Wiener Antje . 2018 . Contestation and Constitution of Norms in Global International Relations . New York : Cambridge University Press .

Winston Carla . 2018 . “ Norm Structure, Diffusion, and Evolution: A Conceptual Approach .” European Journal of International Relations 24 ( 3 ): 638 – 61 .

Winterbottom Anna , Koomen Jonneke , Burford Gemma . 2009 . “ Female Genital Cutting: Cultural Rights and Rites of Defiance in Northern Tanzania .” African Studies Review 52 ( 1 ): 47 – 71 .

Yardi Sarita , Boyd Danah . 2010 . “ Dynamic Debates: An Analysis of Group Polarization over Time on Twitter .” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 30 ( 5 ): 316 – 27 .

Yudkin D.A. , Gantman A.P. , Hofmann W. , Quoidbach J. . 2021 . “ Binding Moral Values Gain Importance in the Presence of Close Others .” Nature Communications 12 ( 1 ): 1 – 12 .

Zarakol Ayse . 2014 . “ What Made the Modern World Hang Together: Socialisation or Stigmatisation? ” International Theory 6 ( 2 ): 311 – 32 .

Zimmermann Lisbeth . 2016 . “ Same Same or Different? Norm Diffusion between Resistance, Compliance, and Localization in Post-Conflict States .” International Studies Perspectives 17 ( 1 ): 98 – 115 .

Zimmermann Lisbeth . 2017 . “ More for Less: The Interactive Translation of Global Norms in Postconflict Guatemala .” International Studies Quarterly 61 ( 4 ): 774 – 85 .

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1468-2486
• Print ISSN 1521-9488
• Copyright © 2024 International Studies Association
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology pp 509–527 Cite as

Ethics, Values, and Morality

Introduction

• Rachel Douglas-Jones 8 ,
• Maja Hojer Bruun 9 &
• Dorthe Brogård Kristensen 10  
• First Online: 24 March 2022

2636 Accesses

Technologies generate questions. Questions about how to live with them, make them, understand their implications, share their benefits, and limit their harms. Sometimes the questions are specific: what does a new way of doing something mean for those who re-shape their lives around it? At other times, the questions are broader: should this technology exist at all? This section brings together the substantial contributions that anthropologists have made to discussing and analysing the disquiet and awe of technological advance, and the languages—ethics, values, and morality—through which it has been addressed. In this Introduction, we review the anthropology of technology as seen through the lenses of ethics, morality, and values, covering both historical attention to these areas of concern and contemporary work. We then introduce the chapters of this section, situating the seven ethnographies in these broader literatures and narrating their shared concerns. From the embodiment of values in material form to their contestation through conversation, policy, and practice, we make visible the registries of contemporary contestations over technology, and the means by which people struggle to settle normative questions about the form that human futures should take.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Buying options

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Ackerman, S. L. (2010). Plastic Paradise: Transforming Bodies and Selves in Costa Rica’s Cosmetic Surgery Tourism Industry. Medical Anthropology, 29 (4), 403–423. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2010.501316 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Albert, E. M. (1956). The Classification of Values: A Method and Illustration. American Anthropologist , 221–248.

Google Scholar  

Amoore, L. (2020). Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the attributes of ourselves and others . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

Anthropology News (1975). Ethical and Human Value Implications of Science and Technology Program. Anthropology News, 16 (9), 14–15.

Barndon, R. (2012). Technology and Morality: Rituals in Iron Working among the Fipa and Pangwa Peoples in Southwest Tanzania. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 21 (1), 37–48.

Beldo, L. (2014). The unconditional ‘ought’: A theoretical model for the anthropology of morality. Anthropological Theory , 14 (3), 263–279. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499614534373 .

Belshaw, C.S. (1959). The Identification of Values in Anthropology. American Journal of Sociology, 64 (6), 555–562.

Benjamin, R. (2016). Informed Refusal: Toward a Justice-based Bioethics. Science, Technology and Human Values, 41 (6), 967–990.

Birenbaum-Carmeli, D., & Inhorn, M. C. (2009). Assisting Reproduction, Testing Genes: Global Encounters with the New Biotechnologies . Oxford: Berghahn.

Blum, V. (2003) Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Boellstorff, T. (2008). Coming of age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Brandt, R. (1954). Hopi Ethics . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Calvão, F. (2019). Crypto-miners: Digital labor and the power of blockchain technology. Economic Anthropology, 6 (1), 123–134.

Campoamor, L. M. (2019). There’s an App for That: Telecom, Children’s Rights and Conflicting Logics of Corporate Social Responsibility. American Anthropologist, 121 (3), 667–679.

Chong, K. (2018). Best Practice: Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in China . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Corsín Jiménez, A. (Ed.) (2008). Culture and Well-Being: Anthropological Approaches to Freedom and Political Ethics . London: Pluto Press.

Crawford, K., & Joler, V. (2018). Anatomy of an AI System. https://anatomyof.ai . Accessed 22 March 2021.

Cribb, A., Dunn, M., & Ives, J. (2016). Empirical Bioethics: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Csordas, T. J. (2013). Morality as a Cultural System? Current Anthropology 54(5), 523–546.

Dam, M. S., & Svendsen, M. N. (2018). Treating pigs: Balancing standardisation and individual treatments in translational neonatology research. BioSocieties, 13 , 349–367.

Dolan, C., & Rajak D. (2016). The Anthropology of Corporate Social Responsibility . London: Berghahn.

Doris, J. M., & A. Plakias. (2008). How to Argue about Disagreement: Evaluative Diversity and Moral Realism. In W. Winnott-Armstrong (Ed.), Moral Psychology: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity, Vol. 2 (pp. 303–331). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Douglas-Jones, R. (2015). A ‘good’ ethical review: ethics audit and professionalism in research ethics. Social Anthropology, 23 (1), 53–67.

Dumit, J. (2014) Writing the Implosion: Teaching the World One Thing at a Time. Cultural Anthropology, 29 (2), 344–362.

Dumont, L. (2013 [1980]). On Value: The Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology, 1980. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3 (1), 287–315.

Durkheim, E. (1974). Sociology and philosophy . New York: Free Press.

Dussauge, I., Helgesson, C. F., & Lee, F. (Eds.) (2015). Value practices in the life sciences and medicine . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DuBois, C. (1955). The Dominant Value Profile of American Culture. American Anthropologist, 57 (6), 1232–1239.

Edel, A. (1962). Anthropology and Ethics in Common Focus. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 92 (1), 55–72.

Edmonds, A. (2007). The poor have the right to be beautiful: Cosmetic surgery in neoliberal Brazil. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13 , 363–381.

Edwards, J. (1999). Why dolly matters: Kinship, culture and cloning. Ethnos, 64 (3–4), 301–324.

Edwards, J. (2000). Born and Bred: Idioms of Kinship and New Reproductive Technologies . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Edwards, J., Harvey, P., & Wade, P. (2008). Anthropology and Science: Epistemologies in Practice . ASA Monographs 43. London: Bloomsbury.

English-Lueck, J. A., & Lueck Avery, M. (2017). Intensifying Work and Chasing Innovation: Incorporating Care in Silicon Valley. Anthropology of Work Review, 38 (1), 40–49.

Espinoza, M. I., & Aronczyk, M. (2021). Big data for climate action or climate action for big data? Big Data & Society . https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720982032 .

Farmer, P. (1999). Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Fassin, D. (2012). A Companion to Moral Anthropology . Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Fassin, D. (2014). The Ethical Turn in Anthropology: Promises and Uncertainties. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4 (1), 429–35.

Franklin, S. (2007). Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogy . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Firth, R. (1953). The study of values by social anthropologists. Man, 231 , 146–153.

Firth, R. (1979). Work and Value: Reflections on Ideas of Karl Marx. In S. Wallman (Ed.), Social Anthropology of Work (pp. 177–206). London: Academic Press

Fortes, M. (1987). Religion, Morality, and the Person: Essays on Tallensi Religion . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fox, R. C., & Swazey, J. P. (1984) Medical morality is not bioethics: medical ethics in China and the United States. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 27 , 336–60.

Fox, R. C., & Swazey, J. P. (1992). Observing Bioethics . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gammeltoft, T. (2014). Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction in Vietnam . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Gammeltoft, T. M., & Wahlberg, A. (2014). Selective Reproductive Technologies. Annual Review of Anthropology, 43 (1), 201–216.

Gellner, D. N., Curry, O.S., Cook, J., Alfano, M., & S. Venkatesen. (2020). Morality is fundamentally an evolved solution to problems of social co-operation. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 26 (2), 415–417.

Gilman, S. (1999). Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

Gregg, M. (2018). Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy . Durham NC: Duke University Press.

Graeber, D. (2001). Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value . New York: Palgrave.

Graeber, D. (2018). Bullshit Jobs: A Theory . New York: Simon and Schuster

Hasse, C., Trentemøller, S., & Sorensen, J. (2018). The use of ethnography to identify and address ethical, legal and societal (ELS) issues. HRI’ 18 Companion , March 5–8, 2018, Chicago IL, USA.

Hampshire, K., & Simpson, B. (2015). Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Third Phase: Global Encounters and Emerging Moral Worlds . Oxford: Berghahn.

Haraway, D. (1990). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century, In D. Haraway (Ed.), Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (pp. 149–81). New York: Routledge.

Haraway, D. (2003). The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press.

Haraway, D. (2008). When Species Meet . Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Haraway, D. (2011). Speculative Fabulations for Technoculture’s Generations: Taking care of unexpected country. Australian Humanities Review, 50 , May 2011.

Hayden, C. (2003). When Nature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking of Bioprospecting in Mexico . Princeton: Princeton University Press

Heintz, M. (Ed.) (2009). The Anthropology of Moralities . London: Berghahn

Heyes, C. J. (2007). Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies . Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press

Howell, S. (Ed.) (1997). The Ethnography of Moralities . London: Routledge.

Hoeyer, K. (2005). Studying Ethics as Policy. Current Anthropology, 46 (5), S71–S90.

Hoeyer, K. (2006). “Ethics wars”: Reflections on the Antagonism between Bioethicists and Social Science Observers of Biomedicine. Human Studies, 29 , 203–227.

Hoeyer K. (2009). Informed Consent: the Making of a Ubiquitous Rule in Medical Practice. Organization, 16 (2), 267–288.

Hoeyer, K. (2020). Ethics as a form of regulation in relation to data and bodily materials. In M.-A. Jacob & A. Kirkland (Eds.), Research Handbook on Socio-Legal Studies of Medicine and Health (pp. 333–348). Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar.

Hoeyer, K. & Tutton, R. (2005). “Ethics was here”: studying the language-games of ethics in the case of UK Biobank. Critical Public Health , 15 (4), 385–397. https://doi.org/10.1080/09581590500523533 .

Hoeyer, K., & Hogle, L. F. (2014). Informed Consent: The Politics of Intent and Practice in Medical Research Ethics. Annual Review of Anthropology, 43 , 347–362.

Jutel, O. (2021). Blockchain imperialism in the Pacific. Big Data & Society . https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720985249 .

Kapferer, B., & Gold, M. (2018). Moral Anthropology: A Critique . New York: Berghahn Books.

Keane, W. (2016). Ethical life. Its Natural and Social Histories . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kelman, S. (2018). The Bumipreneur dilemma and Malaysia’s technology start-up ecosystem. Economic Anthropology 5(1): 59–70.

Kleinman, A. (1999). Experience and its moral modes: culture, human conditions, and disorder . The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Kleinman, A. (2006). What really matters: living a moral life amidst uncertainty and danger . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kluckhohn, C. (1951). Values and Value-Orientations in the Theory of Action: an Exploration in Definition and Classification. In T. Parsons & E. Shils (Eds.), Towards a General Theory of Action (pp. 388–433). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Kluckhohn, C. (1956). Towards a Comparison of Value-emphases in Different Cultures. In L. White (Ed.), The State of the Social Sciences . Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Konrad, M. (2005). Nameless Relations: Anonymity, Melanesia and Reproductive Gift Exchange between British Ova Donors and Recipients . Oxford: Berghahn.

Kroløkke, C. (2018). Global Fluids: The cultural politics of Reproductive Waste and Value . New York: Berghahn Books.

Ladkin, S., McKay, R., & Bojesen, E. (Eds.) (2016). Against Value in the Arts and Education . London: Rowman and Littlefield.

Lakoff, A., & Collier, S. (2004). Ethics and the anthropology of modern reason. Anthropological Theory, 4 (4), 419–434.

Laidlaw, J. (2002). For an Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 8 (2), 311–32.

Laidlaw, J. (2014). The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lambek, M. (2008). Value and Virtue. Anthropological Theory, 8 (2), 133–157.

Lambek, M. (Ed.) (2010). Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language and Action . New York: Fordham University Press.

Lock, M. (2001). Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Luca. (2017). Whitepaper_ Data as a Force for Good. https://luca-d3.com/data-for-good#data-force-good-section . Accessed 22 June 2021.

Manelin, E. B. (2020). Health Care Quality Improvement and the Ambiguous Commodity of Care. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 34 (3), 361–377.

Marett, R. R. (1931). The beginnings of morals and culture: an introduction to social anthropology. In W. Rose (Ed.), An Outline of Modern Knowledge (pp. 395–430) New York: Putnam.

Martin, E. (1991). The Egg and the Sperm: How Science has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles. Signs, 16 (3), 485–501.

Mattingly, C. (2012). Two virtue ethics and the anthropology of morality. Anthropological Theory, 12 (2), 161–184.

Mattingly, C. (2014). Moral Laboratories. Family Peril and the Struggle for a Good Life . University of California Press.

Mattingly, C., & Throop, J. (2018). The Anthropology of Ethics and Morality. Annual Review of Anthropology, 47 (1), 475–492.

Metcalfe, J., Moss, E., & boyd, d. (2019). Owning Ethics: Corporate Logics, Silicon Valley and the Institutionalization of Ethics. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 82 (2), 449–476.

Miller, D. (2008). The uses of value. Geoforum, 39 (3), 1122–1132.

Mol, A. (2010). Care and its values. Good food in the nursing home. In A. Mol, I. Moser & J. Pols (Eds.), Care in practice: On tinkering in clinics, homes and farms (pp. 215–234), Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Nelms, T. C., Maurer, B., Swartz, L. & Mainwaring, S. (2017). Social Payments: Innovation, Trust, Bitcoin, and the Sharing Economy. Theory, Culture, and Society, 35 (3), 13–33.

Ong, A. (2010 [1987]). Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia . State University of New York.

Ong, A. (1988). The production of possession: spirits and the multinational corporation in Malaysia. American Ethnologist, 15 (1), 28–42.

Ong, A., & Collier, S. (2005). Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems . Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Parker, M. H. (2009). Two concepts of empirical ethics. Bioethics 23(4), 202–213.

Parish, S. (1994). Moral Knowing in a Hindu Sacred City . New York: Columbia University Press.

Petersen, A. (2011). The Politics of Bioethics . London: Routledge.

Petryna, A. (2005). Ethical Variability: Drug Development and Globalizing Clinical Trials. American Ethnologist, 32 (2), 183–197.

Petryna, A. (2009). When Experiments Travel: Clinical Trials and the Global Search for Human Subjects . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Pfaffenberger, B. (1992). Social Anthropology of Technology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21 , 491–516.

Poggiali, L. (2016). Seeing (from) digital peripheries: Technology and Transparency in Kenya’s Silicon Savannah. Cultural Anthropology , 31 , 387–411. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca31.3.07 .

Pols, J. (2018). Empirical ethics and the study of care. Web publication/site, Somatosphere. http://somatosphere.net/2018/11/a-readers-guide-to-the-anthropology-of-ethics-and-morality-part-iii.html . Accessed 8 July 2021.

Powers, W. R. (2000). The Harvard Study of Values: Mirror for Postwar Anthropology. The History of the Behavioural Sciences, 36 (2), 15–29.

Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of Care . Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press.

Rabinow, P. (1999). French DNA: Trouble in Purgatory . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rapp, R. (1987). Moral pioneers: women, men and fetuses on a frontier of reproductive technology. Women Health, 13 (1–2), 101–16.

Read, K. (1955). Morality and the Concept of the Person among the Gahuku-Gama. Oceania, 25 (4), 233–282.

Richardson, K. (2016). The asymmetrical ‘relationship’: parallels between prostitution and the development of sex robots. SIGCAS Comput. Soc., 45 (3), 290–293.

Robbins, J. (2012). On becoming ethical subjects: freedom, constraint and the anthropology of morality. Anthropology of this Century , 5.

Robbins, J. (2016). What is the matter with transcendence? On the place of religion in the new anthropology of ethics. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 22 (4), 767–781.

Roberts, E. F. S. (2013). Assisted Existence: an ethnography of being in Ecuador. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 19 , 562–580.

Ross, F. C., & Moll, T. (2020). Assisted Reproduction: Politics, Ethics and Anthropological Futures. Medical Anthropology , 39 (6), 553–562. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2019.1695130 .

Rydstrom, H. (2003). Embodying Morality: Growing Up in Rural Northern Vietnam . Honolulu: University Hawai’i Press.

Sanders, R. (2017). Self-tracking in the digital era: Biopower, patriarchy, and the new biometric body projects. Body & Society , 23 (1), 36–63.

Scheper-Hughes, N. (1995). The primacy of the ethical: Proposals for a Militant Anthropology. Current Anthropology, 36 (3), 409–440.

Sharkey, N., & Suchman, L. (2013). Wishful Mnemonics and Autonomous Killing Machines. AISB Quarterly , 136 , 14–22.

Sharon, T. (2013). Human nature in an age of biotechnology: The case for mediated posthumanism , Vol. 14 . Springer Science & Business Media.

Sharon, T. (2016). Self-tracking for health and the quantified self: Re-articulating autonomy, solidarity, and authenticity in an age of personalized healthcare. Philosophy & Technology , 30 (1), 93–121.

Stark, L. (2011). Behind Closed Doors: IRBs and the Making of Ethical Research . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Strathern, M. (2005). Robust Knowledge and Fragile Futures. In A. Ong & S. Collier (Eds.), Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems (pp. 464–481). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Stoczkowski, W. (2008). The ‘fourth aim’ of anthropology: between knowledge and ethics. Anthropological Theory, 8 (4), 345–356.

Sykes, K. (Ed.) (2009). Ethnographies of Moral Reasoning . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Taft, C. E. (2021). Performing Accountability and Corporate Social Responsibility. Political and Legal Anthropology Review . https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12397 .

Taussig, K-S. (2009). Ordinary Genomes: Science, Citizenship and Genetic Identities . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Trnka, S., & Trundle, C. (2017). Competing Responsibilities . Durham, NC.: Duke University Press.

Trundle, C. (2020). Tinkering Care, State Responsibility and Abandonment: Nuclear Test Veterans and The Mismatched Temporalities of Justice in Claims for Health Care. Anthropology and Humanism, 45 (2), 202–211.

van Oudheusden, M. (2014). Where are the politics in responsible innovation? European governance, technology assessments, and beyond. Journal of Responsible Innovation, 1 (1), 67–86.

Venkatesan, S. (2020). Afterword: Putting together the anthropology of tax and the anthropology of ethics. Social Analysis, 64 (2), 141–154.

Wahlberg, A. (2018) Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Weiss, B. (2016). Real Pigs: Shifting Values in the Field of Local Pork , Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Weisz, G. (Ed.) (1990). Social Science Perspectives on Biomedical Ethics . Dortmund: Springer.

Welker, M. A. (2009). Corporate Security Begins in the Community: Mining, the Corporate Social Responsibility Industry, and Environmental Advocacy in Indonesia. Cultural Anthropology, 24 (1), 142–179.

Zigon, J. (2007). Moral breakdown and the ethical demand: A theoretical framework for an anthropology of moralities. Anthropological Theory, 7 (2), 131–150.

Zigon, J. (2008). Morality: An Anthropological Perspective . Oxford: Berg.

Zigon, J. (2009). Within a Range of Possibilities: Morality and Ethics in Social Life. Ethnos, 74 (2), 251–276.

Zigon, J. (2013). On Love: Remaking Moral Subjectivity in Postrehabilitation Russia. American Ethnologist, 40 (1), 201–215.

Zwart, H., Landeweerd, L. & van Rooij, A. (2014). Adapt or perish? Assessing the recent shift in the European research funding arena from ‘ELSA’ to ‘RRI’. Life Sciences, Society and Policy 10 (11). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40504-014-0011-x .

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Business IT, IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Rachel Douglas-Jones

Department of Educational Anthropology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

Maja Hojer Bruun

Department of Business and Management, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rachel Douglas-Jones .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Ayo Wahlberg

Cathrine Hasse

Center for Medical Science & Technology Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Klaus Hoeyer

Brit Ross Winthereik

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this chapter

Cite this chapter.

Douglas-Jones, R., Bruun, M.H., Kristensen, D.B. (2022). Ethics, Values, and Morality. In: Bruun, M.H., et al. The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_26

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_26

Published : 24 March 2022

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

Print ISBN : 978-981-16-7083-1

Online ISBN : 978-981-16-7084-8

eBook Packages : Social Sciences Social Sciences (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Essay on Ethics for Students and Children

500+ words essay on ethics.

Essay on Ethics – Ethics refers to the concepts of right and wrong conduct. Furthermore, ethics is basically a branch of philosophy dealing with the issue of morality. Moreover, ethics consist of the rules of behavior. It certainly defines how a person should behave in specific situations. The origin of ethics is old and it started from the Stone Age . Most noteworthy, over the centuries many religions and philosophers have made contributions to ethics.

Branches of Ethics

First of all, comes the descriptive branch of ethics. Descriptive ethics involve what people actually believe to be right or wrong. On the basis of this, the law decides whether certain human actions are acceptable or not. Most noteworthy, the moral principles of society keep changing from time to time. Therefore, descriptive ethics are also known as comparative ethics. This is because; it compares the ethics of past and present as well as ethics of one society and another.

Normative ethics is another important branch of ethics. Moreover, Normative ethics deals with certain norms or set of considerations. Furthermore, these norms or set of considerations dictate how one should act. Therefore, normative ethics sets out the rightness or wrongness of actions or behaviours. Another name for normative ethics is prescriptive ethics. This is because; it has principles which determine whether an action is right or wrong.

Meta-ethics consists of the origin of the ethical concepts themselves. Meta-ethics is not concerned whether an action is good or evil. Rather, meta-ethics questions what morality itself is. Therefore, meta-ethics questions the very essence of goodness or rightness. Most noteworthy, it is a highly abstract way of analyzing ethics.

Applied ethics involves philosophical examination or certain private and public life issues. Furthermore, this examination of issues takes place from a moral standpoint. Moreover, this branch of ethics is very essential for professionals. Also, these professionals belong to different walks of life and include doctors , teachers , administrators, rulers.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Applications of Ethics

Bioethicists deal with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, and philosophy. Furthermore, Bioethics refers to the study of controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and medicine .

Ethics also have a significant application in business. Moreover, business ethics examines ethical principles in relation to a business environment.

Military ethics involve the questions regarding the application of ethos of the soldier. Furthermore, military ethics involves the laws of war. Moreover, it also includes the question of justification of initiating military force.

Public sector ethics deals with a set of principles that guide public officials in their service. Furthermore, the public sector involves the morality of decision making. Most noteworthy, it consists of the question of what best serves the public’s interests.

In conclusion, ethics is certainly one of the most important requirements of humanity. Furthermore, without ethics, the world would have been an evil and chaotic place. Also, the advancement of humanity is not possible without ethics. There must be widespread awareness of ethics among the youth of society.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

• Skip to main content
• Skip to secondary menu
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Study Today

Largest Compilation of Structured Essays and Exams

Essay on Ethics and Values (986 Words)

January 1, 2018 by Study Mentor Leave a Comment

We all talk about an ethical lifestyle free of all sins. But do we understand the meaning of ethics and values. It is very easy to preach moral values to others but very difficult to adhere to yourself. A life led for yourself but a life led for others is always worth living. Ethics and values are what build our character from inside.

I know it’s difficult to live an ethical life. Especially when you are surrounded with negativity and dearth of love all around you. I know it is difficult to not combat negativity with negativity. But is it impossible? An eye for an eye is not what the world needs right now. It needs more of beautiful souls who are willing to help out people.

When a child is born, he is like wet mud – gullible, innocent and impressionable. If the children are groomed with a nurturing attitude and they are taught lessons of love, kindness and benevolence; they turn into loving individuals over time. But if they are abused at an early age, they are left with haunting memories of a horrible past.

Either they turn into cruel and indifferent individuals or caring and good people. It all depends on what they underwent at that age and how they take it. Schools should inculcate values in students.

The teachers should not just focus on studies but they should develop students’ brains and characters as well. It is the teachers only who act like mentors and guide students on the path of righteousness.

Society and parents also play a key role in a child’s upbringing. A mother is a child’s first teacher. A mother does everything in her power to groom him into a responsible being. Parents teach the children to differentiate between good and bad.

But the catch is; society is filled with both positive and negative elements. Children learn a lot from the environment. But society is a mixed bunch. There are some good as well as bad elements. But children are more influenced by bad elements because of their tender age, they need to be taught the difference between right and wrong or else the society will find a way to corrupt them.

These days, the newspaper is filled with news of all kinds of gruesome cruelties. People don’t flinch before murdering someone, kidnapping, raping a woman, robbing someone of their possessions and the list is never ending. This world is full of cruelties all around.

People have lost all their empathy and sympathy. It seems as if some devil has taken over their minds and controls all their actions. It is worrying to see the state people are in today. People have marched on the way to success. They have landed on moon but they do not know who lives next door to their houses. It seems as if all the beautiful things vanished from the face of earth.

When a crime is committed, the worst part is not the criminal but the eye-witness who saw the crime happening in front of his eyes but did nothing to stop it.

I don’t understand that does the guilt not eat them alive of seeing something bad happening and yet doing nothing to stop it. It is just cruel how the society has turned a cold shoulder to everything that does not afford them. Empathy and sympathy turn the world but what happens when we witness their dearth in our population.

In our aspirations, we keep on trying our best to climb the ladder of success but we do not hesitate to step onto someone else’s aspirations to fulfill ours. What is the reason that our jails are full and old age homes not enough to accommodate all the old ones out there on the streets.

Children have become indifferent to the needs of their own parents. Parents who give their everything to bring up children but children just spur them away in a flick of a second. They are running from their responsibilities. They don’t want to take care of their old parents.

I don’t know what the world has come to today. All of us walk on our own paths and we do not hesitate to wrong someone for our own benefits. Dearth of love prevails. And the twisted part is, the wrong rarely comes out in the open.

This Kalyug gives the opportunity to commit sins but not correct them. The rich and powerful cheat and fraud other people to earn money but they rarely get exposed. They live their lives in complete ease on the hard-earned money of other people.

Isn’t it hard wrenching to see the war in Syria. It has just destroyed the once happy country. The viral photo of a child washed ashore is trending on internet these days. Instead of unlimited likes, shares and comments; they need some help from the western powers. Countries like USA have turned a deaf ear to their requests.

Instead of helping them out, he has just banned immigrants from all countries. They all are our own brothers and sisters. They should be helped and not punished away. Terrorist attacks target countries and destroys their heart. It is gut wrenching to see the large-scale destruction. It instills fear in the minds of people and they are not able to live a happy and free life.

At the last, I would like to say that the condition of the world will deteriorate further if we don’t join hands to combat such anomalies. Always remember that love has the power to change any heart.

Reader Interactions

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Top Trending Essays in March 2021

• Essay on Pollution
• Essay on my School
• Summer Season
• My favourite teacher
• World heritage day quotes
• my family speech
• importance of trees essay
• autobiography of a pen
• honesty is the best policy essay
• essay on building a great india
• my favourite book essay
• essay on caa
• my favourite player
• autobiography of a river
• farewell speech for class 10 by class 9
• essay my favourite teacher 200 words
• internet influence on kids essay
• my favourite cartoon character

Brilliantly

Content & links.

Verified by Sur.ly

Essay for Students

• Essay for Class 1 to 5 Students

Scholarships for Students

• Class 1 Students Scholarship
• Class 2 Students Scholarship
• Class 3 Students Scholarship
• Class 4 Students Scholarship
• Class 5 students Scholarship
• Class 6 Students Scholarship
• Class 7 students Scholarship
• Class 8 Students Scholarship
• Class 9 Students Scholarship
• Class 10 Students Scholarship
• Class 11 Students Scholarship
• Class 12 Students Scholarship

STAY CONNECTED

• About Study Today
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions

Scholarships

• Apj Abdul Kalam Scholarship
• Ashirwad Scholarship
• Bihar Scholarship
• Canara Bank Scholarship
• Colgate Scholarship
• Dr Ambedkar Scholarship
• E District Scholarship
• Epass Karnataka Scholarship
• Fair And Lovely Scholarship
• Floridas John Mckay Scholarship
• Inspire Scholarship
• Jio Scholarship
• Karnataka Minority Scholarship
• Lic Scholarship
• Maulana Azad Scholarship
• Medhavi Scholarship
• Minority Scholarship
• Moma Scholarship
• Mp Scholarship
• Muslim Minority Scholarship
• Nsp Scholarship
• Oasis Scholarship
• Obc Scholarship
• Odisha Scholarship
• Pfms Scholarship
• Post Matric Scholarship
• Pre Matric Scholarship
• Prerana Scholarship
• Prime Minister Scholarship
• Rajasthan Scholarship
• Santoor Scholarship
• Sitaram Jindal Scholarship
• Ssp Scholarship
• Swami Vivekananda Scholarship
• Ts Epass Scholarship
• Up Scholarship
• Vidhyasaarathi Scholarship
• Wbmdfc Scholarship
• West Bengal Minority Scholarship
• Click Here Now!!

Mobile Number

Have you Burn Crackers this Diwali ? Yes No

• Tools and Resources
• Customer Services
• Communication and Culture
• Communication and Social Change
• Communication and Technology
• Communication Theory
• Critical/Cultural Studies
• Gender (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies)
• Health and Risk Communication
• Intergroup Communication
• International/Global Communication
• Interpersonal Communication
• Journalism Studies
• Language and Social Interaction
• Mass Communication
• Media and Communication Policy
• Organizational Communication
• Political Communication
• Rhetorical Theory
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Communication ethics.

• Lisbeth A. Lipari Lisbeth A. Lipari Department of Communication, Denison University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.58
• Published online: 27 February 2017

Communication ethics concerns the creation and evaluation of goodness in all aspects and manifestations of communicative interaction. Because both communication and ethics are tacitly or explicitly inherent in all human interactions, everyday life is fraught with intentional and unintentional ethical questions—from reaching for a cup of coffee to speaking critically in a public meeting. Thus ethical questions infuse all areas of the discipline, including rhetoric, media studies, intercultural/international communication, relational and organization communication, as well as other iterations of the field.

• moral reasoning
• normativity
• communication and critical studies

Introduction

Broadly conceived, ethics concerns the creation and evaluation of goodness, or “the good,” by responding to the general question: How shall we live ? What makes any given decision good or right or wrong? Is it ethically good for governments to persuade poor people to fight, and perhaps die, in wars that disproportionately benefit the wealthy? Is it an ethical good for society to provide access to free and quality education to all children? Are politicians obligated to tell the truth to their constituents regardless of the consequence? By wrestling with the ancient human question of what is good , ethicists disclose the inherently social and political nature of communicative phenomenon—whether they are linked to laws, morals, values, and customs and whether they vary from region to region or culture to culture. The word ethics itself comes from the Greek word ethikos , which means habit or custom, whereas the word moral comes from the Latin translation of the Greek word ethikos . Ethics govern and yet are distinct from law. That is, while laws encode values and customs that will be enforced by the power of the state, more generally ethics concern those values and beliefs (whether enforced by law or not) that a society or group or individual believe will most likely create goodness. But as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others have famously said, one has a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws. And the questions of what makes a law or action just or unjust, who gets to deliberate, and how we decide are some of the central questions of communication ethics.

In the field of communication ethics , scholars draw upon a variety of ethical theories to address questions pertaining to goodness involving all manifestations of communicative interaction. And because both communication and ethics are tacitly or explicitly inherent in all human interactions, everyday life is fraught with intentional and unintentional ethical questions—from reaching for a cup of coffee to speaking up in a public meeting. Thus, ethical questions infuse all areas of the discipline of communication, including rhetoric, media studies, intercultural/international communication, relational and organization communication, and all other iterations of the discipline. Some scholars specialize in communication ethics as a subfield of communication studies with applications to all aspects of the field, while others work more theoretically in search of philosophical inquiry and understanding. After a brief introduction to the history of the field, this article sketches three central characteristics that shape contours of communication ethics scholarship—heterogeneity, interconnectivity, and historicity—and then goes on to follow three central concerns of communication ethics scholarship—integrity, power, and alterity. A brief overview of five modes of ethical reasoning will close the article.

Brief History of the Discipline

Some scholars trace the origins of communication ethics to American public education in the early 1900s, when questions about “speech hygiene” drove researchers to examine the role of education in fostering qualities of moral character and “mental health” in students (Arnett, 1987 ; Gehrke, 2009 ). Scholarship in subsequent decades came to emphasize speech education as a means to prepare citizens for participation, as both speakers and listeners, in democracy, and particularly as a way to resist fascist oratory. Developed at a time when access to education and the democratic process was shifting from elites to the masses, these scholars focused on speech education as a means to develop moral excellence in psychological, cognitive, and communicative terms they traced to the classical canon of rhetoric, such as the great Roman teacher/scholar Quintilian’s definition of rhetoric as “the good man speaking well” (Quintilian, 2006 ). Postwar decades in the United States brought increasing attention to questions of communication ethics involving demagoguery, persuasion, propaganda, and human rights (Lomas, 1961 ; Nilsen, 1960 ; Parker, 1972 ). Central to these studies were concern for accuracy and truthfulness such that “in each persuasive situation there is an ethical obligation to provide listeners with such information as it is possible to provide in the time available and with the medium used” (Nilsen, 1960 , p. 201).

In the 1980s and 1990s, communication scholars affiliated with what was then the Speech Communication Association (now the National Communication Association) inaugurated the first communication ethics commission and, subsequently, the first national conference on ethics (Arnett, Bell, & Fritz, 2010 ). These early scholars, such as Ken Anderson, James A. Jaksa, Richard Johannesen, Clifford Christians, and Ron Arnett, seeded what was to become a fertile field of scholarship connecting all areas of the discipline in ways that bridged philosophical and applied approaches. Also in the latter half of the 20th century , scholars in communication ethics began to wrestle with the problematics of power and truth in order to interrogate ethical questions regarding the relationship between social standpoint and social justice. Influenced by continental theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francoise Lyotard, and Michel Foucault, communication ethics were sometimes characterized by the struggle between objectivist, absolutist questions of truth versus subjective, relativist conceptions of truth. Scholars critical of objectivist perspectives drew upon insights from critical, critical race, feminist, postcolonial and postmodernist theories that challenged prevailing orthodoxies about the nature of identity, the status of the subject, and the role of power in constructing models of “the good.” Scholars such as Molefi Asante, Larry Gross, and Janice Hocker Rushing undertook examinations of the relationship of ethics to racism, sexuality, and sexism (Asante, 1992 ; Gross, 1991 ; Rushing, 1993 ).

Influenced in part by Alasdair MacIntyre’s neo-Aristotlean work, “After Virtue,” as well as Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics, public sphere theory, and theory of communicative action, scholars in the last part of the 20th and first part of the 21st century became increasingly interested in ethical questions pertaining to truth conditions in political discourse, such as journalism, political rhetoric, and discourse in the public sphere (Baynes, 1994 ; Ettema & Glasser, 1988 ). At roughly the same time, an increasing number of communication scholars began to draw on the existentialist and hermeneutic continental scholarship of philosophers such as Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, and Emmanuel Levinas to explore questions of alterity and otherness as it pertained to relational, rhetorical, and mediated communication (Hyde, 2001 ; Pinchevski, 2005 ).

Over the last 100 years, communication ethics has engaged questions about how to create ethical worlds with our communication processes, be they individual, face-to-face, mediated, or institutional. The area of corporate ethics, for example, concerns not “green-leafing” public relations, but institutional practices that create goodness—such as transparency, accountability, and profit-sharing—not just for owners or shareholders, but for all stakeholders including workers, the earth, the animals, and so forth (Groom & Fritz, 2012 ). Some ethicists, such as Zygmunt Bauman, would likely argue that the concept of corporate ethics is itself oxymoronic: “No moral impulse can survive, let alone emerge unscathed from, the acid test of usefulness or profit. All immorality begins with demanding such a test” (Bauman, 1993 ). In short, communication ethics concerns the discernment of the good, seeking to balance the competing values, needs, and wants of multiple constituencies inhabiting pluralistic democracies.

General Characteristics: Heterogeneity, Interconnectivity, and Historicity

At this point in time, communication ethics scholarship can be described by three central characteristics: heterogeneity, interconnectivity, and historicity. Communication ethics is marked by heterogeneity through the sheer multiplicity of ethical concerns, disciplinary contexts, theoretical perspectives, and modes of reasoning it can pursue. A question about deception, for example, could be examined in any number of communication contexts (e.g., social media, political campaigns, workplace organization, family relations), from any of a number of theoretical perspectives or concerns (e.g., ideological, dialogic, rhetorical, universalist), employing any number of modes of ethical reasoning (e.g., virtue, deontological, teleological, care) and any combination within and between these categories. Often ethical perspectives and values bump into one another, and the ethicist may employ multiple modes of thought to weigh the priorities of ethical value against another—questions about harassment for example, concerns the values of freedom of speech balanced against freedom from intimidation and harassment.

But heterogeneity should not be mistaken for relativism (Brummett, 1981 ). 1 Because ethical questions are embedded both tacitly and explicitly in all human interactions, communication scholars look at both covert as well as overt questions of ethics. Mission statements, for example, may set an overt frame for ethical values and ideals that a given organization aspires toward, but they may not facilitate the recognition of more hidden ethical questions that play out in daily operations. Similarly, ethical codes and credos that stipulate their norms and values are often written at the level of the individual and therefore obscure how institutions, organizations, and groups also function as (un)ethical agents. Codes and credos can also interfere with individual ethical agency and decision-making by removing from conscious awareness the need for vigilant attention to ethical issues that may be hidden. Other forms of overt ethics involve public argument, laws, policies, principals, guidelines, and so forth. In contrast, tacit ethics are implicit patterns of communicative interaction institutions that have ethical implications. That is, communication ethics looks not merely at individual agency and intersubjective processes but also at institutional norms, structural arrangements, and systematic patterns. In communication ethics, ethical questions are a question of not (only) individual agency but of shared implicit and explicit habits, norms, and patterns of communicative action. Communication ethics is therefore quite deliberate in examining both overt and covert contexts.

Heterogeneity also arises through the sheer number of values that may come into conflict in any given situation. In the case of hate speech, for example, the values of free speech bump up against the values of freedom from intimidation, harassment, and violation. Similarly, from the purview of communication ethics, context can mean nearly, if not fully, everything. The question of what makes a convincing ethical argument changes from setting to setting. In the context of a religious setting, for example, reasoning based on tradition and authority might take precedence over reasoning based on compassion and care. Within any given religious community, people wrestle with questions about how much they shall be governed by intelligence, compassion, and outcome and how much by faith. When intelligence tells us one thing and compassion another, which should we trust? Similarly, tensions between local and state or federal control can also shape what values or modes of reasoning take precedence. The communication ethicist must face this nearly endlessly multiplicitous diversity in her inquiry into questions of the good.

Because communication ethics is an immanent subfield that, like the myriad processes of communication itself, is inextricable from the deeply interconnected manifestations of all human interaction, our communicative interactions are inevitably intertwined. Interdependency manifests in the recognition that humans are socially embedded beings and therefore that no self exists completely independent of the social conditions (e.g., language, customs, narratives, hierarchies) from which that self emerged. But it is not simply the self that may or may not consciously choose a given action; communication ethicists also look at how actions choose persons. A worker in a health insurance industry is given an incentive to deny health claims knowing not only that if she does not do it someone else will, but that if she refuses she will be fired and her family will lose its insurance, upon which her disabled child depends. How much ethical agency and “freedom” can such a worker exert? Similarly, the financial managers of this company know that without such incentives, the company will lose money leading to layoffs of workers and possibly denial of even more claims. Thus, not only can there be a kind of independent ethical agency that stands apart from the set of relations it inhabits, there is little possibility of any ethical agent perceiving or anticipating all these ethical interconnections. I may serve my family a healthy dinner of quinoa not knowing that, as an indirect result, thousands of peasants high in the Andes can no longer afford to feed their families the very grain they grow.

Communication ethics is also deeply responsive to the historical events, conditions, and conventions that give rise to every communicative interaction. This can be seen in work on public memory, an area fraught with ethical questions—which historical events are commemorated or memorialized, and which are forgotten (Bruner, 2006 ; Vivian, 2010 )? What events rise to the level of national concern—that is, which events are remembered so as to reflect a shared national or cultural identity? Why is there a Holocaust museum but not a Native American genocide museum? Why have there been no reparations for centuries of American slavery? History relates to ethics via other questions of narrative, public and private. What stories are told, from whose point of view? When or how are these stories punctuated, and who speaks and who is ignored? When communication ethics examines concerns of power, it also explores how struggles over meaning and meaning making are always in dialogue with past and present discourses and regimes of power. How do the historical tensions between the differing goals of public education (i.e., serving to foster public goods such as democracy, liberty and citizenship vs. imposing social control through social stratification, compulsory subordination, and coerced conformity) continue to play out in today’s public debates about education policy, from questions of No Child Left Behind to the neoliberal moves to privatization? And what are the implications of education policy for class position, labor conditions, and increasing economic inequality? What has led public discourses about public goods to be subsumed so readily under neoliberal discourses emphasizing self-sufficiency and individual autonomy (Oh & Banjo, 2012 ; Saunders, 2010 )?

Integrity: Truth, Truthfulness, and Trust

Questions of truth and trust have long been at the center of communication ethics inquiry. As she noted in her classic treatise On Lying , Sissela Bok argues that few if any human groups, organizations, institutions, or states could succeed without the background assumptions of truthfulness (Bok, 1979 ). Distinguishing between truth and truthfulness, Bok puts the burden upon an individual’s active intention—intentionally misleading others differs, to Bok, from unknowingly uttering a falsehood. This distinction between conscious intention and unintentional distortion has been central to studies of journalism ethics, where questions of staged, falsified, and censored news are central (Wilcox, 1961 ; Wulfemeyer, 1985 ; Zelizer, 2007 ). Other questions involve the role of objectivity in news, its epistemic (im)possibility, and the ethical implications distinguishing between impartiality and objectivity (Carey, 1989 ; Malcolm, 2011 ; Ward, 2004 ). The role of the press as a watchdog of democracy has also been of central concern to journalist ethicists, principally through its imagined role as the fourth estate (or branch) of American government and the ethical implications of increasingly concentrated corporate ownership (Bagdikian, 2004 ; Huff & Roth, 2013 ; McChesney, 2014 ). A host of other issues, such as censorship, omission, bias, confidentiality, deception, libel, misrepresentation, slander, and witness, have long been central to ethical concerns in journalism. And some scholars, such as Stephen Ward ( 2005 ), have argued for a new philosophical basis for journalism ethics.

But issues of integrity are not just central to journalism—other modes of mediated communication also give rise to ethical questions about appropriation, colonization, and misrepresentation in addition to the kinds of human interactions these media call forth (D’Arcy, 2012 ; Munshi, Broadfoot, & Smith, 2011 ). Jaron Lanier ( 2010 ), for example, has written extensively about ethical questions related to social media, including what he calls “Hive Mind” that induces mob behavior, an overall lack of independence, groupthink, and depersonalization. Lanier also finds fault with social media’s alienation of information from experience and the drive for anonymity that induces violation, reductionism, insincerity, and a general lack of intellectual modesty. Similarly, in an examination of fearless speech, Foucault ( 2001 ) looks into a series of questions about the philosophical foundations of parrhesia: “Who is able to tell the truth? What are the moral, the ethical, and the spiritual conditions which entitle someone to present himself as a truth-teller? About what topics is it important to tell the truth? What are the consequences of telling the truth?”

Ethical questions about truth and truth telling also show up in rhetorical studies, especially those involving regarding history and politics (Johnstone, 1980 ; Newman, 1995 ). Whistleblowing is another communicative phenomenon where issues of integrity meet ethics. Ostensibly, “whistleblowing happens when ethical discourse becomes impossible, when acting ethically is tantamount to becoming a scapegoat” (Alford, 2001 , p. 36). Yet, according to Alford, the common narrative of the whistleblower as a martyr to truth who is seeking institutional redemption is not played out in the lived experiences of whistleblowers. In fact, the whistleblower is by definition only constituted by processes of institutional retaliation wherein the whistleblower is punished and the institution merely carries on. Even laws supposedly aimed to protect whistleblowers function merely at the level of procedure, which work in turn to reinforce institutional power leaving questions of morality as purely private, not public, affairs. “To act politically in this depoliticized public space is to be a scapegoat” (Alford, 2001 , p. 130). Other areas involving integrity in a wide variety of communication ethics contexts include questions of authenticity, betrayal, cynicism, demagoguery, denial, disclosure, distortion, erasure, exposure, falsification, mystification, obfuscation, omission, secrecy, selectivity, silence, surveillance, suspicion, and transparency (Herrscher, 2002 ; Ivie, 1980 ).

Power: Justice, Normativity, and Force

Power is another central thread in communication ethics scholarship that reveals the extent to which politics and ethics are deeply interconnected. Power is here understood to describe the capacity to impose, maintain, repair, and transform particular modes of social structuring that explicitly and implicitly condition our ideas about the good. When ethical values rise to the level of social/cultural importance, they become laws and not merely customs. But all laws and questions of justice are inherently ethical questions insofar as they inherently shape the contours of what any given community conceives of as the good. As Reinhold Niebuhr put it, “Politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience and power meet, where the ethical and the coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out tentative and uneasy compromises” ( 2013 , p. 4). The relationships between ethics and power can be understood in terms of three dimensions—justice, normativity, and force.

Normativity is a form of power with wide-ranging ethical implications. Not only do social norms become a framework within which all forms of the good (and by extension, the bad) may be produced, they also invisibly become part of the interconnected embeddedness of the social that make subjectivity itself possible. Gender, for example, is a form of social normativity with far-ranging ethical implications. Not only do gender conventions govern nearly every conceivable variation of human interaction (from the professions to child raising), violations of gender norms are soundly punished, often violently. Similarly, because every binary includes a hierarchy, in the case of gender male standards are not only normative but unmarked as such even while they serve to set the standard of what is “good” in many situations. Thus evaluations of performance of many communicative actions such as oratory, argument, debate, writing, turn-taking, holding the floor, delivering instruction, and so forth, may appear to be gender neutral when in fact the very standards of quality and merit may be deeply embedded in normatively masculine gender conventions. Thus, because of its relation to ideology as a means of legitimating existing social relations and differences of power, status quo, and common sense, normativity can exert tremendous and often invisible power that inevitable engender ethical questions. Who dictates the terms of what is normative, correct, standard, common sense?

At the same time, however, normativity fuels the very machinery of everyday communicative action. Without predetermined conventions, such as those that govern traffic (street, commerce, or Internet), human interactions would be fraught with peril or even simply impossible. Similarly, what some consider to be the social contract—the implicit moral obligations we have by virtue of being part of society—make everyday life in the shared social world possible. But at the same time, norms and conventions by necessity make some things possible and others impossible. A good example of the role of normativity in ethical questions of power relates to the questions of national and world languages. Language plays a significant role in the production, maintenance, and change in relations of power. For example, although to many native English speakers the United States appears to be a monolinguistic society, the truth is quite the contrary. Some tens of millions of American speak more than 25 languages other than English (not including the more than 175 native American languages now spoken in the United States) with 17.5 million Spanish speakers (Schmid, 2001 ). The implications of exclusive usage and public acceptance of English-only policies and laws involve a constellation of ethical questions ranging from access to recognition (in terms of citizenship, voting, education, courts, medical care, etc.).

Similarly, there are enormous political and ethical implications of so-called world English wherein there are 1.5 billion English speakers in the world, where English is designated as an official language of 62 nations, and where English serves of the dominant language of science, academic publishing, and international organizations (Tsuda, 2008 ). From a global perspective, world English can serve as problem of linguistic hegemony, whereby English dominates as a form of linguistic imperialism with ethical consequences ranging from linguistic and communicative inequality, to discrimination, and colonization of the consciousness (Tsuda, 2008 ). Thus, issues of communicative competence are not ethically neutral but can in fact become political means of social stratification employing linguistic, discursive, and social norms. Because discourses are ways of displaying membership in particular social groups, communicative norms can also serve to include as well as exclude, to mark as insider or outsider, and as a means to regulate other forms of behavior. Other issues of normativity that touch on communication ethics therefore include belonging, civility, codes, community, common sense, conformity, consensus, identity, homogeneity, legitimation, locality, loyalty, mimesis, narrativity, political correctness, precepts, principals, propriety, prudence, ratification, representation, rules, standards, uniformity, unity, and universalism (Lozano-Reich & Cloud, 2009 ).

The area of justice provides yet another means by which power interrelates with communication ethics. Typically, justice revolves around questions of rights, fairness, due process, discrimination, equality, equity, impartiality, participation, privilege, recognition, sovereignty, and so forth. The American political philosopher John Rawls maintained that justice was equivalent to fairness, and he designed a thought experiment called the veil of ignorance as a means to determine principles of justice (as fairness) in a given community. Rawls’s veil was intended to conceal the social position of each participant in the deliberation of justice. In other words, people would deem principles of fairness without knowing where in society they would end up at the end of the day. In Rawls’s view, meritocracy cannot be just unless everyone begins at the same starting line with the same resources, experiences, endowments, etc. So what principles would those behind the veil choose? Rawls says we would choose equal basic liberties for everyone, with social and economic inequalities existing only if they worked to the advantage of the least well off members of society. To Rawls, the facts of inequitable distribution of economic or other success or failure are, to a large degree, outside of our control and thus neither just nor unjust . What is just and unjust is the way that public and political institutions deal with these facts. Some communication ethicists, however, have challenged these Rawlsian ideals of the capacity for neutral imagination (Couldry, Gray, & Gillespie, 2013 ; Munshi, Broadfoot, & Smith, 2011 ).

Explicit and overt questions of communication ethics often involve the values of justice. Ethical credos, honor codes, moral principles, and ethical guidelines often stipulate “right vs. wrong” scenarios as a means to get at the good. When questions of justice need to be arbitrated, deliberative methods that weigh first principles, outcomes, and precedent are often employed. But these themselves often beg the ethical question of who deliberates, under what conditions, and with what resources (Fraser, 1994 ; Habermas, 1989 ). A community dialogue meant to empower citizens largely disenfranchised from the halls of power must contend with questions of access, competence, and convention that underlie the very possibilities of deliberation. For example, when knowledge and communication skills leading to social power are made available to advantaged social groups but are withheld from less advantaged groups in society, a community “dialogue” can inadvertently become an instrument of injustice (Gastil, Lingle, & Deess, 2010 ; Jovanovic, 2012 ). Similarly, inequitable access to the resources of symbolic capital—the prestige, privilege, and education needed to constitute arguments—cannot be just if the allocation of those resources is unequal and available only to a few.

Questions of force are often directly related to justice in that they present manifestations of state and social power that can violently silence, repress, or simply rule “out of order” questions of justice. Force creates situations in which people are not able to speak for themselves, where those in power do not listen, and when the very language needed to articulate claims to justice is not understood. An example of the ethical dimensions of force can be seen in Scott’s ( 1990 ) idea of the “hidden transcript,” a form of hidden public discourse produced by and witnessed only by those without the power to set norms and the claims of justice. As Scott writes, even the most violent political oppression never completely silences the voices of the oppressed—the unspeakable is spoken clandestinely through discourse hidden from those in power: “Most of the political life of subordinate groups is to be found neither in overt collective defiance of power holders nor in complete hegemonic compliance, but in the vast territory between these two polar opposites” ( 1990 , p. 136). Similarly, Squires ( 2002 ) draws on this concept to examine how subordinated groups voice political resistance in disguise, hidden between the lines of the official or public transcript in a multiplicity of coded forms: “In the history of Black public spheres, the pressures of living in a racist society, the ongoing fight for equality, and the rich cultural reserves have necessitated” the use of hidden transcripts (Squires, 2002 , p. 457). Thus explicit force such as prohibitions of speaking and listening are met with implicit and explicit modes of force involving rumor, gossip, disguises, linguistic tricks, metaphors, euphemisms, folktales, and ritual gestures: “For good reason, nothing is entirely straightforward here; the realities of power for subordinate groups mean that much of their political action requires interpretation precisely because it is intended to be cryptic and opaque” (Scott, 1990 , p. 137).

Other forms of the power of force can be seen in the selective aggregation of “big data” by media and Internet conglomerates, or the everyday silencing, censorship, coercion, compulsion, confession, diagnosis, interrogation, negation, marginalization, repression, and prohibition that occur in workplaces, schools, governments, and other organizations where force overtly and covertly serves power (Fairfield & Shtein, 2014 ; Nunan & Di Domenico, 2013 ). But force also resists power in forms such as (re)appropriation, critique, extortion, framing, mobility, negation, networks, parrhesia, speaking truth to power, subversion, and even violence. For example, during the height of state violence in response to the American civil rights movement, a group of Quakers began pamphleteering, witnessing, and organizing in search for forceful responses to violence. In their 1955 pamphlet, “Speak truth to Power,” the Quakers wrote, “if ever truth reaches power, if ever it speaks to the individual citizen, it will not be the argument that convinces. Rather it will be his own inner sense of integrity that impels him to say, ‘Here I stand. Regardless of relevance or consequence, I can do no other’” (Rustin, 1955 , p. 68).

Relation: Alterity and Compassion

Another central thread of communication ethics is the idea of the relation as ontologically basic, meaning that no self can exist outside of the myriad relationships that make up the social matrix of communication. As Martin Buber wrote, “man did not exist before having a fellow being, before he lived over against him, toward him, and that means before he had dealings with him. Language never existed before address” ( 1998 , p. 105). The relational thread of communication ethics calls upon us to never lose sight of the radical alterity, or otherness, of the other. That is, we are asked to never mistake our understanding of the other for the other herself , never to impose our meaning and understanding upon him, never to attempt to absorb/assimilate/appropriate the other into ourselves. We are enjoined to avoid absorbing the other’s difference into my own same .

One of the central concerns of communication ethics pertains to our relation to others and, in particular, to the radical otherness , or alterity, of others. Postmodern and post-colonial literatures have clearly identified and lucidly critiqued the many ways in which political hegemons cast the other in the role of feared and threatening stranger where the other is depicted as without humanity or legitimacy, resulting in patterns of annihilation, oppression, and alienation or of appropriation, assimilation, and absorption. In contrast, the ethical relation to alterity approaches the other as welcomed—as “the stranger, the widow, the orphan” (Levinas, 1969 , p. 77). To Levinas, the other is a moral center to whom one owes everything, and the other must always come first, not last: “To recognize the Other is to recognize a hunger. To recognize the Other is to give. But it is to give to the master, to the lord, to him whom one approaches as ‘Vous’ in a dimension of height” ( 1969 , p. 75).

In writing about this second, ethical sense of alterity, Levinas observes how the other is always more than she appears: “The face of the Other at each moment destroys and overflows the plastic image it leaves me” ( 1969 , p. 51). The acknowledgment of alterity enables speakers to acknowledge, if not honor, radical differences in thought, belief, political and social location, communicative, symbolic and social capital, and so forth. Other aspects of alterity that arise in communication ethics involve relations of alienation, ambiguity, asymmetry, contradiction, cosmopolitanism, discord, diversity, incongruity, interruption, intersectionality, and ostracism (Arneson, 2014 ; Hyde, 2012 ; Pinchevski, 2005 ).

Thus, unlike a Habermasian discourse ethics of the ideal speech situation, where interlocutors are instructed to “bracket status differentials and deliberate as if they were social equals,” (Fraser, 1994 , p. 117), or a Rawlsian theory of justice, which asks interlocutors to deliberate behind a “veil of ignorance,” alterity deliberately invites and acknowledges difference, acknowledging that each of us arrive “on the scene” of communication with different histories, traditions, values, and experiences. The acknowledgment of alterity gives rise to a sense of ethical responsibility—the ability to respond to the other—which leads to compassion. To Buber, therefore, “Genuine responsibility exists only when there is real responding” ( 1975 , p. 16). Ethical compassion arises not because one identifies with the others’ suffering but because one recognizes the other’s alterity, and therefore, her suffering. As Noddings writes, “I do not ‘put myself in the other's shoes,’ so to speak, by analyzing his reality as objective data and then asking, ‘How would I feel in such a situation?’ On the contrary, I set aside my temptation to analyze and plan. I do not project; I receive the other into myself, and I see and feel with the other” ( 1984 , p. 30).

Noddings illustrates the idea of empathic engrossment as our response to an infant crying. We know something is wrong, and the infant’s feeling becomes ours. This is not a problem-solving state, but a feeling-with state. Thus ethical compassion is not vulnerable to ideological ideas about worthy and unworthy suffering but simply feels with the other because she is suffering. Therefore, relational compassion is open to transformation of the self wherein “we are not attempting to transform the world, but we are allowing ourselves to be transformed” (Noddings, 1984 , p. 34). The relational dimension of communication ethics are also important in feminist care-based ethics, focusing less on the rights of individuals and more upon caring responsibilities in relationships (Tronto, 1993 ). Other dimensions of compassion that arise in communication ethics involve acknowledgment, advocacy, affirmation, amnesty, atonement, attunement, embodiment, forgiveness, generosity, gratitude, humility, kindness, leisure, precarity, reconciliation, and sharing (Arnett, 2013 ; Holba, 2014 ).

Discussion of the Literature: Five Modes of Ethical Reasoning

As a branch of philosophy, ethics concerns questions about what makes some actions right and some wrong in a given context. Throughout history all cultures have developed particular doctrines or philosophies of the good, many of which are classified in the West along four primary lines: virtue ethics , which locate the good in the virtuous character and qualities of actions or individuals; deontological ethics , which locate the good in an act or an individual’s adherence to duties or principles; teleological ethics , which locate the good in the consequences of actions and choices; and dialogic ethics , which locate the good in the relations between persons. During the 20th century , postmodern ethics has called these prior ethical theories into question by challenging not merely the value of rules, procedures, systems, and fixed categories for understanding or theorizing ethics, but the humanist ideas of persons as autonomous agents who can act independently as ethical agents. Below are described five such modes of ethical reasoning.

Most commonly associated with the 5th-century bce Greek philosopher Aristotle, virtue ethics focus on the choice, cultivation, and enactment of “virtuous” qualities, such as courage, temperance, truthfulness, and justice, in both the individual and in civic life. In his foundational Nicomachean Ethics , Aristotle ( 1998 ) describes how virtue is an expression of character in which we become temperate by doing temperate acts. In the Aristotelian sense, then, ethics are a human activity rather than a creed, principle, or goal. Most religious traditions articulate a number of overlapping virtues, many of which derive in turn from even earlier traditions and cultures. For example, the so-called cardinal virtues of 12th-century Roman Christianity emphasize courage, prudence, temperance, and justice; these were derived from the earlier Greek philosophies of Plato and Aristotle that in turn derive from far earlier Egyptian wisdom literature (ca. 3000 bce ). Similarly, the 5th-century bce Paramitas of Indian Buddhism stress generosity, patience, honesty, and compassion and are derived in part from virtues articulated in Hindu scriptures that originated around 1000 bce . Further east in 5th-century bce China, both Confusianism and Taoism identified virtues such as empathy, reciprocity, and harmony for the cultivation of an ethical personal and civic life. Even the 18th-century American political virtues of Jeffersonian democracy (inscribed in the Declaration of Independence as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) derive in part from the Aristotelian idea of eudaimonia , the happiness caused by living a virtuous life. Outside of religious traditions, contemporary Euro-American theorists of ethical virtue, sometimes called neo-Aristotelians, locate virtue variously, for example, in the enactment of intentions and motives (Phillipa Foot, Michael Slote), in practical action or phronesis (Alasdair MacIntyre), and in the civic value of emotions, especially compassion (Martha Nussbaum).

Deontological ethics (derived from the Greek word for duty ) are most commonly associated with the 18th-century Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant, who constructed a theory of moral reasoning based not on virtues, outcomes, or emotions but on duties and obligations. In his book Foundations for a Metaphysics of Morals , Kant proposes that ethics are based on a universal law that he calls the categorical imperative . Sometimes mistakenly confused with the golden rule (i.e., do unto others as you would have them do unto you ), the categorical imperative holds that a person should only act on the principles that she or he would want everyone else to always act upon. Kant’s universal law is categorical because there are absolutely no exceptions under any conditions, and it is imperative because it is a necessary duty to which everyone must adhere. But the imperative is dictated not by goods in and of themselves, but by logical reasoning. For example, Kant argues that the ethical prohibition against lying is a categorical imperative because if lying were universalized, no one would believe lies, which depend for themselves on public trust. Bok’s work on lying builds upon this logical contradiction inherent in lying. Similarly, the second formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative—which states that we should never treat people as means to our ends, but always as ends in and of themselves—is readily understood as a universalizable, prohibitive law. Other deontological ethical theories include religious and monastic approaches (such as adhering to divine commands, doctrinal principles, and the fulfillment of monastic vows) and social-contract theories based on the philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jeans-Jacques Rousseau. In contemporary Euro-American contexts, deontologists, also called neo-Kantians, have developed rights-based approaches (e.g., John Rawls’s theory of justice ), discourse-based approaches (e.g., Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics ), and contract-based approaches (e.g., Thomas Scanlon’s contractualism ). Significantly for communication, both Habermas’s and Rawls’s theories center on processes of communication from which ethical norms and principles are derived. For example, Habermas’s discourse ethics prescribes the development and acceptance of rationally grounded validity claims and nontranscendable norms that are produced in democratic argumentation, whereas Rawls’s theory of justice relies upon the discursive achievement of overlapping consensus and public reason . Both approaches have been critiqued on a number of grounds from differing theoretical perspectives, including feminist, postmodernist, Marxist, communitarian, libertarian, and noncognitivist. For example, Chantal Mouffe critiques both Habermas’s and Rawls’s theories because they rely upon idealized, conceptually impossible, and hyper-rational models of deliberative democracy.

Sometimes considered the foil of deontological ethics, teleologica l (from the Greek word for goal ) ethical theories (also known as consequentialist ) exercise moral judgments based on the outcomes and consequences of actions rather than on principles, duties, or virtues. Among the most common ethical theories are utilitarianism and ethical egoism . Utilitarianism, associated with the 18th-century British philosophies of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, theorizes that we are ethically bound to do what is best for the most people. According to Mill, for example, actions are good when they promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number . In the contemporary Euro-American context, consequentialist theorists include Peter Singer, who extends utilitarianism to include the good of animals and other beings on the planet; Shelly Kagan, who defends consequentialism from critiques by contemporary deontological ethicists; and Amartya Sen, who applies utilitarian ethics to economics, democracy, and public health. Another form of teleological ethics— ethical egoism (which is sometimes called rational self-interest theory)—theorizes that all ethical actions are ultimately self-serving, even those that appear to be self-sacrificing. Some contemporary theorists argue an ethical egoist position from a psychological point of view that stresses the emotional and social benefits of ethical actions to self, whereas others argue ethical egoism from an evolutionary point of view that stresses the genetic and biological benefits to self. Still others argue ethical egoism from a rational point of view, positing that both individuals and society benefit when each individual benefits. Teleological ethics have been critiqued on a number of grounds from a number of perspectives, especially the deontological and virtue-based approaches. Martha Nussbaum, for example, argues that consequentialist reasoning all too easily leads to a kind of heartless cost-benefit calculation that excludes the full expanses of the ethical.

Associated largely with late 20th-century Euro-American philosophers, such as Zygmunt Bauman, Joseph Caputo, and Michel Foucault, but also with feminist ethicists such as Carol Gilligan, Joan Tronto, and Nel Noddings, postmodern ethicists critique so-called modernist and enlightenment ethical philosophies such as virtue, deontological, and teleological ethics. Rather than conceptualizing human beings as free, autonomous, independent, and rational agents, as do the modernist theorists, postmodernists view human beings as inter-related, interdependent, contradictory, emotional, and, occasionally at least, irrational social beings. Drawing in part on the 19th-century philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, who crafted a brilliant challenge to traditional religion, philosophy, and morality, postmodern ethicists further reject modernist ideals of certainty, universalism, and essentialism, as well as rules, codifications, and systems. In place of ethical rules or precepts, for example, Zygmunt Bauman posits the idea of moral responsibility in which each person must stretch out towards others in pursuit of the good in all situations, even, or perhaps most especially, when what is the good is most uncertain. Thus, Bauman cautions against certainty, calculation, and precept, arguing that reason alone is an insufficient basis for ethical action. Similarly, feminist ethicists from a range of perspectives, such as Annette Baier’s virtue-oriented ethics to Chantal Mouffe’s Marxist-oriented ethics, critique deontological perspectives such as Rawls’s idea of the priority of the right over the good because it categorically privileges individualistic and abstract rights over collective goods and values. From a somewhat different postmodern perspective, Michel Foucault posits ethics as caring for the self through what he calls a practice of freedom . Joseph Caputo, in contrast, argues against ethics itself and in its place posits the affirmation of the other, the singularity of each ethical situation, and the centrality of the unqualified, unconditional gift that requires precisely those things that are not required.

Rather than theorizing an ethics based in individual character, duty, outcome, or interest, dialogic ethics locates the ethical in the intersubjective sphere of communicative relationships between and among persons. The issues of response and responsibility are woven into the center of dialogic ethics. Associated largely with the work of two 20th-century Jewish European philosophers, Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, dialogic ethics posits ethics as first philosophy wherein the ethical relation with the other, rather than the ontology of the self, is understood to be foundational to human experience. To Buber, the person becomes a person by saying Thou and thereby entering into relation with other persons. The Thou , in Buber’s understanding, is not a monadic subjectivity but a relation of intersubjectivity , or development of mutual meaning, that arises from people cohabiting communication exchanges in which understanding arises from what happens in between the subjectivity of persons. To Levinas, one’s personal subjectivity can only arise through one’s own responsibility to the other , who is utterly different from oneself and to whom one owes everything. Dialogic ethics thus requires a healthy respect for the irreducible alerity , or otherness, of persons with whom one has dialogue, wherein the self never mistakes its own understanding of the other for the other herself. In the context of communication studies, dialogic ethics has generated a rich body of research by contemporary scholars such as Kenneth Anderson, Ronald Arnett, Rob Cissna, Michael Hyde, and Jeffrey Murray, wherein the ultimate issues in communication ethics pertain not so much to words themselves but rather to the ethical realm in which communication is constitutive of persons, cultures, publics, and relationships. For example, to Cissna and Anderson, dialogic ethics involve an awakening of other-awareness that occurs in and through a moment of meeting.

In the field of communication, ethicists make use of all of the above theories in approaching questions of ethics in interpersonal, intercultural, mediated, institutional, organizational, rhetorical, political, and public communication contexts. Clifford Christians and Michael Traber, for example, take a deontological approach in searching for ethical universals and protonorms across cultures. In contrast, Josina Makau and Ronald Arnett take a more dialogic approach in a volume on communication ethics and diversity. In contrast, Fred Casmir takes a multi-perspectival approach to intercultural and international communication ethics. More recently, Michael Hyde has drawn on the dialogic ethics of Emmanuel Levinas to explore ethical rhetorical action in personal and public life, and Sharon Bracci and Clifford Christians have brought a wide range of ethical perspectives to bear on a range of communication questions.

In the classroom, communication ethicists emphasize the importance of cultivating attunement to silences, erasures, and misrecognitions that occur when one voice speaks in place of another or when another is silenced. By asking questions such as who speaks, who is heard, or whose voice is rendered unintelligible, students are encouraged to more fully recognize both tacit and overt ethical questions in all manner of communicative interactions. While most communication ethics textbooks tend to include some combination of theory, disciplinary context, and applied context, each tends to principally emphasize one or two of these areas. Some communication ethics textbooks are organized principally around modes of moral reasoning, while others address ethics as it is understood in different areas of the field. Some textbooks are embedded in specific applied contexts such as the workplace or the media, and some attempt to combine theory, disciplinary context, and value.

Addendum: Some Key Themes of Communication Ethics

Websites/other information.

Communication Ethics Division of NCA: http://commethics.org/news/

Institute of Communication Ethics: http://www.communicationethics.net/sales/index.php?nav=book .

Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory: http://rhetoric.eserver.org/quintilian/

Further Reading

• Anderson, K. E. , & Tompkins, P. S. (2015). Practicing communication ethics: Development, discernment, and decision-making . New York, NY: Routledge.
• Arnett, R. C. (1986). Communication and community: Implications of Martin Buber’s dialogue . Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
• Casmir, F. L. (1997). Ethics in intercultural and international communication . Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Cheney, G. , Lair, D. J. , Ritz, D. , & Kendall, B. E. (2009). Just a job? : Communication, ethics, and professional life . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Cheney, G. , May, S. , & Munshi, D . (Eds.). (2011). The handbook of communication ethics . New York, NY: Routledge.
• Chesebro, J. W. (1973). Cultures in conflict—a generic and axiological view. Today’s Speech , 21 (2), 11–20.
• Christians, C. , & Traber, M. (1997). Communication ethics and universal values . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Cissna, K. N. , & Anderson, R. (2002). Moments of meeting: Buber, Rogers, and the potential for public dialogue . Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Couldry, N. , Madianou, M. , & Pinchevski, A . (Eds.). (2013). Ethics of media . Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Etieyibo, E. (2011). The ethics of government privatisation in Nigeria. Thought and Practice , 3 (1), 87–112.
• Foucault, M. (1997). Ethics: Subjectivity and truth ( P. Rabinow , Ed., R. Hurley et al., Trans.). New York, NY: The New Press.
• Habermas, J. (1990). Moral consciousness and communicative action . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Hardwig, J. (1973). The achievement of moral rationality. Philosophy and Rhetoric , 6 (3), 171–185.
• Harker, M. (2007). The ethics of argument: Rereading Kairos and making sense in a timely fashion. CCC , 59 (1), 77–97.
• Hyde, M. J. (2001). The call of conscience: Heidegger and Levinas . Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
• Johannesen, R. L. (2002). Ethics in human communication (5th ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
• Johnstone, C. L. (1983). Dewey, ethics, and rhetoric: Toward a contemporary conception of practical wisdom. Philosophy and Rhetoric , 16 (3), 185–207.
• Levinas, E. (1998). Otherwise than being . ( Alphonso Lingis , Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
• Lipari, L. (2014). Listening, thinking, being: Toward an ethics of attunement . State College: Penn sylvania State University Press.
• Makau, J. M. (1997). Communication ethics in an age of diversity . Urbana: University of Illiinois.
• Mumby, D. K. (1987). The political function of narrative in organizations. Communication Monographs , 54 (2), 113–127.
• Nussbaum, M. (1995). Poetic justice: The literary imagination and public life . Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
• Parker, D. H. (1972). Rhetoric, ethics and manipulation. Philosophy and Rhetoric , 5 (2), 69–87.
• Prellwitz, J. H. (2011). Nietzschean genealogy and communication ethics. Review of Communication , 11 (1), 1–19.
• Roberts, K. G. , & Arnett, R. C . (Eds.). (2008). Communication ethics: Between cosmopolitanism and provinciality. Critical Intercultural Communication Studies, Vol. 12 . New York, NY: P. Lang.
• Singer, P. (1995). How are we to live? Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
• Alford, C. F. (2001). Whistleblowers: Broken lives and organizational power . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Aristotle . (1998). The Nichomachean ethics ( David Ross , Trans.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Arneson, P. (2014). Communicative engagement and social liberation: Justice will be made . Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
• Arnett, R. (1987). The status of communication ethics scholarship in speech communication journals from 1915 to 1985. Central States Speech Journal , 38 (1), 44–61.
• Arnett, R. (2013). Communication ethics in dark times: Hannah Arendt’s rhetoric of warning and hope . Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
• Arnett, R. C. , Bell, L. M. , & Fritz, J. M. H. (2010). Dialogic learning as first principle in communication ethics. Atlantic Journal of Communication , 18 (3), 111–126.
• Asante, M. K. (1992). The escape into hyperbole: Communication and political correctness. Journal of Communication , 42 (2), 141–147.
• Bagdikian, B. H. , & Bagdikian, B. H. (2004). The new media monopoly . Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
• Bauman, Z. Postmodern Ethics . (1993). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• Baynes, K. (1994). Communicative ethics, the public sphere and communication media. Critical Studies in Mass Communication , 11 (4), 315–326.
• Bok, S. (1979). Lying: Moral choice in public and private life . New York, NY: Vintage Books.
• Brummett, B. (1981). A defense of ethical relativism as rhetorically grounded. Western Journal of Speech Communication: WJSC , 45 (4), 286–298.
• Bruner, M. L. (2006). (e)merging rhetorical histories. Advances in the History of Rhetoric , 9 , 171–185.
• Buber, M. (1975). Between man and man . New York, NY: Macmillan.
• Buber, M. (1998). The knowledge of man: Selected essays . Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.
• Carey, J. W. (1989). Communication as culture: Essays on media and society . Boston, MA: Unwin Press.
• Couldry, N. , Gray, M. L. , & Gillespie, T. (2013). Culture digitally: Digital in/justice. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media , 57 (4), 608–617.
• D’Arcy, A. , & Young, T. M. (2012). Ethics and social media: Implications for sociolinguistics in the networked public. Journal of Sociolinguistics , 16 (4), 532–546.
• Ettema, J. S. , & Glasser, T. L. (1988). Narrative form and moral force: The realization of innocence and guilt through investigative journalism. Journal of Communication , 38 (3), 8–26.
• Fairfield, J. , & Shtein, H. (2014). Big data, big problems: Emerging issues in the ethics of data science and journalism. Journal of Mass Media Ethics , 29 (1), 38–51.
• Foucault, M. (2001). Fearless speech . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Fraser, N. (1994). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (pp. 109–142). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Gastil, J. , Lingle, C. J. , & Deess, E. P. (2010). Deliberation and global criminal justice: Juries in the International Criminal Court. Ethics and International Affairs , 24(1), 69–90.
• Gehrke, P. J. (2009). The ethics and politics of speech: Communication and rhetoric in the twentieth century . Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
• Groom, S. A. , & Fritz, J. M. H . (Eds.). (2012). Communication ethics and crisis: Negotiating differences in public and private spheres . Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
• Gross, L. (1991). The contested closet: The ethics and politics of outing. Critical Studies in Mass Communication , 8 (3), 352–388.
• Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Herrscher, R. (2002). A universal code of journalism ethics: Problems, limitations, and proposals. Journal of Mass Media Ethics , 17 (4), 277–289.
• Holba, A. M. (2014). In defense of leisure. Communication Quarterly , 62 (2), 179–192.
• Huff, M. , Roth, A. L. , & Project Censored . (2013). Censored 2014: Fearless speech in fateful times; the top censored stories and media analysis of 2012–13 . New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.
• Hyde, M. J. (2012). Openings: Acknowledging essential moments in human communication . Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.
• Ivie, R. L. (1980). Images of savagery in American justifications for war. Communication Monographs , 47 (4), 279–294.
• Johnstone, C. L. (1980). An Aristotelian trilogy: Ethics, rhetoric, politics, and the search for moral truth. Philosophy and Rhetoric , 13 (1), 1–24.
• Jovanovic, S. (2012). Democracy, dialogue, and community action: Truth and reconciliation in Greensboro . Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.
• Lanier, J. (2010). You are not a gadget: A manifesto . New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority ( A. Lingis , Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
• Lomas, C. W. (1961). The rhetoric of demagoguery. Western Speech , 25 (3), 160–168.
• Lozano-Reich, N. M. , & Cloud, D. L. (2009). The uncivil tongue: Invitational rhetoric and the problem of inequality. Western Journal of Communication , 73 (2), 220–226.
• Malcolm, J. (2011). The journalist and the murderer . New York, NY: Knopf.
• McChesney, R. W. (2014). Blowing the roof off the twenty-first century: Media, politics, and the struggle for post-capitalist democracy . New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.
• Munshi, D. , Broadfoot, K. J. , & Smith, L. T. (2011). Decolonizing communication ethics: A framework for communicating otherwise. In G. Cheney (Ed.), The handbook of communication ethics (pp. 119–132). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Newman, R. P. (1995). Truman and the Hiroshima cult . East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
• Niebuhr, R. (2013). Moral man and immoral society: A study in ethics and politics (2nd ed.). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
• Nilsen, T. R. (1960). Persuasion and human rights. Western Speech , 24 (4), 201–205.
• Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education . Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Nunan, D. , & Di Domenico, M. (2013). Market research and the ethics of big data. International Journal of Market Research , 55 (4), 2–13.
• Oh, D. , & Banjo, O. O. (2012). Outsourcing postracialism: Voicing neoliberal multiculturalism in Outsourced . Communication Theory , 22 (4), 449–470.
• Pinchevski, A. (2005). By way of interruption: Levinas and the ethics of communication . Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
• Quintilian . (2006). Institutes of oratory ( L. Honeycutt , Ed, J. S. Watson , Trans.). Retrieved from http://rhetoric.eserver.org/quintilian/
• Rushing, J. H. (1993). Power, other, and spirit in cultural texts. Western Journal of Communication , 57 (2), 159–168.
• Rustin, B. , Cary, S. G. , Bristol, J. E. , Chakravarty, A. , Chalmers, A. B. , Edgerton, W. B. , et al. (1955). The American Friends Service Committee. Speak truth to power: A Quaker search for an alternative to violence . A Study of International Conflict Prepared for the American Friends Service Committee. Approved for publication March 2, 1955.
• Saunders, D. B. (2010). Neoliberal ideology and public higher education in the United States. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies , 8 (1), 42–77.
• Schmid, C. L. (2001). Politics of language: Conflict, identity, and cultural pluralism in comparative perspective . Cary, NC: Oxford University Press.
• Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Squires, C. R. (2002). Rethinking the black public sphere. Communication Theory , 12 (4), 446–468.
• Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care . New York, NY: Routledge.
• Tsuda, Y. (2008). English hegemony and English divide. China Media Research , 4 (1), 47–55.
• Vivian, B. (2010). Public forgetting: The rhetoric and politics of beginning again . State College: Pennsylvania State Press.
• Ward, S. J. A. (2005). Philosophical foundations for global journalism ethics. Journal of Mass Media Ethics , 20 (1), 3–21.
• Ward, S. J. A. (2004). The invention of journalism ethics: The path to objectivity and beyond . Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
• Wilcox, W. (1961). The staged news photograph and professional ethics. Journalism Quarterly , 38 , 497–504.
• Wulfemeyer, K. T. (1985). How and why anonymous attribution is used by Time and Newsweek . Journalism Quarterly , 6 2(1), 81–126.
• Zelizer, B. (2007). On “having been there”: “Eyewitnessing” as a journalistic key word. Critical Studies in Media Communication , 24 (5), 408–428.

1. And some scholars have made the case for ethical relativism in certain contexts of communication. See, for example, Barry Brummett , A Defense of Ethical Relativism as Rhetorically Grounded, Western Journal of Speech Communication: WJSC , 45 (4) (Fall 1981), 286–298.

Related Articles

• Rehabilitation Groups
• Communication Privacy Management Theory and Health and Risk Messaging
• Dialogue, Listening, and Ethics
• Global Media Ethics

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Communication. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 16 April 2024

• Cookie Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility
• [66.249.64.20|162.248.224.4]
• 162.248.224.4

Character limit 500 /500

Marketing Research Ethics, Values and Norms Essay

Introduction.

Norms can simply be defined as conventional standards that a society or professional organization is expected to maintain. Marketers should put in mind that they are serving the greater economy as whole and as such they should endeavor to do no harm. The laws and regulations of the society should be followed. Choices made by marketers should be within the law. To ensure that the marketers do not hurt the customer they should be well trained and experienced so as to add worth to their organizations and clients. This will leave the customer more satisfied and attract more investors to the organization.

Customer trust is very vital in any marketing system. To build trust the customer should not be told lies or misled about the products in the market. Marketing information about goods and services should not be deliberately deceptive to the customers. Ethics requires that a relationship should be built in such away as to provide for just consideration of customer complaints. For efficiency in the trade there should be nurturing of good faith.

Marketers should practice ethical values that are part of the ethical norm in the marketing industry. Ethical values include respect, responsibility, fairness, openness and respect. Ethical values play big role in fostering and improving the confidence of the end user. Ethical values require the marketer to stand behind their products if they fail to deliver to their mentioned benefits. They should always practice responsible behavior by accepting the outcome of their marketing decisions and policies. Marketers should always put in mind the needs of the customer. The interests of the seller should not outweigh the needs of the customer. So as to balance between the two it is mandatory for the marketer to be fair. There should be neither price fixing nor sales manipulations that are intended to hurt the customer. As matter of being open the marketer should always disclose the real list price of the available products this will reflect transparency in the marketing process.

It is unethical for marketers to participate in racial profiling or stereotyping customers. Individual differences should always be considered when doing promotions in marketing. Therefore, the customer should be treated with respect. (Illinois. Institute of technology, 2008). In order to be considered ethical products should be fairly traded and this means that there should be equitable trading agreements. There should be cooperative trading principles and not competitive trading principles, fair pricing is a factor that marketers have to put in mind (Shaw D; Shiu E IgentaConnect 2008).

Marketing nowadays encompasses environmental awareness. It is therefore, ethical for marketers to play the pivotal role in ensuring that products produced are environmentally sound and produced under publicly acceptable surroundings (forbrug.dk 2005). Although the products are required to be environmentally friendly, they are also required to be safe for human consumption. For instance, it was unethical for China to market their eggs abroad which were found to contain traces of harmful chemicals. Message communicated during marketing should be precise and reasonable. Materials used in marketing must assist the consumer to arrive at a knowledgeable choice and analyze the environmental benefits of service or product offered.

In the division of product or service development and management the marketer has a duty of enlightening the consumer on various aspects. They should make all the risks associated with a product or service handling known to the consumer. The marketer has to inform the end user of any change in the product or service that he intends to buy that might impact on the end users purchase choice. The buyer should also be made aware of the extra cost additional features.

Marketing research should be conducted responsibly. There should be no raising of funds or selling under the pretext of conducting research. Market researchers should credible and maintain honesty by avoiding falsification and omission of important data in the research. Although many organizations have customer base that is loyal, outside clients need also be treated fairly and with respect as part of maintaining ethical standards.

In their respective organizations marketers are required to maintain a professional relationship. They should never use force to get the attention of the customers or that of their fellow colleagues. Confidentiality with regard to company’s records and information is what most organizations require of their marketers. They should never try to duplicate the work of their colleagues and present it as theirs without approval. When marketing to the consumers they should never make use of the company’s to solicit favors by taking advantage of the consumer so as to maximize personal wealth or for any other reason. To maintain integrity in the organization the marketer should meet requirements of contracts and respect mutual agreements.

Internet marketing and online computer communications has been used marketers to expand and look for new markets. Internet can be easily manipulated and therefore a code of ethics has also to be applied when it comes to online marketing. When doing online marketing it is the responsibility of the organization to commit itself to ethical internet practices. Internet marketing should not be used in illegal manner whether by fax or mail. When doing market research online information received from the consumers via mail should be treated with utmost privacy. Collected data should be protected from any unofficial access. (AMA Code of ethics, Chicago).

In marketing research the research supplier is a major party. As a matter of ethics he must stick to the fundamental accepted principles applied in any scientific analysis., statistical data and sampling techniques should be precise. In order for the research to be objective, it should be free from any personal bias. Objectivity should lead to accurate findings in the report, facts about the techniques available to the client must be available. When clients are in competition the supplier should not carry out research for two clients in competition as this will put the confidentiality of the research at risk. It is required that research findings be held in confidence by the supplier.

As a party in the research the respondent has the liberty to make a choice whether to say no when asked to participate. In choosing to participate the respondent is under duty to cooperate, be truthful and honest. The respondent has to be briefed on the nature of the research before he starts participating. Research should not be made to cause harm to the respondent, he should therefore be assured of his own personal safety. Privacy is a characteristic of research, respondent’s name or information should not be sold out, and he should not be communicated to at odd hours. Apart from privacy anonymity of the respondent should be maintained and this involves not mailing list of research respondent outside the two involved parties.

Apart from the respondent, supplier researcher and the client there is the general public who witnesses the results of the research. So as to make decisions based on knowledge the public depends on marketing research for information on production. The results of the research should be complete and be fully reported for it to be trusted. False information will create wrong impression to the public. Finally the research should free of any bias opinion if it is to be trusted. (Gail Hudson ).

AMA Code of Ethics . 2007. Web.

An Assessment Of Ethical Obligation And Self-Identity In Ethical Consumer Decision-Making: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach. 2008. Web.

College of Business Administration. Code of Ethics. 2008. Web.

Ethical and Environmental Marketing Claims (2005). Web.

Ethical Considerations in Marketing. 2008. Web.

Illinois Institute of Technology. Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at IIT. Ethical Norms and Values for Marketers. 2008. Web.

Shaw D; Shiu E IgentaConnect 2008. Web.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, March 8). Marketing Research Ethics, Values and Norms. https://ivypanda.com/essays/marketing-research-ethics-values-and-norms/

"Marketing Research Ethics, Values and Norms." IvyPanda , 8 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/marketing-research-ethics-values-and-norms/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'Marketing Research Ethics, Values and Norms'. 8 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "Marketing Research Ethics, Values and Norms." March 8, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/marketing-research-ethics-values-and-norms/.

1. IvyPanda . "Marketing Research Ethics, Values and Norms." March 8, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/marketing-research-ethics-values-and-norms/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Marketing Research Ethics, Values and Norms." March 8, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/marketing-research-ethics-values-and-norms/.

• Respondent Superior: Term Definition
• Self-Awareness in Human Interactions
• Memorandum for Claimant John Frost Ltd.
• Good Marketing Strategy: Marketers vs. Cultural Values
• Internet Marketing Communication Strategies
• Operant and Respondent Conditioning
• Intercultural Research and Interview: Communication and the Approach
• Consuming Technology: Why Marketers Sometimes Get It Wrong?
• The Ethical Values of Marketers
• Ethical Behavior in Marketing
• Asda Company's Business Ethics.
• John Kline’s “Ethics for International Business”
• Ethical Aspects of US Sex Education Institutions
• Ethical Considerations in Technology
• Eclipse Airlines Ethics Case

Home / Essay Samples / Philosophy / Ethics / My Personal And Ethical Values

My Personal And Ethical Values

• Category: Philosophy , Psychology , Life
• Topic: Ethics , Morality , Values

Pages: 3 (1545 words)

Views: 2754

• Downloads: -->

--> ⚠️ Remember: This essay was written and uploaded by an--> click here.

Found a great essay sample but want a unique one?

are ready to help you with your essay

You won’t be charged yet!

Fear Essays

Empathy Essays

Inspiration Essays

Courage Essays

Hope Essays

Related Essays

We are glad that you like it, but you cannot copy from our website. Just insert your email and this sample will be sent to you.

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service  and  Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Your essay sample has been sent.

In fact, there is a way to get an original essay! Turn to our writers and order a plagiarism-free paper.

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->