1878 - 5158 , Volume 1 , Number 2

If philosophical moral reflection improves moral behavior, one might expect ethics professors to behave morally better than socially similar non-ethicists. Under the assumption that forms of political engagement such as voting have moral worth, we looked at the rate at which a sample of professional ethicists—and political philosophers as a subgroup of ethicists—voted in eight years’ worth of elections. We compared ethicists’ and political philosophers’ voting rates with the voting rates of three other groups: philosophers not specializing in ethics, political scientists, and a comparison group of professors specializing in neither philosophy nor political science. All groups voted at about the same rate, except for the political scientists, who voted about 10–15% more often. On the face of it, this finding conflicts with the expectation that ethicists will behave more responsibly than non-ethicists. What is the relationship between philosophical moral reflection and real-world moral behavior? Does reflecting philosophically on moral questions lead us to act better? Though the question is central to both moral psychology and moral education, it has never been systematically explored. In this and related articles we plan to make a start. Rev.Phil.Psych. (2010) 1:189–199 DOI 10.1007/s13164-009-0011-6 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13164-009-0011-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. E. Schwitzgebel (*) Department of Philosophy, University of California at Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0201, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. Rust Department of Philosophy, Stetson University, Unit 8250, 421 North Woodland Boulevard, DeLand, FL 32723, USA e-mail: [email protected] Author's personal copy