engleski

Students' moral reasoning, Machiavellism and socially desirable responding: implications for teaching ethics and research integrity

Abstract OBJECTIVE: To investigate relationship between personallity traits related to professional and research integrity and moral reasoning among medical students. METHOD: Second year medical students (n=208, 85.6% of 243 enrolled students) answered moral reasoning test &#8211; Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2), and Machiavellianism and Paulhus Socially Desirable Responding scales. RESULTS: Students had the higest score on the Postconventional schema of moral reasoning (mean&#177; ; standard deviation, 35.2&#177; ; 11.6 out of possible 95) compared with Personal Interest (27.2&#177; ; 12.3) and Maintaining Norms schemes (29.2&#177; ; 11.5 ; P<0.001, repeated measures ANOVA). Female students scored higher than their male collegues on Postconventional moral reasoning (37.6&#177; ; 11.0 vs. 31.2&#177; ; 22.4, P<0.001, independent samples t-test). Machiavelianism score was in the upper half of possible range, with the highest score on the Deceiving subscale, where female students scored higher than their male colleagues (24.5&#177; ; 4.2 vs. 22.9&#177; ; 5.1 out of possible 30 ; P=0.037, independent sample t-test). Female students also scored higher on the Impression Management subscale, whereas their male colleagues scored higher on the Self-deception subscale of Paulhus Socially Desirable Responding scale. Multiple regression analysis showed that Machiavellianism Cynicism subscale was a significant positive predictor of Personal Interest schema (&#946; =0.197, P=0.018) and negative predictor of Postconventional moral reasoning (&#946; =-0.183, P=0.029). Scores on Paulhus Socially Desirable Responding were not associated with moral reasoning scores. CONCLUSIONS: Although it is generally believed that moral reasoning scores are not related to personallity variables, our study indicated that Machiavellianism, especially its Cynicism construct, was associated with moral reasoning. These results have important implications for teaching ethics and responsible conduct of research in different cultural and socioeconomic settings.

medical; undergraduate methods; teaching methods; ethics; medical; psychology; morals

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