Abstract
The world is in trouble with numerous significant challenges to life and society such as climate change, divisive politics, economic disparity, war, racism and discrimination, and violence. At the core of these issues is human behavior and in particular, ethical decision making. The purpose of this reflection is to underscore three practical principles to encourage more prosocial behavior by (a) embracing the reality of egoism, (b) finding ways to merge egoism with the common good, and (c) socially engineer ethical behavior that benefits society. Considering ethical decision making and nurturing prosocial behavior in a realistic manner provides at least some hope for relieving the many difficulties that our society faces.
References
Anderson R. E. (Ed.) 2015. World Suffering and Quality of Life. Springer Netherlands.
Anderson R. E. 2014. “Suffering on a Global Scale,” in Idem, Human Suffering and Quality of Life: Conceptualizing Stories and Statistics (pp. 49–68). Dordrecht – Heidelberg – New York – London: Springer Nature.
Baykara Z. G., Demir S. G., & Yaman S. 2015. “The Effect of Ethics Training on Students Recognizing Ethical Violations and Developing Moral Sensitivity,” Nursing Ethics 22(6):661–675. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733014542673
Bennett O. 2019. Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Postmodern World. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Biglan A. 2015. The Nurture Effect: How the Science of Human Behavior Can Improve Our Lives and our World. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.
Borysowski J., Ehni H. J., & Górski A. 2021. “Ethics Codes and Medical Decision Making,” Patient Education and Counseling 104(6):1312–1316. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2020.10.034
Bussen T. J., Biggs H., & Bono T. 2024. Enlightened Self-Interest: Individualism, Community, and the Common Good. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Drea K. M., Brown M., & Sacco D. F. 2021. “Functional Altruism Among Agreeable and Narcissistic Donors: Evidence from Crowdsourced Fundraisers,” Psihologijske Teme 30(1):125–143. https://doi.org/10.31820/pt.30.1.7
Klugman C. & Stump B. 2006. “The Effect of Ethics Training upon Individual Choice,” Journal of Further and Higher Education 30(02):181–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098770600617703
Knapp S. J. & Fingerhut R. 2024. Practical Ethics for Psychologists: A Positive Approach. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Liu Y. 2024. “The Influencing Factors of Altruism and Egoism,” Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences 26:567–571. https://doi.org/10.54097/kxq67452
Mangone E. 2020. Beyond the Dichotomy between Altruism and Egoism: Society, Relationship, and Responsibility. Charlotte, NC: IAP.
Marques J. F. 2024. “Leadership Today: Balancing Ego and Altruism,” The Journal of Values-based Leadership 17(2):5. https://doi.org/10.22543/1948-0733.1494
Mizzoni J. 2017. Ethics: The Basics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Morscher E. 1998. Applied Ethics in a Troubled World. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Otterbring T., Festila A., & Folwarczny M. 2021. “Selfless or Selfish? The Impact of Message Framing and Egoistic Motivation on Narcissists’ Compliance with Preventive Health Behaviors during COVID-19,” Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 2:100023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2021.100023
Plante T. G. 2024a. Living Ethically in an Unethical World: Doing the Right Thing, Second Edition. San Diego, CA: Cognella.
Plante T. G. 2024b. Living Better with Spiritually Based Strategies that Work: Workbook for Spiritually Informed Therapy (SIT). San Diego, CA: Cognella.
Plante T. G. 2024c. Health Behavior Change: Proven Strategies for a Longer and Healthier Life. San Diego, CA: Cognella.
Rothstein J. K. 2022. “Egoism and the Limits of Ethics,” Journal of Mental Health and Social Behaviour 4(1):161–166. https://doi.org/10.33790/jmhsb1100161
Sleeman K. E., De Brito M., Etkind S., Nkhoma K., Guo P., Higginson I. J., Gomes B., & Harding R. 2019. “The Escalating Global Burden of Serious Health-Related Suffering: Projections to 2060 by World Regions, Age Groups, and Health Conditions,” The Lancet Global Health 7(7):e883–e892. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30172-X
Steele L. M., Mulhearn T. J., Medeiros K. E., Watts L. L., Connelly S., & Mumford M. D. 2016. “How Do We Know What Works? A Review and Critique of Current Practices in Ethics Training Evaluation,” Accountability in Research 23(6):319–350. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2016.1186547
Tilley J. J. 2022. “Does Psychological Egoism Entail Ethical Egoism?” The Review of Metaphysics 76(1):115–133. https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12440
Trenin D. 2020. “It Will Get Worse Before It Gets Worse,” Horizons: Journal of International Relations and Sustainable Development 17:86–93.
Wallace E., Buil I., & De Chernatony L. 2020. “Consuming Good on Social Media: What Can Conspicuous Virtue Signalling on Facebook Tell Us about Prosocial and Unethical Intentions?” Journal of Business Ethics 162(3):577–592. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3999-7
Walsh R. 2024. “Common Good Constitutionalism and the Individual – A Property Perspective,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence 69(1):77–87.
Watts L. L., Medeiros K. E., Mulhearn T. J., Steele L. M., Connelly S., & Mumford M. D. 2017. “Are Ethics Training Programs Improving? A Meta-Analytic Review of Past and Present Ethics Instruction in the Sciences,” Ethics & Behavior 27(5):351–384. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2016.1182025
Weiß M., Iotzov V., Zhou Y., & Hein G. 2022. “Th Bright and Dark Sides of Egoism,” Frontiers in Psychiatry 13:1054065. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.1054065
Westra E. 2021. “Virtue Signaling and Moral Progress,” Philosophy & Public Affair 49(2):156–178. https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12187
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Thomas Plante
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.