Empathic Perspective-Taking and Ethical Decision-Making in Engineering Ethics Education

Ethical decision-making within engineering has not been broadly studied, although there is a growing body of evidence supporting the view that missteps in ethical decision-making result in changes in organizational culture and in disasters which in turn negatively impact a broad number of stakeholders. The ethical decision-making framework we propose in this paper builds on the notion of empathy as central, although not sufficient in of itself, to the ethical decision-making process. We build on work outside of engineering on the role of empathy in ethical reasoning along with an emerging model of empathy within engineering, drawing on literature in the fields of philosophy, social psychology, neuroscience, and engineering education. We first discuss what empathy is and how empathy informs ethical decision-making in general, with a specific focus on the cognitive form of empathy or what we call empathic perspective-taking. Next we explore methods through which engineers might empathically think and act in ethically challenging situations. Finally, we explore a range of engineering contexts and cases that highlight the role empathy plays in coming to an ethically justifiable decision in specific contexts. We conclude with the suggestion that engineering ethics educators need to develop effective tools for developing and assessing empathic perspective-taking to promote ethical decision-making within the practice of engineering.