Adapting the Moral Self: The Challenges of Evolutionary Psychology for Administrative Ethics

Abstract

Recent advances in evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience have important implications for administrative ethics. Positivist scientific methodologies may be useful for both researchers and practitioners with regard to their own morality and ethical decision-making. If moral thought is founded on the psychological priority of emotion over reason, administrative ethics, as a branch of normative ethics, should take its emotional foundations seriously. Administrative ethics has implicitly embraced situational and dispositional approaches before turning to evolutionary psychology, with particular reference to the concepts of moral emotions as psychological adaptations and by-products. Developments in cognitive neuroscience indicate the areas of the brain in which moral thought (affective and cognitive) takes place Michael Macaulay is reader in governance and public ethics at the University of Teesside and co-director of the Centre for Public Governance. With a background in political philosophy, his work looks at ethical dimensions of public management (particularly UK local government).