Humans Learn Ethics From Their Environment - 1597 Words

Humans Learn Ethics from their Environment There has been a huge debate throughout the years as to whether human beings are ethical by nature or whether ethics is acquired in other ways. Christian Keyser’s research has evidence showing that humans are ethical by nature; conversely the Milgram experiment propagates that humans are not ethical by nature. Humans learn ethics as a result of their genetic predisposition, as well as, environmental factors such as: culture, socialization, and nurturing. In order to understand if we are ethical or not, we need to understand the difference between being moral or ethical. Many people believe that being moral and ethical are the same thing, but these two terms are a bit different. Morality†¦show more content†¦One example of the cultural racism is the exercise from Jane Elliott. She is a former school teacher who created an exercise to show people that racism still exists in all different countries (Elliott, 2009). The exercise happened in the UK where people with brown eyes were superior and people with blue eyes were being discriminated against. During the exercise, the two out of thirty adults were against the situation and left. These two people were white. One of the men in the video stated that â€Å"the majority of the group is committed to what she wants to do and notably is the white members of the group who are uncertain about it† (Elliott, 2009). This shows that these white members grew up with the belief that racism does not exist, but in reality it does. Another example is that if you grow up in a family with strong political ties, then you will likely adopt those same values. If you live in a household with republican beliefs, then you are more likely to have the same republican views as your parents. According to Christian Keyser’s research, humans learn behaviors from watching others. Although this shows that humans are empathetic by nature, we should not assume that this mean s that humans are ethical by nature. Humans learn by watching their parents or guardians and learn how to react to certain situations. For example, if a child see’s that their parent is afraid of spiders, then they will pick up these