Minor Tweaks, Major Payoffs: The Problems and Promise of Situationism in Moral Philosophy

Abstract

hroughout the 1980s, pharmaceutical companies bestowed lavish gifts on health care practitioners, including free travel, equipment, and accommodation.The size and frequency of these gifts raised concerns that the medical profession's integrity was being compromised.As a result, voluntary guidelines were introduced in 1991 limiting their value to $100 or less.It was thought that smaller gifts such as pens, pads, calendars, and samples of drugs would pose no threat.This line of thinking was false.Several studies now confirm that even minor gifts of this sort can lead to major changes in physicians' practices, including rising volumes of prescriptions, erratic prescribing patterns, preferences for new drugs with unproven benefits, and increased prescription spending overall. 1 Despite the substantial evidence demonstrating these effects, physicians regularly deny that small gifts alter their practices, and if not for the work of social scientists, many outside the profession would probably agree.After all, how could these intelligent, highly trained, and rational individuals be swayed by so little?Such sensible thoughts would have been radically misguided.Minor trinkets yield major payoffs for pharmaceutical companies.In this paper, I argue that something similar holds true in the realm of interpersonal morality.Our interactions with others can also be shaped by small details of our situations, and the effects can be just as considerable.Indeed, our sensitivity to immediate situational triggers has not escaped the notice of recent moral philosophers, who have explored the issue in the form of situationist social psychology, or situationism -the thesis that we routinely underestimate the extent to which minor situational variables influence morally significant behavior.2 Situationism has been seen as a threat to prevailing lay and philosophical theories of character, personhood, and agency, leading many 1.For a review of the literature, together with a theoretical discussion, see Katz et al. (2003).2. The literature on situationism is sizable and growing.See, for example, Annas (2003), Athanassoulis (2000)

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