Cynicism as a Fundamental Dimension of Moral Decision-Making: A Scale Development

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-2001

Abstract

Altruism and cynicism are two funda mental algorithms of moral decision-making. This derives from the evolution of cooperative behavior and reciprocal altruism and the need to avoid being taken advantage of. Rushton (1986) developed a self report scale to measure altruism, however no scale to measure cynicism has been developed for use in ethics research. Following a discussion of reciprocal altruism and cynicism, this article presents an 11-item self report scale to measure cynicism, developed and validated using a sample of 271 customer-service and sales personnel

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