Abstract
Altruism and cynicism are two fundamental 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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Turner, J.H., Valentine, S.R. Cynicism as a Fundamental Dimension of Moral Decision-Making: A Scale Development. Journal of Business Ethics 34, 123–136 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012268705059
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012268705059