Good Computing

"... we are inquiring not in or­der to know what virtue is, butin order to become good, sinceotherwise our inquiry wouldhave been ofno use." Aristotle,Nicomachean Ethics, Book II.

Moral Exemplars inthe Computing Profession

CHUCK HUFF ANDLAURA BARNARD

01,1101 Ob)«r Idtfll/fttr 10./I09IMT5.2009.9)4/j8

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EXplicit attention tocomputer ethics beganwith Norbert Weiner's(1950) groundbreak­ing book, The Hu­

man Use of Human Beings [33].The teaching of computer ethicsarguably started in the 1970s withthe distribution of Walter Maner'sStarter Kit in Computer Ethics andthe publication of Deborah John­son's seminal text Computer Ethics[18], [19J(see Bynum [4] for a shorthistory). Since that time, many ex­cellent scholars have entered thefield and much work has been done.Work on the philosophical ground­work for computing ethics [9], [31],the policy difficulties associatedwith computing [22], [24], [30],and professional ethics in comput­ing [IOJ, [11] has multiplied andborne much fruit.

Yet oddly, we still know very1ittle about how computer profes­sionals manage to be ethical intheir everyday lives. What skillsand strategies do they use tonavigate the normal (and theunusual) stresses, the conflictingdemands, and the multiple pos­sibilities and difficulties of theircareers? In psychological terms,we are interested in understand­ing how individuals achieve con­tinued successful performanceof ethical behavior in the field ofcomputing. In philosophical termswe might cast the question ashow individuals attain and prac­tice the virtues of the computingprofession. Certainly if we couldlearn something about this, itmight influence the way we teachcomputer ethics to those who willbecome computer professionals.

One way to begin this inquiryis to follow the life stories of com­puter scientists who are known fortheir ethical commitment. We havedocumented 24 of these life storiesin a series of interviews with mor­al exemplars in computing in theUnited Kingdom and Scandjnavia,people who are successfully inte­grating ethical concern into their

practice of computing [17]. This isexploratory work. but it still gives usa multifaceted picture of how moralexemplar in compuring structuretheir lives, make their choices, andimplement their plans.

Interviewing Exemplarsin Computing

SamplingWe followed the sampling methodof one of the classic moral exem­plar stud.ies [6]: recruiting a panelof experts, establishing criteria,and then beginning the samplefrom nominations provided by thepanel and asking approved nomi­nees themselves to suggest others.The panel consisted of recognizedexperts in computer ethics whowould also be able to nominateindividuals from the cultures wewanted to target:

• Prof. Don Gotterbarn, EastTennessee State University,U.S.

• Dr. Alison Adams, Univer­sity of Salford, U.K.

• Prof. Goran Collste, LinkopingUniversity, Sweden

• Dr. Barbara Begier, Poly­technic University, Poland

• Prof. Barrie Thompson, Uni­versity of Sunderland, U.K.

• Prof. Jeroen van den Hoven,Erasmus University, TheNetherlands.

The selection criteria werebased on those used by Colby andDamon [6J. The panel convened toestablish criteria at the November,2002, meeting of ETHICOMP inLisbon. Several months before, wecirculated a white paper among Ihepanel members to propose criteriafor selection, and moderated anemail djscussion of those criteria.The panel dropped Colby and Da­mon's [6] final criterion requiring"a sense of realistic humility." Sev­eral panel members persuasivelyargued that the necessity for self­promotion in many areas of indus­try and academia might disallow

promlsJllg candidates. l Thus, thefinal criteria were:

I) Either a) a sustained commit­ment to moral ideals or ethicalprincipl~s in computing thatinclude a generalized respectfor humanity, or b) sustainedevidence of moral virtue in thepractice of computing.

2) A disposition to make comput­ing decisions in accord withone's moral ideals or ethi­cal principles, implying alsoa consistency between one'sactions and intentions and be­tween the means and ends ofonc's actions.

3) A willingness to risk one'sself-interest for the sake ofone's moral values.

4) A tendency to be inspiring toother computing professionalsand thereby to move them tomoral action.

Within a month after the meet­ing of the panel, panel membershad sent in their initial nomina­tions of exemplars. As these ac­cumulated, they were circulatedback to the panel for approval.The panel received the names anda short explanatory biographicalsummary. Significant concernabout any nominee from any pan­el member was cause for removalof the name. Only one nomineewas removed for this reason.

This method provides nothinglike a random sample of exemplars(an impossible criterion) or of allcomputer professionals (since wewanted to concentrate on the ex­emplary). But it does provide abeginning selection of individu­als who are likely extraordinaryin their ethjcal commitment in theprofession, as judged by the paneland the criteria above. Thus· we

IA recent qualitative analysis of personolityChlll'aCteriSlics of Ihe interviewees [II shows Infllhumility emerges /IS II theme in the interviews (If

alllhe exemplars, Thus the cltcludco 5th criterionwas also fulfilled.

48 I IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE I FALL 2009

Different approaches to moralcareers are driven by differentvalues, or visions of the good.

can make conclusions about thesimilarities and variations that ex­ist among these individuals who3re exemplars in the profession.Some validation of their exem­plar status is provided by the factthat most panel members knew atleast some of the nominees of oth­ers, and several nominees receivedmore than one nomination (indeedmany nominees knew each other,though sometimes as opponenLS onan issue). We believe this sampleprovides a good beginning for un­derstanding excellence in elhicalcommitment in the profession,

We were careful to construct asample with significant chance forvariation based on background. Inthe end, 36 exemplars were nomi­nated in the U.K., and 27 in Scan­dinavia. Thirty-five of the 63 werecontacled ba ed on Our desire forrepresentation in important catego­ries. Half the sample was to be fromthe U.K. and half from Scandinavia.We included this distinction be­eau e of work by Hofstede [12]that suggested these culture hadsignificantly different workplaceenvironments, We tried to recruit asmany women as possible (7 in theU.K. sample and 2 in the Scandina­vian sample), We wanted to inter­view exemplars with experience inacademia and industry, and to getperspective from a few governmentpolicy exemplars. These categoriesoverlapped, with seven exemplarshaving significant experience inmore than one area, In the end, 13exemplars had significant experi­ence in academia, 15 had signifi­cant experience in industry, and 3had significant experience in gov·emment policy. Given the nature ofthe criteria, it is not surprising thatII of the 24 exemplar were in thefinal decades of their careers and 4were retired. But we were able tofind 4 exemplars in the first decadeof their career and 5 exemplars inthe middle of their careers.

Of the 35 exemplars chosenfrom the nomination set, 3 refusedafter some conversation, 7 never

re ponded to initial contacts, andI responded affirmatively, but toolate to be included in the sample.Thus we conducted interviews with24 exemplars out of 35 contacted,a response rale of 71.43%. This isa quite successful response ratefor interviewing what Odendahl &Shaw [25] have called "elites," andit is much higher than the 27% rateobtained by Colby & Damon [6].Representative exemplars include:

• Simon. Rogerson: The firstProfe sor of Computer Ethicsin a university and the found­er of EthiCOMP, a premierEuropean conference on eth­ics and computing (also mycollaborator and host duringthe project).

• Eli<.abelh France: The firstData Protection Registrar inthe UK Her policies helpedsel the agenda for Europeanprivacy law,

• James Towell: Early careerprivate software consultant,with a business profile basedin ethical software design.

• Sreve Shirley: Changed hername from Stephanie to geteI ients for her software designcompany, the first companyin England to concentrate onsoftware alone. She has beena major force in encouragingwomen to adopt cnreers incomputing (several of our ex­emplars cite her influence).

• Ellid Mumford: A member ofthe Tavistock social researchgroup in Britain. and an ear­ly pioneer in socia-technicalsystems (her work is exten­sively cited in Scandinavianuser-centered design work).

• Francis Grundy: A pioneerin encouraging women in

computing who has writ­ten severaI books on genderand computing and lecturedwidely on the continent.

• Alan Newell: A pioneer indeveloping systems to helpthe deaf, the blind, and thephysically handicapped tointeract with computers, butmore importantly, to inter­act with other people. Hisresearch team pioneeredthe word completion spell­ing system now used oncell phones.

• Alan Cox: A LINUX Pio­neer, and a pioneer in theopen source software move­ment. He is head of securityprogramming for Red Hat,and an international spokes­person against restrictive in­telleclual property law.

• Jail Holvasr: A sociologyprofessor in Amsterdam and

a pioneer in privacy advocacyin that country. Now aconsul­tant to companies on privacylaw and ystem design.

• Ove Ivarsen: Started his ca­reer as a furniture builder inthe Swedish blue-collar union,LO. He moved up in the unionas a trainer and eventuallyfounded and now administersthe influential Swedish USERAward for software that sup­ports workers.

Interview and PersonalityQuestionnaireThe 3 hour interview, ba ed onMcAdam's life story protocol[21], asked the exemplars to tellstories from their professionallives. There were stories of in·fluential others, of low and highpoints, from early in their career

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Moral exemplars scored higher onextrov r ion, agreeablE'ne ,andopenness to experience.

and from recent event . The inter·view was held in two sessions onconsecutive days and digitally au­dio-recorded. The recordings weretranscribed and the transcripts sentback to the exemplar for approval.Interviewees made only minor re­visions in their transcripts.

Exemplars were also asked tocomplete a short version of a stan­dard personality inventory, theBFl-44 (Big Five Inventory-44).This is a 44-item self-report in­strument [20] with reasonable reli­ability and cross-cultural validity.It was chosen because of it well­established reliability in researchprograms and its breviry. Tn addi­tion, norms for European popula­tions are available from Srivastavael al. [29]. The BFl-44 measuresfive dimensions of per onalitywidely agreed to be important andstable personality dispositions: I)imroversion-e.xtraversion, a mea­sure of social vitaHty and social

dominance; 2) conscientiousness,a measure of impulse control andachievemcm orientation; 3) neurot­icism, a measure of negative emo­tional reactivity; 4) agreeableness,a measure of social adaptabilityand altruism, and 5) openness toexperience, a measure of intellec­tual openness and creativity.

Tnformal Analysisof TranscriptsThe first author read the tran­scripts closely looking for themesthat might emerge from the sto­ries. This informal analysis sug­gested that most of the exemplarsconsciously cultivated networksof support for their activities andcited multiple people as positiveinfluences. In common with otherwork on exemplars, they did not

think of themselves as morallyextraordinary. However, all wereactive problem solvers and sawthe challenges in their projectsas a mix of the moral, technical,and social. In response, they usedboth social and technical skills inalmost all their work, often ex­plicitly claiming that thc two weremutually supporting in determin~

ing their success.There appeared to be at least two

different a'pproaches to our exem~

plars' moral careers. This is simi·lar to a finding in other exemplarstudies [6] of social service work­ers, in which some concentrated ondirect ervice (helpers) and othersconcentrated on reforming socialsystems (reformers). Tn the com­puting context, we have labeledthese approaches craftsperson andreformer. Craflspersons tendedto focus on their clients or usersand to draw on pre-existing val­ues in computing (e.g., user focus,

customer need, software quality)to define the goals of their work.Thus, they tended to view them­selves as a provider of a serviceor product (e.g., computing for thehandicapped) and to view difficul­tie or disagreements as problemsto be solved. Reformers tended tobe crusaders who were attemptingto change the values in social sys­tems (organizations, professions.national cultures). They tended toview individuals as victims of in­justice and to attempt to remedythat injustice.

Coding the TranscriptsWe designed a coding systembased on the informal analysis(the coding manual is availableat http://www.stolaf.edulpeople/huff/misc/exemplar). 1\vo inde-

pendent coders coded each storyfrom each exemplar for the pres­ence or absence of 12 items: I)social support and 2) antagonism,use of 3) technical or 4) social ex­pertise, 5) the description of harmto victims or 6) need for reform,7) action taken toward reform,8) design undertaken for users orclients, 9) cffectivenes and 10)ineffectiveness of action, and II)negative and 12) positive emotion.One can compute 288 rater agree­ment scores (one for each of 12codings for each of 24 exemplars).The average rater agreement showssubstantial agreement among rat­ers: 90.70%, with SD = 8.7.Disagreements between coderswere averaged.

Items 3 and 8 were averaged tocreate an index of a Crafl theme ineach exemplar's stories, and items5, 6, and 7 were averaged to createan index of a Reform theme in theeach exemplar's stories,2

Results

Correlations from the CodingsAs expected, technical and so­cial expertise tended to co-occurin stories (r = 0.339, p = 0.10),'and social expertise predicted ef­fectiveness and positive emotionin exemplars' stories (r = 0.415;r = 0.602, respectively). Inter­estingly, those who talked moreabout technical expertise tendedto also mention more instances ofineffectiveness (r = 0.447). Thismay be because stories of difficul­ties often involved struggles to gettechnical details right. Thus, thismore quantitative analysis sub­stantiates the mixing of social andtechnical expertise in the work ofmoral exemplars.

2The items for tnch index were sufficiently rell\lcdto justify combining .hem (Cronbnch alpha (or

crrtfl • 0.4$ and for Reform - 0.76). Cronbach'salpha. hen: measures how intem:llllcd the mUltiplemeasures are thaI one wants to combine into an

index (7).

lSignificance levds (or all correlations art: p <0.0.5 or smaller. unless otherwise noted.

so I IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE I PAI.L 2009

Stephen Engberg.

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! .Jan Hotvast j j ~1 .Sleve Shirley ~ ij • 1 ~ Simon Rogerson :

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Other Personality ResultsCan the exemplars be collectivelycharacterized as having a particularkind of personality? In short, moralexemplars score higher than theircountry's norm on extroversion,

members that extraversion containsa component of social dominance(a desire to influence others) in ad­dition to gregariousness, it makessense that those high in extraver·sion might be attracted to reform.Alternatively, those who seore highon craft, tend also to score high onopenness to experience (r = 0.393,p = 0.057). Again, the connectionof openness to creativity makesthis association reasonable.

agreeableness, and openness to expe­rience. They score, on average, lowerOn neuroticism (less negative emo­tional reactivity) than their country'snorm. And they seem nOt to differfrom the nann on conscientiousness.

Table I provides five one sample,2-tailed, t-tests, each testing the hy­pothesi that the exemplars are dif­ferent from their respective countrynorms on the relevant personali tydimension. Scores on each dimen­sion are difference scores, where thedifference is for the relevant countrynorm for each exemplar. Thus, theNonvegian nonn for extroversion issubtracted from each Norwegian'sextroversion score to get the amounttheir scores are higher (a positive

2

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.011

2.893

5.226

1.162-4.647

2.784

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.530

.670

.224-.778

.457

Mean

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Table I

Personalily Dimension

ExtroversionAgreeablenessConscientiousnessNeuroticismOpenness to Experience

Craft and Reform ResultsThe most surprising result camefrom the two indexes of approachesto mora) careers: reform and craft.Whcn these two indexes are plottedagainst each other (see Fig. I), onecan see that several groups of peo­ple clearly emerge. The indexes aretransformed into standard scores(a score of I means the individualis I standard deviation above lhemean of the exemplars, a scoreof -I means the exemplar is I stan­dard deviation below the mean). Aclear group of reformers emerges inthe plot and though the discontinuityis not so clear, there is still a groupof craft person who score aboveaverage on craft and below on thereform. 1\vo interestjng individualsscore high on both indexes, eachwith life stories lhat make sense ofthese scores. Simon Rogerson hashad two careers, first a quite tech­nical software development careerand then a career in academia as areformer (where he started the Ethi­COMP conference series). StephanEngberg has combined the designof privacy-enhancing technologieswith a desire to reform privacypolicy and practice in Denmark.Finally, a group of exemplars thatis "undifferentiated" on these di­mensions emerges, suggesting thatthere may be more approaches to amoral career in computing than thecraft and reform indexes track.

Personality scores add someinteresting complexity to this pic­ture. Exemplars who score high onreform, tend also to score high onextraversion (r = 0.466). If one re-

Not surprisingly, exemplars whoreported more instances of socialsupport were mllch more Ii kely toreport effectiveness in their stories(r = 0.553) and similarly, thosewho reponed social antagonismwere more likely to report inef­fectiveness (r = 0.393). Thus, theprofile of moral exemplars as thosewho depend on their social envi­ronment for effective problem solv­ing is replicated with this analysis.

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Craftspersons tended to focuson their clients or users and todraw on pre-existing values.

number) or lower (a negative num~

ber) than the Norwegian norm.Before being averaged, the scoreswere expressed in z-scores basedon the population means and stan­dard deviations for each exemplar'scountry (provided by Sam Gosling,based on data from [29)). Thus, the0.53 mean for extroversion can beinterpreted as the exemplars scoringabout 1/2 of a tandard deviationhigher on extroversion (or more ex·troverted than 67% of individuals intheir country of origin).

Striking Preliminary FindingsSeveralstrikingfindingsemergefromthis exploratory work. Hrst, there isclearly more than one profile of theway compuLing moral exemplars didtheir work. There were, at least, twotypes: refonners who tried to changesocial systems and craftspersonswho designed systems to help indi­viduals. There likely are many moretypes, but this finding opens the doorto search for, and teach toward, vari­ety in moral careers, We need not en·vision the goal of computing ethicscourse a imposing a uniformity ofvalues, represented by ethics codesor other norms of the profession. Inany healthy profession, one mightexpect a range of shared values [2],with some commanding more adher­ence (e.g., safety) than others (e.g..intellectual property), and some be­ing topics of lively dcbate (e.g., pri­vacy vs. national security tradeoffs).This value-pluralism [27], [32] is anarural slate of affairs and allowsthe sort of moral diversity that canproduce craftsperson and reform­ers pur uing different goals, all withthe betterment of the profession andsociety in mind. We do not have toadopt philosophicnl relativism torecognize that different individualswill emphasize and care nbout dif-

ferent aspects of the many valuesthat arc shared among computingprofessionals. Indeed moral diver­sity may be a good thing, with indi­viduals devoting time to the valuesthat are the most important to them.

Second, different approaches tomoral careers are driven by differ­ent values, or visions of the good,that are central to the individualswho adopt them. Each of the exem­plar is attempting to achieve goodsthat are central to them and central[0 their conception of who they areas a computing professional. This isobliquely hown at the beginning ofeach interview when each exemplarinvariably claims that they do notsee themselves as special but haveinstead simply been doing "the rightthing" or "what I love," In p ycho­logical terms this is evidence of sig­nificant integration of moral goalsinto their professional self·concept[3]. In philosophical terms it is oneaspect of character [28].

Third, personaLity character­istics correlated with these ap­proaches to good computing. Thesample i far too small and arbi­trary to conclude that certain per­sonal ity characteristics make onemore likely to be a moral exemplar.There surely are significant differ­ences from country norms on fourof the five dimensions. But it maywell be, for instance, that certainpersonality characteristics (e.g.,extroversion) make a moral exem­plar more likely to be sampled byour particular method. Our samplearguably consists of moral exem­plars, but there are cenainly manymore that we may have overlookedbecause they were 0 retiring. Itmakes much more sense to saythat personality might well shapethe way one is a moral exemplarin computing. EXlraversion and

social dominance fit with the so­cial requirements for a career oftrying to bring abom reform in aprofession or in the larger society.It is likely that personality influ­ences choices in a moral Careerand that choices made in a moralcareer influence personality in re­turn [26]. As professional playto their strengths, it is likely thattheir slrengths increase. To under­stand the variety of ways in whichcomputer professionals chart theirmoral careers, we will clearlyneed to take into account person­ality characteristics.

Fourth, exemplars consistentlyspoke of both social skills (e.g.,understanding people, navigatingorganizations) and technical skills(e.g.. understanding database struc­tures and software processes) as in­fluential in successful moral actionin computing, and as crucial evenfor good design. For many of thecrartsper ons, the center of theircraft was recognizing the organi­zational or personal needs of usersand using their technical expertiseto reframe those needs into thingsthat computing could help them do.But for all the exemplars the skillsof constnlcting functioning, COm­

mitted work groups, navigating or­ganizations, and influencing otherswere part of their success.

This centrality of kills is goodnews to educators, for this is onecontributor to moral action in com·puting that can surely be taught.It also integrates well with recentwork in moral psychology that treatsmoral action as a kind of expertise[23] with skill sets and competen­cies that can be learned. An impli­cation of this finding is that it is thecombination of social and technicalskills that leads to the successfulperformance of the virtues in com­puting, and that it would be moreeffective to teach this combinationthan to teach the two in isolation(or to only teach the technical). 1bdo this will require some under­standing of the complex social andtechnical skill and knowledge base

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4 - _WM

fig. 2.

Influence This

matters (e.g., the business and orga­nizational imperatives that governconcern for privacy). A we iden­tify these skills and knowledge, thismodel suggests that courses in com­puter ethics should engage studentsin extensive use of the knowledgeand practice of the skills. Doing sowould make the clas more like alaboratory or project-based coursewith extensive work on cases andprojecls. These kinds of skill andknowledge also help prepare thestudent for the various Moral Ecol­ogies they will enc unter in theircareer. Recognizing that there aredifferent moral ecologies [8] canhelp students in choosing carccrpaths and in reacting skillfully to

places on the dimensions are mattersfor empirical inquiries.

Thus, as Fig: 2 suggests andwork by Narvaez & Lapsley [23]documents, One can teach the skillsand knowledge associated withmoral expertise, though it requiresconsiderable practice to reach ex­pert level . As our work suggests,these skills and knowledge arc bothabout technical matters (e.g., datastruclures for privacy) and social

Moral Ecologies

Integration ofMorality into the

Self·System

Be Aware of This

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Prepare for These

Retormers tended to be crusaderswho were attempting to change thevalues in social systems.

vide a detailed review of this modeland its implications for pedagogyin computer ethics in a recent two­part theoretical paper [15], [16].

The model allows us to arrangethe components along two dimen­sions. One i that of malleability.Because of individual differences,Moral Sk.ilI Sets are not perfectlymalleable, but they are the mostteachable component. Moral Ecol­ogy and the Integration of Morality

into the Self System are both some­what malleable, while core Personal­ity is the least likely to change. Sincethe personal appropriation of moral­ity is a decision the individual alonecan make, the Integration of Morali­ty into the Self System is most underthe comrol of the self. We have ar­ranged the other components on thissecond dimension accordingly, withthe individual having the least con­trol over Moral Ecology. None of thecomponents are placed at an extremeend of a dimension: even core per­sonality can change over time [26]The components are placed on thedimensions mostly to suggest whereinstruction, coaching, and guidancewill be most effective. Their actual

our exemplars used to olve theproblems that confronted them andto achieve the goals they set.

Finally, the social ecology with­in which moral action occurredclearly haped the ability of exem­plars to do good work. The effectsof social support or antagonism andthe importance of social skills tosuccess are markers of this impor·tance. Compared to those just be­ginning their careers, senior-levelexemplars told strikingly differenttales of their freedom to make mor­al choices, based in part on theirpower in and value to their organi­zations. Almo t all the exemplarstold stories of building networksof support within and across orga­nizations to facilitate the achieve­ment of their goals. Exemplars alsorecognized that some organizationsmade moral action more a part ofthe job, rather than isolating suchconcerns. The importance of varia­tion in organizational climate isalso attested to in work by MichaelDavis [8] who in extensive inter­views found organizations to differin predictable ways that affectedthe abi lity of engineers to pursueethical goals in their design work.The powerful influence of socialecology speaks to the need for edu­cation in the social kills requiredto navigate these ecologies.

These preliminary results sug­gest four components of a model ofsucces fut moral action in comput­ing: I) personality, which shapesbut does not determine choices inmoral careers, 2) moral commit­ment, or integration of moralityimo the self, which influences themoral goals the computer profes­sional attempts to achieve, 3) mor­ally relevant skills and knowledgethat provide the competency toactually perform the good that isenvisioned, and 4) a moral ecol·ogy that either supports or hinders(sometimes both) the computer pro­fessional. These components willlikely interact with each other (e.g.,some skills will be morc relevantin some moral ecologies). We pro-

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the Moral Ecologies in which theyfind themselves [13]. Influencingmoral commitment is already listedas one of the Hastings Center goalsof a course in ethics (5]. but rethink­ing it as Integration of Morality intothe Self System helps us both better"to measure it (see the suggestions in[15]) and to see how aspiring com­puting professionals might wel­come guidance that allows them toconstruct their ethical commiunents[14]. FinaUy. recognizing the vari­ety of ways of being ethical thatcomputer professionals might adopt(e.g., craft or reform) gives us roomto allow for individual expressionof Personality in moral careers.

Identifying these componentsallows us to begin to construct oradapt measures that would allow uSto track them and their interactionsacross the careers of computer pro­fessionals. Understanding how thesecomponents influence computerprofessional's choices, successes,and failures in moral careers, andhow they are integrated into the ev­eryday projects of computer profes­sionals. will take us a long way tobeing able to better prepare them toconstruct their moral careers.

This understanding. admittedlya monumental undertaking, wouldstill only be one aspect of the fieldof computer ethics. But it is a cru­cial aspect. and one we may well beready to undertake.

Author InformationChuck Huff is Professor of Psy­chology at St. Olaf College. 1520St. Olaf Avenue. Northfield, Min­nesota 55057.

Laura Barnard is a Clinical Psy­chology student at Duke University.Box 90086. Durham. NC 27708.

AcknowledgmentThanks to Sam Gosling for countrynOrms for the BFI-44 (see [29] forthe methodology). We also thank theNational Science Foundation (SES­0217298 & SVS-0822640) for theircontinuing support and Simon Rog­erson and DeMontfort University

for support during the planning anddata collection. Thanks to studentsKriStyn Aasen. Craig Enlund, JennyIngebritsen, Joe Stewart, and NicoleGilbertsen for their heroic work indesigning and implementing thecoding system. Finally, thanks to theexcmplars who selflessly gave signif­icant time to this projecl so we couldlearn something from them.

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