By Cara Walker
I felt my whole body tense as I stole several glances to my right and my left. Secretively, I hunched over my desk and made long, deliberate marks with my pen. L…K…E…I tried desperately to recall the shape of the final loop of the “R” in my mom’s signature. My chest was tight.
What have I done? I thought.
I had never regretted a decision more quickly. My two years of cursive practice had served me well, but it was clear that as I sat in my fifth grade classroom, waiting on my teacher to come check our agendas for our daily parental signature, my forgery was blatantly apparent.
I should have trusted my gut.
I should have listened to my intuition during what I remember as my first ethical decision.
Ten years later, as I look back on that incident, I can’t help but wonder what drove such a strong feeling of guilt in my dishonesty. What is it that causes us to deem certain behaviors wrong?
American philosopher Charles Peirce proposed four fundamental ways of knowing how to make ethical decision. Intuition is one of these methods of “fixing our beliefs” – a concept for all who rely on their so-called “gut” to make decisions.
But how do our backgrounds shape the individual voices of reason inside each of our heads?
Because despite my childhood choice to ignore that feeling of wrongdoing, I know I have a clear sense when something just doesn’t feel right, and this has a great deal to do with my past experiences.
Dr. Chris Roberts, a professor at the University of Alabama and co-author of Doing Ethics in Media: Theories and Practical Applications, says intuition does influence our decision making, calling it a double-edged sword.
In Chapter 1 of Doing Ethics in Media, it states, “We take in a wide variety of opinions and observations running them through our individual filters – filters created by our particular lot in life.”
According to the book, these filters can be affected by many different factors including our professions, demographics (age, sex, education, income, and location), psychographics (values and motivations), our level of indifference and our self-interest.
Danielle Waddell, an undergraduate journalism major at the University of Alabama, says she agrees with the idea of personal filters within the realm of intuition.
“Things we learn impact the way we respond to things and the way we feel about things,” she said. “My background with Christianity specifically impacts the way I make decisions. I hold myself to standards I’ve learned in church, and I think someone else’s response to an ethical dilemma may be different if they don’t have the same type of religious background that I have.”
In essence then, my gut reaction to faking my mother’s signature as a child, as insignificant of a decision that may seem now, is based on factors that are uniquely my own – all of which have molded my decision making.
Intuition, although a general concept in the sense presented by Peirce so many years ago, is a much more complex idea in the world of ethics.