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Ethical engineering practice is a global issue. However, cultural norms and social realities may result in differences in ethical behavior. A basic instructional challenge is developing the ability of students to understand ethical practice and to facilitate discussion of ethical issues across regional and cultural boundaries. The present project seeks to facilitate discussion and analysis of ethical practices of undergraduate engineering students at our university, Texas Tech, and peers at universities in Ukraine and India, our partnering countries. An undergraduate ethics course for engineering majors and the website https://EthicalEngineer.ttu.edu are currently the primary channels through which this project is being developed and implemented. The paper describes (1) steps in developing the website, which is currently operational, (2) progress developing partnerships and recruiting participants, and (3) results from preliminary tests of machine-assisted methods for analyzing students' submissions to the website. The Ethical Engineer is an emerging web-based innovation for facilitating cross-cultural discourse in engineering ethics.

Smartphones have provided many benefits for society, but these benefits have come at some cost. Researchers have identified a number of problematic smartphone usage (PSU) behaviors associated with greater impulsiveness and excessive reassurance seeking, particularly among younger people, women, and minoritized groups. In the present study, we extended this research by (1) examining whether these findings replicate in slightly older demographic groups, (2) determining whether perceived social norms are a substantial predictor of PSU, and (3) confirm that using smartphones specifically for social media is associated with PSU. We conducted an online survey on 183 participants recruited through Prolific. The participants in the present study were significantly older (approximately 9 years) compared to a previous study. Previous findings were replicated on our older sample. Perceived social norms regarding smartphone use had a large association with PSU. We found that using one's smartphone primarily for social media (rather than other popular applications) was associated with greater PSU. We found no evidence that PSU is linked with depression. Nor did we find evidence that the relationship between age and PSU is mediated by age-related decreases in impulsivity, as previous researchers had speculated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online shoppers have a vast array of information available to aid their purchasing decisions (e.g., average user ratings, histograms of ratings). Past research is ambiguous regarding the degree to which shoppers try to simplify this information integration process. Some results suggest that customers will invest a substantial amount of time and effort into the decision process, while others suggest that customers prefer to keep the process as simple as possible and avoid extra effort. In the present study, we sought to examine the conditions under which people will use heuristic strategies versus more analytic ones. We found that the average user rating plays a large role in determining which strategy customers use to integrate product information into a purchasing decision. We show that people use a "binary bias"—assessing the relative number of "high" and "low" ratings and choosing items with the more favorable ratio—when products have a lackluster (~three‐star) average user rating. However, when average ratings are higher, customers instead use even simpler cues to make decisions. We also found evidence that individual differences in analytical thinking dispositions are associated with using more effortful information integration strategies. Thus, the present research suggests different strategies for displaying product information to customers depending on the average user ratings of the product and characteristics of the shoppers themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many novel diseases are of zoonotic origin, likely including COVID‐19. Describing diseases as originating from a diverse range of animals is known to increase risk perceptions and intentions to engage in preventative behaviors. However, it is also possible that communications depicting use of exotic animals as food sources may activate stereotypes of cultures at the origin of a disease, increasing discriminatory behaviors and disease stigma. We used general linear modeling and mediation analysis to test experimental data on communications about zoonotic disease origins from the critical first two months leading up to the declaration of a global pandemic. Results suggest that communications about potential familiar food origins (pigs) affected people's risk perceptions, health behaviors, and COVID‐19 stigma compared to more exotic food sources (e.g., snakes). Participants (N = 707) who read descriptions of exotic origins viewed the virus as riskier and reported stronger intentions to engage in preventative behaviors than those who read about familiar origins (pigs). However, reading exotic origin descriptions was also associated with stronger intentions to avoid Asian individuals and animal products. These results are critical for both theory and public policy. For theory, they are the first to experimentally demonstrate that zoonotic origin descriptions can impact intentions to engage in discriminatory behaviors for cultures viewed as the origin of a novel infectious disease. For policy, they offer clear, actionable insights on how to communicate about risks associated with a novel zoonosis while managing the potential impact on discriminatory behaviors and stigma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many novel diseases are of zoonotic origin, likely including COVID-19. Describing diseases as originating from a diverse range of animals is known to increase risk perceptions and intentions to engage in preventative behaviors. However, it is also possible that communications depicting use of exotic animals as food sources may activate stereotypes of cultures at the origin of a disease, increasing discriminatory behaviors and disease stigma. We used general linear modeling and mediation analysis to test experimental data on communications about zoonotic disease origins from the critical first two months leading up to the declaration of a global pandemic. Results suggest that communications about potential familiar food origins (pigs) affected people's risk perceptions, health behaviors, and COVID-19 stigma compared to more exotic food sources (e.g., snakes). Participants (N = 707) who read descriptions of exotic origins viewed the virus as riskier and reported stronger intentions to engage in preventative behaviors than those who read about familiar origins (pigs). However, reading exotic origin descriptions was also associated with stronger intentions to avoid Asian individuals and animal products. These results are critical for both theory and public policy. For theory, they are the first to experimentally demonstrate that zoonotic origin descriptions can impact intentions to engage in discriminatory behaviors for cultures viewed as the origin of a novel infectious disease. For policy, they offer clear, actionable insights on how to communicate about risks associated with a novel zoonosis while managing the potential impact on discriminatory behaviors and stigma., (© 2021 Society for Risk Analysis.)