Factors That Influence Individual Ethics Essay Example

This is because children will response to their perception of their parents' behaviors since childhood stage. Therefore, parents play an important role to demonstrate ethical boundaries for their children. They are typically the first to voice and instill a strong sense of right and wrong in their children. Take an example, when the child see his family members comply to high ethical standards like being truthful, the child will more likely to adopt a high standards of ethical.

How the factors influence individual ethics:

• A parent is the one who build a foundation for their children's personal ethics. For an example, when my parents tell me and my siblings that lying is wrong, we will be honest and not dare to lie when communicate with anyone else. Therefore, parents behave has a strong impact as well.
• Besides that, the children will absorb the actions of their family members. This will contributes heavily to their sense of morality. Through my experience, some of the parents will send their children late for school and this will cause their children do not practice punctual when they grow up later.

Thus, the children are likely to develop a lower ethical standard if their family members are engaging in unethical behaviors and allow their children to do the same.

• For instance, when my nine years old cousin being polite to the elders, their parents will give them some rewards for conforming. In other way, when they are not being polite or rude to the younger, their parents will punish them for not conforming to these high ethical behaviors. My cousin will practice
  

to be polite to everyone no matter younger or older than him.

2. 2 Peer influences

An individual especially teenagers need to have a caring parents which always care about their matter like what is happening in school, knowing who is their friends and also care about their feeling on time to time. The teens will not like to hanging around with their peers just to feel some compassion because they feel they are acceptance at home. Nowadays, a lot of parents spend most of their times in work to earn more money to overcome their family expenses. Some of the parents wanted to give the best facilities and equipment for their children to have a good environment for studying.

Thus, the parents have less time to spend with their children and lastly the child is likely to share their feeling with their peers who will influence their individual behavior indirectly. The child will have a low ethical standards behavior if their peers practice these behaviors. On the contrary, the child is likely to adopt the high ethical standards if their peers have these good ethical behaviors. For example, the child will follow or do the same thing if their friends are engage in vandalism, gangsters, shoplifting or drug abuse.

Most of the time children are not mature enough to think whether the matter is right or wrong. How the factors influence individual ethics:

• For instance, when I am in secondary school, there is one of my classmates who study the same class with me since we are in primary one. He is one of the best students in
  

school no matter in academic or sports. However, this person is growing up and going through his teenage years with full of peer influence and this get him into a lot of trouble. Since he joins the basketball club, he makes a lot of friends from different class and different school.

Most of the basketball player in this group have a low ethical standard such as talk bad words; revolve around drugs and alcohols, vandalism and also gangsters. Therefore, he tries to act like them, so that he can be accepted in that group. •Peers are friends and classmates in the same age group. Peer has the important influence on teenager’s behaviors, decision, and attitudes. It is important that an individual especially young people to build a good relationship with positive peers in their childhood period.

Take an example, when I am in secondary school, I am a person who is very passive, quiet, and timid. I do not like to social and communicate with others. Besides that, I am not active in school activities. However, I got a chance to participate the youth camp in the year 2008 at one of the church in Kota Kinabalu. Through the camp, I make a lot of friends which influence me in many aspects. These peer leaders have positive thinking, active, friendliness, know how to socialize with people, and always punctual. I feel happy and full of satisfactions after the activities because I have the chance to be independent just like others peer leaders. Moreover, now I can be like my peer leaders to stand in front of the audience to give speech. In conclusion,

the encouragements of my peer leaders in the camp influence me in many aspects which change my life a lot.

• An individual will be influence by their peer in decision making when they need to make a decision and this will change their ethical behaviors. Take an example that always seen in the secondary students nowadays. When I am having my post as a temporary secondary school teacher in Kota Kinabalu High School, I see many students are easily influence by their peer group. They start to date with others boys or girls just because their peers do so. Thus, their attitude towards studies will gradually regress. In addition, most of them will involve themselves in unhealthy activities, not respect to the teacher, untruthful, and always late to school.

2.3 Situational factors

How the factors influence individual ethics:

• I have a friend who works in a bank. She works in front of the counter. Her salary is just enough for her to cover her month expenses. However, she needs money to settle the extra expenses for the Chinese New Year and pay school fees for her three children. Then, it is the opportunity arise when there is left a few person in the counter. She quickly grabs the opportunity to take RM1000 from the counter and plan to put the money back few days later. Merely, she does not expect that her manager will do a spot check.

Then, her manager found out she took the money from the counter. She gets caught and has been fired by the manager. Although this does not justify their dishonesty, it

does provide some context for understanding why people may sometimes behave unethically if they have no other choice.

• It is stated in Wikipedia, peer pressure is the influence exerted by a peer group or an individual, encouraging other individuals to change their attitudes, values, or behaviors in order to conform to group norms. It has been widely accepted that peer influence is a powerful factor in adolescent development.

For example, I have student who faced peer pressure when he is in form three. This is because he changes class in that particular year. The child is afraid that he is not accepted in his group. Hence, he try to do the things that his peers ask him to do so, for example, come late to school, do not respect to elders, and cheating during examinations. At last he chooses to accept the challenges from his friends and get influence to low ethical standards.

• It is another example for situational factor which influence a person ethical behavior. In the year 2006, my cousin which younger than me was passed away in a car accident and I am having my final examination. I am sad but still need to prepare for my exam. During the examination, I faced a lot of questions that I am not sure with the answer. However, the friend that sits in front of me is good in that subject. I have the opportunity to look at her answer because she accidentally put her answer sheet at the place that I can easily see. I choose to look some of her answer to pass the subject in my
  

exam. After the exam, I find out this low ethical behaviors make me feel guilty and I do not practice it anymore.

Conclusion

According to Ho, J. A. , et al. (2012), ethics means an individual’s personal beliefs about right and wrong behaviours. This paper is discussing about the factors that form an individual ethics. The three factors are family influences, peer influences and situational factors. Besides that, this paper also discuss about how the rule of law can be use as guide to moral choices. An individual will start to form his or her ethical behaviours from the influence of family members.

There family members especially parents will affect their children the most. If the parents are developing a good ethical behaviour, the children will also influence by their parents and they will also cultivate good ethical behaviours. Therefore parents should always be careful with their behaviours. However, there are still a lot of parents that are busy with their career and spend less time with children. This will result the children get influence by their peer easily. These children will feel closer with friend and will get influence by their friends easily.

If their peer is a positive person, then that particular child will also have a good ethical behaviour. In opponent, if this group of peers have bad ethical behaviours, then this child will have a big possibility to involve in vandalism, gangsters, shoplifting or drug abuse. The third factor is the situational factors. It means that it is the final determinant of an individual’s ethics. For instance, when a person is facing financial problems and he has

a chance to corrupt and settle his financial problems.

Now, he is facing the choices to be having the good or bad ethical behaviours. People already know about the rules of law but somehow they still ignore them and still doing the bad ethical behaviors. For example, there is rules of law that stated cannot throw rubbish to the floor, cannot drive over the speed limit, smoke in public areas, corruptions and so on. However, peoples still keep doing the bad behaviors although they know that it is illegal. If people have the moral choices, they will choose follow the rule of law and not just ignore law.