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Moral identity affects interpersonal relationships by guiding how people perceive and respond to feedback, evaluate others and select task partners and friends. Self-described principled participants (high scorers on the Integrity Scale) more strongly preferred principled-prototypic others over expedient ones and believed it possible to be more principled in one's beliefs (Study 1), preferred evaluators who regarded them as principled over expedient (Study 2), had friends who saw them as principled and paired up with friends who were themselves principled (Study 3). In contrast, expedient individuals did not display mirror-image reactions but saw merit in being both expedient and principled; they were accepting of any relevant feedback and partner preferences. Moral identity is a key link between ethical beliefs and behaviours.

A mixed-method research approach was developed to address description, definition, and measurement in ill-defined training domains. A series of research efforts were conducted to demonstrate the approach and assess its viability. The ill-defined domain that served as the vehicle for this effort was the sense-making (perceptual and interpretive) process of the ethical decision making experience among United States Military Academy Cadets. Here, we empirically derived a thematic model of the ethical decision making experience based on a sample of written accounts. Using the thematic model, the Ethical Perceptions Scale (EPS) was developed to measure individual and group perceptual/interpretive preferences for ethical decision making with respect to military specific ethical dilemmas. A confirmatory factor analysis supported that the Ethical Perception Scale is measuring in accord with the thematic model. We also tested the reliability and construct validity of the scale; reliability was good and construct validity indicated that the scale measures in the correct conceptual domain. The model and scale are applicable to Professional Military Ethics training for Officer Cadets and newly commissioned junior officers to cover ROTC, OCS, and USMA. The research method demonstrated may be applied to address other ill-defined domains in Army, and other, research and training contexts.

The concept of the relational self suggests that simply imagining significant others produces shifts in self‐assessments consistent with one’s roles and experiences with those others. To test relevant hypotheses, college women (from the United States) imagined a significant other as part of a visualization task. After imagining parents as compared to peers, participants described themselves as less sensual, dominant, and adventurous (Experiment 1), a pattern consistent with other women’s ratings of how they actually felt with those others. Supporting the idea that self‐esteem differences emerge in more evaluative contexts, self‐esteem moderated self‐assessments on key dimensions (Experiment 2). After imagining a romantic other but not a best friend, self‐esteem was directly related to women’s self‐ratings of sensuality, physical attractiveness, and being at ease.

A problem-based learning strategy (Bransford & Schwartz, 1998) was used to develop a training protocol to enhance U.S. Military Academy (USMA) Cadets' awareness of ethical issues and decision-making processes in negotiation situations. The training protocol was tested in an upper-level course on negotiations at USMA. Cadets were assigned to either an experimental (training) or a control (no training) group. The experimental group was exposed to four negotiation scenarios at one-month intervals, and were asked to evaluate the scenario for potential ethical issues, to role-play the scenario in class, and then to evaluate their own and others' negotiation and ethical decision-making performances. Role-plays were followed by an after action review in which the instructor encouraged Cadets to discuss their ethical evaluation and decision-making processes. Following the fourth scenario, the instructor presented a lecture describing a thematic model of ethical sense-making (cf. Graves, Pleban, Miller, Branciforte, Donigian, Johnson, & Matthews, 2010) and how the model could be applied to facilitate decision-making across different contexts. Pre-post training assessments indicated that the training strategy significantly improved the experimental group's sensitivity to themes related to ethical sense-making and decision making in military specific situations relative to scores obtained from the control group. Also, post exercise ethical awareness scores correlated significantly with Cadets' negotiation strategies. The Cadets' responses to the training were favorable. The training strategy may be used to support experiential and dialogue-based professional military ethics training for officer Cadets and newly commissioned junior officers (ROTC, OCS, and USMA). 15. SUBJECT TERMS professional military ethics training, assessment and training development, ethical decision making, active learning, decision-making experiences, ethical perceptions scale (EPS), thematic model, ill-defined domains 19. LIMITATION OF ABSTRACT 20. NUMBER OF PAGES