The Impact of Personal Moral Philosophies on the Safe Practice of Students in Chemistry and Related Majors

Moral ethic prevails in the science and education of chemistry. These issues are unique to chemistry and arise from between the theoretical and the practical behavior in laboratory. The study reported in the paper investigated the impact of personal moral philosophies on the safety practices of students in chemistry and related majors. The results showed that lab anxiety, safety attitude, safety knowledge, and idealism were significant predictors of safety practice, with the last item being the strongest predictor. According to Forsyth's four distinct personal moral philosophies, among Chinese students, situationism was the most common, followed by exceptionism and then absolutism, with subjectivism as the least common. All lowest scores are from exceptionism. Idealism was more common among males than females, more among higher grade students than lower, and more among students from eastern as compare to western regions of China. All the results showed that the content of idealism should be incorporated into safety training to improve safety practices. Attention to idealistic education in all aspects of university education can help to improve safety behavior.