Ethical and critical thinking
Imagine you are seeking information on a new car that you are thinking of buying. Determine the level of trust that you would place in information provided by the following: a salesman at the car lot, the dealer’s Website, social media (i.e. Facebook), an associate from work, and finally a close friend. Discuss the key factors involved in assessing the amount of trust that you put into each.
If you were in a position to persuade another person, explain whether or not you would slant information in such a way as to make your point seem more credible if you sincerely believed that your position was correct. Discuss the primary ethical dilemmas that this scenario could cause for both you and the person whom you are trying to persuade.
RESPOND TO FOLLOWING STATEMENT:
For the car scenario, here is my opinon:
As a salesperson myself, I do trust sales people who seem experienced and understand that giving knowledge and not high pressure gets sales. Therefore, if the sales person has been with the dealership for a while and is taking a more consultative approach, I would feel that I am dealing with a professional who also understands that truth now gets this sale, future sales and referral sales. However, if the salesperson is new, I would have less faith because they do not have enough experience.
For the dealer’s website, I would trust the information on the website as far as features and benefits because of laws about truth in advertising and the fact that most dealerships have to be monitored by the brand they represent for truthfulness.
As far as social media and a work associate, I would not look here for information per se on the vehicle but instead look for trends of opinions from other buyers of the same vehicle. If I saw 100 reviews and 99 were great but 1 was bad, I would research the bad one a little more but, in the end, trust the 99 good ones. However, if from those 100 reviews, 18 had a similar issue, it would also make me worried about buying that car without written assurances that the issue has been resolved universally for the car type.
As far as a close friend, what I believe from them depends on their experience with the model of the car. If they own or have owned something by that manufacturer and especially the model I am looking at or they have a close relative or friend who has, I consider that first hand knowledge and if it is a friend who’s opinion I trust then I would certainly take what they say to be truthful and keep it in mind for my opinion. However, if what they tell me is that their neighbor’s best friend’s dog owner’s wife’s boss from 10 years ago had one of these cars and didn’t like it, there are too many degrees of seperation and I would not believe it as mich.
