Descriptive ethics, also known as
comparative ethics, is the study of
people's beliefs about morality. It
contrasts with prescriptive or normative
ethics, which is the study of ethical
theories that prescribe how people ought
to act, and with meta-ethics, which is
the study of what ethical terms and
theories actually refer to. The
following examples of questions that
might be considered in each field
illustrate the differences between the
fields:
Descriptive ethics: What do people think
is right?
Meta-ethics: What does "right" even
mean?
Normative ethics: How should people act?
Applied ethics: How do we take moral
knowledge and put it into practice?
What is descriptive ethics? 
Descriptive ethics is a form of
empirical research into the attitudes of
individuals or groups of people. In
other words, this is the division of
philosophical or general ethics that
involves the observation of the moral
decision-making process with the goal of
describing the phenomenon. Those working
on descriptive ethics aim to uncover
people's beliefs about such things as
values, which actions are right and
wrong, and which characteristics of
moral agents are virtuous. Research into
descriptive ethics may also investigate
people's ethical ideals or what actions
societies reward or punish in law or
politics. What ought to be noted is that
culture is generational and not static.
Therefore, a new generation will come
with its own set of morals and that
qualifies to be their ethics.
Descriptive ethics will hence try to
oversee whether ethics still holds its
place.
Because descriptive ethics involves
empirical investigation, it is a field
that is usually investigated by those
working in the fields of evolutionary
biology, psychology, sociology or
anthropology. Information that comes
from descriptive ethics is, however,
also used in philosophical arguments.
Value theory can be either normative or
descriptive but is usually descriptive.
Lawrence Kohlberg: An example of
descriptive ethics 
Lawrence Kohlberg is one example of a
psychologist working on descriptive
ethics. In one study, for example,
Kohlberg questioned a group of boys
about what would be a right or wrong
action for a man facing a moral dilemma:
should he steal a drug to save his wife,
or refrain from theft even though that
would lead to his wife's death?
Kohlberg's concern was not which choice
the boys made, but the moral reasoning
that lay behind their decisions. After
carrying out a number of related
studies, Kohlberg devised a theory about
the development of human moral reasoning
that was intended to reflect the moral
reasoning actually carried out by the
participants in his research. Kohlberg's
research can be classed as descriptive
ethics to the extent that he describes
human beings' actual moral development.
If, in contrast, he had aimed to
describe how humans ought to develop
morally, his theory would have involved
prescriptive ethics.
Descriptive ethics and relativism 
Descriptive ethics does not explicitly
discern between good and bad ethical
theories. This can be interpreted in two
ways.
Descriptive ethics claims, implicitly or
explicitly, that amorality is moral.
Descriptive ethics thus embraces moral
relativism. Or,
Descriptive ethics makes no claim that
amorality is moral. Its innate amorality
is solely due to a practical division of
labour between descriptive ethics and
normative ethics.
The first position holds descriptive
ethics to be in competition with
normative ethics, whereas the second
holds it as complementary to normative
ethics.
References 
See also 
List of ethics topics
Lawrence Kohlberg
Meta-ethics
Moral reasoning
Moral psychology
