Normative ethics is the study of general normative principles or virtues. There are various doctrines concerning general normative principles. Altruists hold that when deciding how to act one ought to take the interests of others into account, as well as one's own.
Hedonists hold that one ought to pursue only pleasure or happiness for oneself and others.
The Golden Rule states that one should act towards others as one wants them to act towards oneself. Consequentialists believe that one ought to do whatever will have the best consequences. Deontologists hold that the rightness or wrongness of actions is a matter of how they accord with moral rules, not of their consequences. One must obey the rule that one ought to tell the truth, even if the consequences of breaking the rule would be better. Others hold that rightness or wrongness cannot be captured by a set of moral rules at all, and that it is not simply the consequences of an action which determine its moral status.