Final answer:
Ethics is the term that defines a set of moral principles or values, and it involves various areas and approaches to guiding right behavior in society.
Step-by-step explanation:
The set of moral principles or values referred to in the question is best defined as ethics. Values, morals, laws, and beliefs are all terms related to how humans ought to behave towards one another in a society, but ethics specifically deals with the basic principles that underpin moral rules and guide right behavior. Ethics is divided into several areas, including metaethics, which explores foundational questions about morality, normative ethics, which proposes standards or norms for right actions, and applied ethics, which deals with the application of ethical principles in specific situations.
Various ethical approaches exist such as virtue ethics, which focuses on the development of character traits, care ethics, which highlights the importance of relationships and concrete situations, and consequentialism, which considers the outcome of actions to determine their moral value. Ethics as a field encourages individuals to live according to certain ethical principles for the betterment of society and their personal well-being.