Moral structure and moral content: Their relationship to personality (original) (raw)
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international journal of behavioral sciences, 2019
Introduction: The aim of the present study was to investigate the predicting role of the big five personality traits in the four components of moral decision-making. Method: The population of this descriptive-correlation study included all the students in the University of Mazandaran. The participants were 384 students selected by stratified random sampling. In order to collect data, the Mini-IPIP, Ethical Sensitivity Scale, DIT-2, Moral Identity Questionnaire and the Moral Courage Scale were used. The data were analyzed by SPSS-24. Results: According to the results of this study, neuroticism was a negative significant predictor of moral identity and moral courage, extraversion was a negative significant predictor of moral identity, openness was a positive significant predictor of moral identity, agreeableness was a positive significant predictor of moral sensitivity and moral identity and conscientiousness were a positive significant predictor of moral identity, and moral courage. Conclusion: According to the results of the present study, it can be stated that different personality traits can predict different aspects of moral decision making.
Moral Competence, Personality, and Demographic Characteristics: A Comparative Study
Ethics in Progress, 2016
The development of moral competence is affected by both internal and external factors and has been researched by many scientists. The present study investigated a) whether the five factors of personality, gender and geographical area would affect ones’ moral competence, b) whether the personality factors Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness would be correlated positively with moral competence in everyday life, whereas Extraversion and Neuroticism would be correlated negatively with morality, c) if there will be differences in students’ moral competence exhibited in everyday life and that expressed in PE/sports framework and d) whether type of school, factors of personality, as well as moral competence exhibited in sports-framework would all be significant factors for the interpretation of a student’s moral competence. The sample consisted of 331 junior high students (7th and 8th graders) (Mage = 12.47, SD = 0.740), who were given the Moral Competence Test Greek Version (Mouratidou et al. 2003), the Moral Judgment Test in Physical Education(Mouratidou et al. 2008), and the Inventory of Child Individual Differences (Besevegkis & Pavlopoulos 1998). The results indicated that of the five-factor personality model only Conscientiousness can affect moral reasoning ability in everyday life and that the type of school can account for less than 5% of variance when predicting moral competence in high school students.
Propositions for the Study of Moral Personality Development
Current directions in psychological science, 2010
Most of us have at one point speculated about why one individual grew up to be honest and fair while another became wicked and untrustworthy. In the current review, we present the case that new directions in the empirical study of moral personality development are needed. We set the stage for this future work by presenting six propositions that should serve as the foundation for future research in the field. We conclude by providing an example of how using a more integrative and inclusive framework for studying personality can readily incorporate these propositions.
The relationship of moral maturity and ethical attitude1
Journal of Personality, 1979
Two issues related to Hogan's Survey of Ethical Attitudes (SEA) were investigated. First, the adequacy of Hogan's theoretical characterizations of the two poles of the SEA was tested. The results supported his characterization of the ethics of conscience, but only partially supported his characterization of the ethics of responsibility. Our second focus was on Hogan's prediction that "moral maturity"" should be curvilinearly related to the SEA. As predicted, when moral maturity was measured in Hogan's sense, subjects scoring in the middle of the SEA dimension showed higher levels of moral maturity than those at either the ethics of conscience end or the ethics of responsibility end. In contrast, moral maturity in Kohlberg's sense was linearly related to the SEA with the most mature individuals scoring at the ethics of conscience end of the dimension. The total pattern of results highlights the importance of conceptual clarity and conceptual pluralism in research on morality.
The Reliability and Validity of Objective Indices of Moral Development
Applied Psychological Measurement, 1978
The present paper addresses three issues sur rounding Rest's Defining Issues Test, an objective test of moral development based on Kohlberg's six- stage theory of moral development. Those issues are (1) the stability of test scores over time; (2) correla tion of scores with Kohlberg's interview measure of moral development; and (3) the insensitivity of its scoring procedure, which ignores responses to all items keyed to lower stages. In two age heterogene ous samples, total score test-retest reliabilities were generally in the high .70's or low .80's, regardless of which of several scoring schemes was used. In another age heterogeneous sample, the correlation with scores on Kohlberg's test was .70; but in two age homogeneous samples, the correlations were about .35 and .20. These validity coefficients sug gest that (1) the common variance shared by Rest's and Kohlberg's tests in age heterogeneous samples can be attributed to the fact that scores on bo...
The Perceived Personality of Moral Exemplars
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 030572499103188, 2010
Contemporary moral psychology and education overemphasise rationality and neglect moral virtues and personality that must be part of a comprehensive understanding of moral functioning. The purpose of this study was to delineate the perceived personality characteristics of moral exemplars using the template of the Five-Factor Model which represents the fundamental dimensions of personality, and to compare that trait description with those for related types of exemplars. Participants were 120 adults from across the lifespan (17± 91 years) who provided free-listing descriptions of moral, religious and spiritual exemplars, which were then analysed in terms of the ® ve personality factors. Results revealed meaningful differences in personality attributions across types of exemplars, and indicated that traits re¯ecting the Conscientiousness and Agreeableness factors were particularly salient for the moral exemplar. Discussion focuses on the value of a re-examination of moral character and virtue, and the need to integrate moral cognition and personality within a realistic model of moral functioning and education.
The Impact of Gender Role and Personality on Moral Orientation
This study examines the discriminators of moral orientation in term of Masculinity and Femininity (gender role), age, the education level and the personality traits, in an investigation of their contribution in the overall process of moral decision making. The sample of study consisted on (N=300) undergraduates students of various business institutes of Pakistan. Participants were connected through the questionnaires, of which 172 were returned and processed. The finding of the study suggests that personality characteristics of judging and intuition are more strongly related with justice orientation. Moreover, the perceiving and sensing characteristics were more strongly related with care orientation while the gender role (Masculinity and femininity) was having a very less contribution in the overall analysis. Further, the results showed that moral orientation is less differentiated by gender roles but strongly differentiated by the characteristics of the personality, and age, education variables were seen as moderate contributors in the analysis.
A social-cognitive approach to the moral personality
2004
In the last decade there has been a remarkable resurgence of interest in studying moral rationality within the broad context of personality, selfhood and identity. Although a concern with the moral self was never entirely absent from the cognitive developmental approach to moral reasoning (e.g., Blasi, 1983, 1984), it is fair to say that sustained preoccupation with the ontogenesis of justice reasoning did not leave much room for reflection on how moral cognition intersects with personological processes. There were both paradigmatic and strategic reasons for this. The paradigmatic reason can be traced to the Piagetian roots of moral developmental theory. Piaget's understanding of intelligence was profoundly influenced by his training as a biologist, by his work as a naturalist, and his interest in the differential classification of species (especially mollusks) on the basis of morphological variation. Just as the classification of various biological species into zoological categories is based on formal structural characteristics, so too are certain structural characteristics critical to the differential classification of children's thinking. The young Piaget who had, as a naturalist, collected and classified specimens of Lapsley and Narvaez 2 mollusks is continuous with older Piaget who, as a genetic epistemologist, collected and classified specimen's of children's thinking (Lapsley, 1996; Chapman, 1988). From this perspective, then, Piagetian stages are best considered descriptive taxonomic categories that classify formal "morphological" properties of children's thinking on an epistemic level. Stages describe species of knowledge, varieties and kinds of mental operations, and not different kinds of persons. When Kohlberg appropriated the Piagetian paradigm to frame moral development he well understood the taxonomic implications of the stage concept. He understood that moral stages described kinds of sociomoral operations or different "species" of moral reasoning. The moral stage sequence was a taxonomy identified by a "morphological" analysis of formal structural characteristics of sociomoral reflection. Moral stages classify variations of sociomoral structures, not individual differences among persons. As a result Kohlberg and his colleagues could write that moral "stages are not boxes for classifying and evaluating persons" (Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs & Lieberman, 1983, p.11). Consequently moral stages cannot be the basis for aretaic judgments about the moral worthiness of persons. The stage sequence cannot be used as a yardstick to grade one's moral competence. It makes no evaluative claims about character, says nothing about virtues, is silent about the moral features of personality and selfhood. Indeed, as Kohlberg (1971, p. 217) put it, "We ...do not think a stage 6 normative ethic can justifiably generate a theory of the good or of virtue, or rules for praise, blame and punishment" and hence principles of justice "do not directly obligate us to blame and to punish." Instead, the moral developmental stages, like Piaget's stages, describe forms of thought organization of an ideal rational moral agent, an epistemic subject, and therefore cannot be "reflections upon the self" Lapsley and Narvaez 3 (Kohlberg, Levine & Hewer, 1983, p. 36). There can be no reason to wonder, then, given these paradigm commitments, just how personological issues, or notions of selfhood and identity, could matter to an epistemic subject or to a rational moral agent. Yet the moral development tradition had strategic reasons, too, for its minimalist account of selfhood, character and personality. For example, Kohlberg was specifically interested in charting the development of justice reasoning, as opposed to other possible topics of investigation just because this aspect of morality seemed most amenable to stage typing. Moreover, the possibility of stage typing gave Kohlberg what he most desired of a moral theory, which was a way to defeat ethical relativism on psychological grounds. Kohlberg saw that justice reasoning at the highest stages made possible a set of procedures that could generate consensus about hard case moral quandary. This was the heart of his project. Consequently, those aspects of moral psychology that could not be stage typed or that could not be used in the struggle against ethical relativism were not the object of study in the cognitive developmental tradition. This included, of course, the Aristotelian concern with virtues and moral character. Kohlberg's objection to a virtue-centered approach to moral character was based on at least two additional considerations. The first was that there was no sensible way to talk about virtues if they are conceptualized as personality traits. The Hartshorne and May studies, for example, along with Mischel's theoretical analysis, seemed to cast doubt on a widely assumed fundamental requirement that personality traits show dispositional consistency across even widely disparate situations. This cross-situational consistency of traits was surprisingly hard to document. Consequently, the ostensible failure of traits in the study of personality made recourse to virtues an unappealing option in moral psychology. But Kohlberg's second objection to Lapsley and Narvaez 4 virtues was perhaps more to the point. For Kohlberg any compilation of desirable traits is a completely arbitrary affair. It entails sampling from a bag of virtues until a suitable list is produced that has something for everyone. What's more, and worse, given Kohlberg's project, the meaning of virtue trait words is relative to particular communities. As Kohlberg and Mayer (1972, p. 479) famously put it: Labeling a set of behaviors displayed by a child with positive or negative trait terms does not signify that they are of adaptive significance or ethical importance. It represents an appeal to particular community conventions, since one person's 'integrity' is another person's 'stubbornness,' [one persons's] 'honesty in expressing your true feelings' is another person's 'insensitivity to the feelings of others. Clearly, then, the language of virtue and moral character just won't do if the point of moral development theory is to provide the psychological resources to defeat ethical relativism. Although the cognitive developmental approach to moral reasoning is of singular importance, and continues to generate productive lines of research, it is also true that an adequate moral psychology could not neglect issues of selfhood, identity and personality for very long. Indeed, Augusto Blasi (1983; Walker, this volume) recognized many years ago that any credible account of moral action requires a robust model of the self. Moreover, its neglect of virtues, its silence on questions of character, meant that the cognitive developmental tradition has had little to say to parents who are fundamentally concerned to raise children of a particular kind. How to raise children of good moral character is an important goal of most parents. When one asks parents about the moral formation of their children we doubt very many will mention the need to Nelson, K. (Ed.) (1989). Narratives from the crib. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.