Moral Courage: A Review on Its Determinants, Importance and Consequences

Abstract

As a specific type of prosocial behavior, moral courage means standing up against moral norm violations with potential risks and social cost to the helper. Understanding its importance led scholars to work on capturing and promoting moral courage. The current paper aims to raise an awareness, draw attention to its importance, address the gaps in literature, and provide an up-to-date source of moral courage for future studies and intervention programs in Turkish culture. To this end, first, importance of moral courage was explained by real life examples and empirical research findings. Then, conceptual confusion in prosocial behavior and its subtypes was addressed. Especially, unique nature of moral courage as a different prosocial behavior was operationally defined and explained by comparing with other types of prosocial behaviors. Following that, psychological processes and situational determinants of moral courage were explained by reviewing the related literature. Moreover, measurement of moral courage and scarce number of studies conducted in Turkey were mentioned. Finally, suggestions for future research and implementations in the field were listed. In conclusion, moral courage is crucially important for healthy functioning of individuals and society, and it appears to be a distinct prosocial behavior as it requires strong moral stance against situations high in social cost.