Remembering Your (Im)Moral Past: Autobiographical Reasoning and Moral Identity Development

Abstract

Narratives about positive and negative life events have been shown to be associated with identity development. The present study extends this line of research by investigating how individuals’ autobiographical memories about their past immoral and moral actions relate to moral identity development. The authors interviewed 131 participants from 3 age periods (adolescence, emerging adulthood, adulthood) about past events in which they did something right or wrong and felt either good or bad about it. The authors assessed moral identity development by the self-centrality of moral values and by internal moral motivation. Results demonstrated that older participants and participants with higher internal moral motivation drew stronger connections between their current self and past moral and immoral actions. Moreover, individuals with higher internal moral motivation more often acknowledged the conflicting nature of these events. Taken together, the findings indicate that the way individuals remember their own (im)moral past is associated with moral identity development.