Saints, and the Rest of Us: Broadening the Perspective on Moral Identity Development

Abstract

In the field of psychology, the construct of moral identity emerged as one response to the perceived gaps between moral judgment and action [Blasi, 1983, 1984]. As such, moral identity was conceptualized as the extent to which being a moral person is important to people’s sense of who they are and who they want to be, and posited to act as an intervening psychological structure between moral thinking and conduct. In other words, it was thought that, for people for whom morality is central to and integrated within their identity, the desire to live in a manner consistent with their sense of self would serve as a key moral motivation [Aquino & Reed, 2002; Colby & Damon, 1992; Hardy & Carlo, 2005; Matsuba & Walker, 2005]. In the target article, Krettenauer and Hertz [this issue] place the construct of moral identity in its right intellectual context and briefly summarize the main findings of three decades of research: Measures of moral identity, framed largely in terms of the self-reported centrality a person places on possessing and enacting moral values, have repeatedly yielded findings of individual differences that, while theoretically consistent (inasmuch as moral identity centrality has been shown to be associated with readiness to engage in prosocial action and to abstain from antisocial behavior), have also been relatively small and not unique. Krettenauer and Hertz, however, are not much concerned in this article with the staying power of the moral identity construct as a means for predicting individual differences in moral behavior. Their main concern, one that has also been articulated by other researchers in the field [e.g., Hardy & Carlo, 2011; Lapsley & Stey, 2014], relates to the paucity of findings regarding age differences in moral identity. Indeed, Krettenauer and Hertz are faced with a quandary. The most broadly used measures of moral identity have consistently and reliably yielded findings of no age differences.