Moral Self-concept Research Articles

Always looking for a moral identity: The moral licensing effect in men convicted of domestic violence

Abstract People who act in accord with moral standards enjoy a strong moral self-concept, but people with a strong moral concept do not always behave morally: sometimes they exhibit consistent behaviors and sometimes compensatory behaviors. Through two studies, this paper shows that people who do wrong enjoy a stronger moral self-concept and regulate their moral behavior accordingly. Specifically, men in court-mandated psychological treatment for having employed violence against their partners manage to preserve a very positive moral self-concept. They also exhibit moral self-regulation: when prompted to consider their high moral self-concepts, they recalled performing significantly more prosocial behaviors in the previous year (consistency effect), and immediately following this, they relaxed their future intentions to act in prosocial manners over the next year (licensing effect). This novel connection between intimate partner violence and moral regulation allows us to observe the dark side of feeling too moral in a sensitive sample.

The Morality of Men Convicted of Domestic Violence: How It Supports the Maintenance of the Moral Self-Concept.

The phenomenon of abuse toward women is a prevalent social problem in most societies. In the present work, we take into consideration the abusive man's point of view with particular reference to the sphere of their morality and set as aims: (a) to show that high levels of self-deception are mediating between an extreme moral worldview, called moral absolutism, and a functional high moral self-concept, (b) to analyze the relation of the five moral foundations (Harm, Fairness, Ingroup, Authority, and Purity) with this moral absolutism, and (c) to test a comprehensive model of the relationships between the individuated variables in the preceding hypotheses. Participants are 264 men convicted of domestic violence offenses, who, having begun court-mandated psychological treatment lasting 12 weeks, have filled out a self-report questionnaire during the second meeting. The results reveal that (a) self-deception is as a full mediator between moral absolutism and moral self-concept in men convicted of domestic violence and in such a way that the more they felt right about their moral beliefs, the more they deceived themselves, and the more they felt good about themselves, (b) the moral foundations could be explaining moral absolutism understood as a rigid moral vision of the world, and (c) the tested model produces satisfying fit indices. Finally, we discuss the applied implications, for example, a key role can be played by the family and the school: Moral socialization begins within the family and there finds the first push that will accompany it the rest of life.

Systematic review of character development and childhood chronic illness.

To review empirical evidence on character development among youth with chronic illnesses. A systematic literature review was conducted using PubMed and PSYCHINFO from inception until November 2013 to find quantitative studies that measured character strengths among youth with chronic illnesses. Inclusion criteria were limited to English language studies examining constructs of character development among adolescents or young adults aged 13-24 years with a childhood-onset chronic medical condition. A librarian at Duke University Medical Center Library assisted with the development of the mesh search term. Two researchers independently reviewed relevant titles (n = 549), then abstracts (n = 45), and finally manuscripts (n = 3). There is a lack of empirical research on character development and childhood-onset chronic medical conditions. Three studies were identified that used different measures of character based on moral themes. One study examined moral reasoning among deaf adolescents using Kohlberg's Moral Judgement Instrument; another, investigated moral values of adolescent cancer survivors with the Values In Action Classification of Strengths. A third study evaluated moral behavior among young adult survivors of burn injury utilizing the Tennessee Self-Concept, 2(nd) edition. The studies observed that youth with chronic conditions reasoned at less advanced stages and had a lower moral self-concept compared to referent populations, but that they did differ on character virtues and strengths when matched with healthy peers for age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Yet, generalizations could not be drawn regarding character development of youth with chronic medical conditions because the studies were too divergent from each other and biased from study design limitations. Future empirical studies should learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the existing literature on character development among youth with chronic medical conditions.

The impact of vision impairment on students’ self-concept

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the self-concept of students with vision impairment who were placed in specialist and mainstream educational settings in South Australia. Self-Concept was explored across six dimensions, namely Physical, Moral, Personal, Family, Social and Academic Self-Concepts and the Total Self-Concept. The ‘Tennessee Self-Concept Scale: Second Edition’ was administered to 25 students with vision impairment (13 females and 12 males). Participating students’ age ranged between 15 and 25 years and they were included from all levels of vision impairment. The visual acuity of the participants ranged from 6/18 or less (low vision) to 3/60 and less (blindness). Although the majority of the students with vision impairment obtained low scores on all dimensions of self-concept, namely physical, moral, personal, family, social and academic, some students obtained normal scores in relation to family and academic self-concepts. There were no significant differences between female and male students with vision impairment across the six dimensions of self-concept and thus total self-concept. These findings have implications for teachers, special educators, policy-makers and a range of professionals in the education and special education sector in enabling greater understanding of the self-concept accomplishment of the students with vision impairment. However, this study has limited scope for generalisation of the study's conclusions due to the study's small population sample size.

보건의료계열 대학생의 생명의료윤리의식, 도덕적 자아개념 및 자아존중감*

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the level of biomedical ethics awareness, moral self-concepts, and self-esteem among college students majoring in healthcare. This study employed a crosssectional survey design. The participants were 268 third- or fourth-year university students majoring in healthcare in South Korea. The statistical analyses include descriptive statistics of the respondents’ general characteristics, and the data were analyzed with a t-test and ANOVA using the SPSS WIN 18.0 program. The average score for biomedical ethics awareness was 2.01±0.20 (using a 4-point Likert scale); the scores for self-esteem and moral self-concepts were 2.04±0.45, and 2.17±0.31 respectively. Biomedical ethics awareness showed a positive correlation with moral self-concepts (r=.157, p=.011); and selfesteem showed a positive correlation with moral self-concepts (r=.596, p<.001). Reproductive ethics (r=.124, p=.043) and the right to life (r=.147, p=.016), sub-domains of biomedical ethics awareness, also showed positive correlations with moral self-concepts. The results of this study suggest that biomedical ethics education should focus primarily on reproductive ethics, the right to life, and the ethics of death.

Self-Concept in Relation to Achievement Motivation of High School Students

The purpose of this investigation was to find out the significant relationship between Self-concept and achievement motivation of high school students and also tried to measure the self-concept and achievement motivation in relation to gender. For the purpose of the present study 400 (200 boys, 200 girls) students of high school were selected randomly from four different schools of Aligarh (UP) within the age range of 16-17 years. To assess the self concept of high school students Self-Concept Questionnaire developed by Dr. R. K. Saraswat (1984) was used which provides six dimensions viz. physical, social, intellectual, moral, educational, and temperamental as well as a total self-concept score. The achievement motivation of high school students was measured by the Achievement Motivation (n-Ach) Scale developed by Dr. Pratibha Deo and Asha Mohan (1985). Pearson’s product moment co-efficient correlation was applied to investigate the relationship between self-concept and achievement motivation; t-test was applied to see the differences between mean scores of girls and boys on self-concept and achievement motivation. One of the findings of the study showed a significant positive correlation existed between self concept and achievement motivation of high school students. Another finding of the study revealed that there was no significant gender differences existed on total self-concept, physical self-concept, intellectual self-concept, educational self-concept and temperamental self-concept. Furthermore it was found that girls and boys differed significantly on social self-concept and moral self-concept.

Self-Concept and Stress among Junior and Senior School Counselors: A Comparison Case Study in Secondary Schools in Malacca

Counsellors are increasingly burdened with administrative work in school. The pressure of a high workload among counsellors lowers self-concept and job satisfaction. This study aims to explore self-concept and stress in junior and senior counselors in school. Rogers’ theory and Boyle’s model of teacher stress are fundamental theories. This study used quantitative methods based on a survey technique. The sample included 205 respondents (172 senior and 33 junior counselors) and the data were collected using the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale and Teacher Stress Inventory. The results showed that senior counselors had higher ethical self-concept in terms of family, social, and moral self-concepts compared with junior counselors. In terms of job satisfaction and stress, senior counselors had higher job satisfaction and lower stress than did junior counselors. The results showed there were no significant differences between senior and junior counselors in terms of enforcing school rules, implementation of tasks, interpersonal relationships, and stress. There was no difference between junior and senior counselor in terms of addressing their students’ problems. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5p593

Moral Absolutism, Self-Deception, and Moral Self-Concept in Men Who Commit Intimate Partner Violence: A Comparative Study With an Opposite Sample.

The objective of this study is to show compatible data with the idea that men who commit intimate partner violence are uninhibited about the moral consequences of their behaviors, probably because they feel certainty about the rightness of their moral values and they strongly deceive themselves to maintain a good moral self-concept, and thus a good level of well-being. To do that, we compare their scores with those obtained by an opposite sample regarding the use of violence, made up of professional male psychologists who work in the social field trying to teach others alternative strategies to violence.

Connections between moral psychology and intimate partner violence: Can IPV be read through moral psychology?

Connections between two traditionally separate fields, Moral Psychology and Intimate Partner Violence, are made in this paper with the ultimate goal of improving the psychological interventions dealing with this persistent and prevalent social problem. Three current research conclusions in the field of moral psychology lead us to posit that men who use violence against the partner may be affected by moral paradoxes at the beginning of the psychological treatment that make them reluctant to change their behavior. These conclusions are the following: a) sacred moral values can lead to violent actions, b) the certainty about one's moral principles creates a license to behave immorally, and c) self-deception mechanisms allow people to claim to be acting morally while acting selfishly. Following these ideas that allow people to live happily thinking that they are very moral individuals regardless of their actual behavior, we posit that men who use violence against their partners may also be trapped in such paradoxical mechanisms. Recent empirical results support these ideas and demonstrate that men convicted of domestic violence have an absolutist conception about what is right and wrong, a sacred vision of the five moral foundations, a high moral self-concept, and high levels of self-deception mediating between their extreme moral vision of the world and their high moral self-concept.

Thick as Thieves? Dishonest Behavior and Egocentric Social Networks

People experience a threat to their moral self-concept in the face of discrepancies between their moral values and their unethical behavior. We theorize that people’s need to restore their view of themselves as moral activates thoughts of a high-density personal social network. Such thoughts also lead people to be more likely to engage in further unethical behavior. In five experiments, participants reflected on their past unethical behavior, and then completed a task designed to measure network density. Those who cheated more frequently in the past, recalled their negative moral identity, or decided to lie were more likely to activate a high-density network (Experiment 1-3). Using a mediation-by-moderation approach (Experiment 4), we confirm that this link between dishonesty and network density is explained by a threat to positive self-concept. Importantly, activating a dense network after engaging in dishonest behavior allows further dishonest behavior in a subsequent task (Experiment 5).

Children's Moral Self-Concept: The Role of Aggression and Parent–Child Relationships

This study examined the role of aggressiveness and parenting in the development of children’s moral self-concept. Participants were 198 elementary school children and their parents (M = 8.65 years, SD = 2.44). Participants completed a structured moral self puppet interview and a questionnaire about their relationship to parents. Parents completed a questionnaire measuring their children’s aggressiveness. Results indicated that children who were more aggressive scored significantly lower on the moral self than did less aggressive children. Positive parent–child relationships predicted higher scores on children’s moral selves. Finally, negative parent–child interaction moderated the effect of aggression, with negative associations between aggression and children’s moral self exacerbated at high levels of negative parent–child interaction, and attenuated at lower levels. This study elucidates the importance of aggression and parenting in accounting for differences in children’s moral self.

Physical Abuse and Self-concept of Senior Secondary School Students in Cross-River State, Nigeria

Survey data collected from 2,000 senior secondary school two (ss2) students in Cross-River State, Nigeria were analysed to determine the influence of child physical abuse on their selfconcept(such as social self-concept, physical selfconcept, moral self-concept, financial self-concept and family self-concept) were considered in the study. One Way Analysis of Variance was used for data analysis and the hypothesis was tested at 0.05 alpha level. The result obtained showed a significant negative influence of physical abuse on the student’s self-concept in terms of the social self, physical self, moral self, family self and financial self-concept respectively.

The threat of moral refusers for one's self-concept and the protective function of physical cleansing

We investigated how people respond to moral threats and the consequences this has for one's moral self-concept. In two experiments, participants first tasted a sausage and were then confronted with a bogus participant who had refused to taste the sausage because of moral or non-moral reasons. People disliked the moral refuser more than the non-moral refuser. The self-threatening effect of having one's morals questioned was also reflected in specific patterns of cardiovascular responses and negatively affected participants' self-evaluations. We further show that the negative effects of a moral threat can be prevented by a simple intervention of physical cleansing: Participants who had cleansed their hands before being confronted with a moral refuser did not show the negative effects on self- and refuser evaluations. Importantly, the protective effects of physical cleansing were most pronounced for people with a strong moral identity. Taken together, these results underline the importance of one's self-concept when confronted with a moral refuser, and introduce an effective intervention to prevent these negative consequences.

Moral emotions and the development of the moral self in childhood

Researchers have been emphasizing the importance of moral emotions for young children's moral self. However, the relationship between children's moral self and moral emotions has never been investigated empirically. The present study examined the relationship between children's self-representations about (im)moral behaviour and moral emotions attributions in a sample of 132 elementary-school children (M age = 8.39 years, SD = 2.50). Participants were presented a newly developed moral self measure, along with a measure of moral emotion attributions. Two dimensions of children's moral self-concept were identified: preference for prosocial behaviour and avoidance of antisocial behaviour. Results revealed a slight decrease in preference for prosocial behaviour with age, as well as an increased correlation between preference for prosocial behaviour and moral emotion attributions. Overall, findings suggest that moral emotions do not play a pivotal role for young children's moral self-concept. Children's moral self-concept becomes increasingly coordinated with moral emotions as they approach adolescence.

Threats to Moral Identity: Testing the Effects of Incentives and Consequences of One's Actions on Moral Cleansing

Individuals engage in moral cleansing, a compensatory process to reaffirm one's moral identity, when one's moral self-concept is threatened. However, too much moral cleansing can license individuals to engage in future unethical acts. This study examined the effects of incentives and consequences of one's actions on cheating behavior and moral cleansing. Results found that incentives and consequences interacted such that unethical thoughts were especially threatening, resulting in more moral cleansing, when large incentives to cheat were present and cheating explicitly harmed others. Implications are discussed in terms of ethics training, using incentives as motivators, and the depersonalized norms of science.

과학영재의 성취동기와 자기개념, 완벽주의, 부모양육행동과의 관계

The achievement motivations of science gifted students are very important in becoming experts who achieve high level. In this study, 77 8th graders of Science Gifted Education Center were divided into highly motivated and low motivated groups. Multidimensional Perfectionism, Self-Concept, Parenting Behaviors Scale were compared between these 2 groups, and predicting variables were verified through regression analysis. As a result, highly motivated students received higher scores on Perfectionism, self-directed Perfectionism, and other-directed Perfectionism. Self-concept scores were higher on factors of body, moral, personalities, social, and abilities as well. In Parenting Behaviors Scale, only the father`s affection factor was influenced. The result of regression analysis revealed that self-directed Perfectionism, social self-concept, and moral self-concept had meaningful predictions. In parameter verification, partially mediated effect of self-directed Perfectionism and social self-concept was verified in the relationship between father`s affection factor and achievement motivation. This study confirmed that self-directed Perfectionism of science gifted students has positive effects on adaptation. The importance of social and moral education and the father`s affection were found as well.

Doing Good Leads to More Good: The Reinforcing Power of a Moral Self-Concept

What is the role of self-concept in motivating moral behavior? On one account, when people are primed to perceive themselves as “do-gooders”, conscious access to this positive self-concept will reinforce good behavior. On an alternative account, when people are reminded that they have done their “good deed for the day”, they will feel licensed to behave worse. In the current study, when participants were asked to recall their own good deeds (positive self-concept), their subsequent charitable donations were nearly twice that of participants who recalled bad deeds, or recent conversation topics, consistent with an account of moral reinforcement. In addition, among participants reporting good deeds, those who did not note whether they were recognized or unrecognized by other people donated significantly more than participants who took note of others’ responses. In sum, when people are primed to see themselves as good people, who do good for goodness’ sake, not to obtain public credit, they may be motivated to do more good.

The Cost of Callousness

It has often been argued that compassion is fundamental to morality. Yet people often suppress compassion for self-interested reasons. We provide evidence that suppressing compassion is not cost free, as it creates dissonance between a person’s moral identity and his or her moral principles. We instructed separate groups of participants to regulate their compassion, regulate their feelings of distress, or freely experience emotions toward compassion-inducing images. Participants then reported how central morality was to their identities and how much they believed that moral rules should always be followed. Participants who regulated compassion—but not those who regulated distress or experienced emotions—showed a dissonance-based trade-off. If they reported higher levels of moral identity, they had a greater belief that moral rules could be broken. If they maintained their belief that moral rules should always be followed, they sacrificed their moral identity. Regulating compassion thus has a cost of its own: It forces trade-offs within a person’s moral self-concept.

Vicarious moral licensing: The influence of others' past moral actions on moral behavior.

This article investigates the effect of others' prior nonprejudiced behavior on an individual's subsequent behavior. Five studies supported the hypothesis that people are more willing to express prejudiced attitudes when their group members' past behavior has established nonprejudiced credentials. Study 1a showed that participants who were told that their group was more moral than similar other groups were more willing to describe a job as better suited for Whites than for African Americans. In Study 1b, when given information on group members' prior nondiscriminatory behavior (selecting a Hispanic applicant in a prior task), participants subsequently gave more discriminatory ratings to the Hispanic applicant for a position stereotypically suited for majority members (Whites). In Study 2, moral self-concept mediated the effect of others' prior nonprejudiced actions on a participant's subsequent prejudiced behavior such that others' past nonprejudiced actions enhanced the participant's moral self-concept, and this inflated moral self-concept subsequently drove the participant's prejudiced ratings of a Hispanic applicant. In Study 3, the moderating role of identification with the credentialing group was tested. Results showed that participants expressed more prejudiced attitudes toward a Hispanic applicant when they highly identified with the group members behaving in nonprejudiced manner. In Study 4, the credentialing task was dissociated from the participants' own judgmental task, and, in addition, identification with the credentialing group was manipulated rather than measured. Consistent with prior studies, the results showed that participants who first had the opportunity to view an in-group member's nonprejudiced hiring decision were more likely to reject an African American man for a job stereotypically suited for majority members. These studies suggest a vicarious moral licensing effect.

The association between self-deception and moral self-concept as functions of self-consciousness

Regulated by self-consciousness, self-deception is a part of the self-system that suppresses negative aspects of the self and maintains a positive moral self-concept. We tested this evolutionary hypothesis on 166 college students by measuring self-deception using both a questionnaire and a series of hypothetical helping scenarios. The results showed a positive correlation between self-deception and moral self-concept, which was moderated by private self-consciousness. Among participants with high, but not low, self-consciousness, high moral self-concept individuals were more willing to help when potential self-benefits were present than low moral self-concept individuals, whereas there was no difference between the two groups concerning helping without self-benefit. These results support the evolutionary view that self-deception serves to maintain optimal moral self-concept, especially for individuals with high self-consciousness.