Sun, J., Wilt, J. A., Meindl, et al. (2023).
Journal of Personality.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12812
Abstract
Objective
What types of moral improvements do people wish to make? Do they hope to become more good, or less bad? Do they wish to be more caring? More honest? More loyal? And why exactly do they want to become more moral? Presumably, most people want to improve their morality because this would benefit others, but is this in fact their primary motivation? Here, we begin to investigate these questions.
Method
Across two large, preregistered studies (N = 1818), participants provided open-ended descriptions of one change they could make in order to become more moral; they then reported their beliefs about and motives for this change.
Results
In both studies, people most frequently expressed desires to improve their compassion and more often framed their moral improvement goals in terms of amplifying good behaviors than curbing bad ones. The strongest predictor of moral motivation was the extent to which people believed that making the change would have positive consequences for their own well-being.
Conclusions
Together, these studies provide rich descriptive insights into how ordinary people want to be more moral, and show that they are particularly motivated to do so for their own sake.
My summary:
- People most frequently expressed desires to improve their compassion. This suggests that people are motivated to become more moral in order to be more caring and helpful to others.
- People more often framed their moral improvement goals in terms of amplifying good behaviors than curbing bad ones. This suggests that people are motivated to become more moral by doing more good things, rather than by simply avoiding doing bad things.
- The strongest predictor of moral motivation was the extent to which people believed that making the change would have positive consequences for their own well-being. This suggests that people are motivated to become more moral for their own sake, as well as for the sake of others.
