Modeling moral personality: Moral chronicity, moral identity, and moral cognition

"Moral chronics," or people who tend to interpret social information in terms of chronically activated moral schemas, may react differently to situations than people who interpret social information in terms of other chronically activated schemas. Moral chronicity may therefore be an important factor in predicting moral behavior. Although moral chronicity may be an important component of moral functioning, not much is known about it. In this exploratory study, variables theorized to be related to moral chronicity, including perspective taking, sympathy, positive outlook, moral identity, and age were measured and used to test different models of moral personality in order to learn how people with a moral personality are different from those without one and how these variables interact to drive moral behavior.; The hypothesized models of moral personality were based on the assumption that sympathy, sensitivity to the perspectives of others, optimism, and moral identity predict moral chronicity. The data, however, suggests that moral chronicity is not predicted by sympathy, perspective taking, optimism, and moral identity but rather that moral identity predicts these other variables and that moral chronicity and moral identity may be two separate components of moral personality. Moral identity may represent an explicit moral personality which may serve as a motivation for moral cognition, sensitivity, and character, whereas moral chronicity may represent an implicit moral personality which may influence the interpretation of social information and account for the automaticity of moral behavior. Theoretical and educational implications are discussed.