New research published in the Journal of Personality highlights that dispositional self-efficacy significantly increases the likelihood of intervening against moral norm violations in everyday life, while moral disengagement decreases it.
Moral courage involves standing up against wrongdoing, even when it comes with personal risk. While past research has focused on extraordinary acts, such as whistleblowing, Anna Baumert and her colleagues turned their attention to everyday moral courage—intervening in common situations like harassment or dishonesty.
Despite frequent opportunities, people rarely intervene, leading to questions about what drives or inhibits this behavior. Previous studies suggest that cognitive factors, like a sense of responsibility and self-efficacy, as well as emotions like anger or fear, play a role. However, most research has been based on controlled or hypothetical scenarios. How do personality traits influence moral courage in real-world settings?
Participants represented a diverse cross-section of the German population, recruited through a quota-based sampling approach. They completed detailed self-report questionnaires designed to assess personality traits, with key traits including moral attentiveness, which reflects how often individuals notice and think about moral issues in daily life; dispositional self-efficacy, or the belief in one’s ability to handle challenges; and moral disengagement, which involves rationalizing or justifying unethical behavior.
Following this personality assessment, participants entered the experience sampling phase, which spanned seven days. During this period, they received two daily prompts via text or email, one in the morning and one in the evening, asking them to report any moral norm violations they had witnessed since the last prompt. If they observed a violation, they provided a detailed description of the incident and completed questions about their cognitive and emotional responses, including how responsible they felt, their sense of efficacy, and whether they experienced emotions like anger or fear.
The researchers were particularly focused on whether participants chose to intervene in these situations and how they did so. This method allowed the collection of a robust dataset, with 1,965 reports of norm violations from 678 participants who encountered at least one such situation during the study period.
The researchers found that dispositional self-efficacy is a key driver of moral courage in everyday life, with participants who scored higher in self-efficacy being significantly more likely to intervene when witnessing moral norm violations. Further, participants who felt a strong sense of responsibility were more likely to intervene. Conversely, moral disengagement acted as a significant barrier to intervention, as those who scored higher in moral disengagement were less inclined to act, primarily because they felt less responsible for addressing the wrongdoing.
Anger was found to be a powerful motivator, driving participants to take action against norm violations, likely because it is associated with a sense of injustice and a desire to correct wrongs. On the other hand, fear was a significant inhibitor of intervention, as participants who felt afraid were less likely to act, possibly due to concerns about the risks involved.
Interestingly, the overall intervention rate was 32%, indicating that moral courage, while present, is not always acted upon in everyday situations. This research underscores the importance of self-efficacy and emotional engagement in promoting moral courage in everyday situations. Understanding these processes can help develop interventions that foster moral courage in everyday contexts.
Of note is that the correlational nature of this study precludes causal conclusions.
The research, “Personality processes of everyday moral courage”, was authored by Anna Baumert, Fabian Ezra Mentrup, Lisa Klümper, and Julia Sasse.