The Theory of Organizing Models of Thinking as a Tool for the Qualitative and Microanalytical Study of Moral Identity

ABSTRACT

Moral identity has been investigated by most such studies using quantitative methods and viewed as a generalized self-schema around moral traits. A qualitative approach based on a microanalysis may shed light on other views of moral identity functioning. The Theory of Organizing Models of Thinking (OMT) provides a foundation for describing and explaining the psychological function and organization of self-representations from a constructivist perspective. This article presents a qualitative approach grounded in the OMT for studying moral identity and indicates some of its contributions to the field. By conceptualizing moral identity as a system of self-representations that integrates moral values, we describe an analysis procedure that makes it possible to investigate how and with what degree of centrality moral values are integrated into the subject’s system of self-representations by focusing on three complementary indicators: the spontaneous mobilization of moral contents in the subject’s self-representations; the meanings that the subject attributes to those contents; and their coordination with other contents of self-representations (moral and nonmoral). The analysis also provides conditions for exploring the different forms that the integration of moral values into self-representations can take: identity attribute, feeling, life goal, moral action, political ideology, autobiographical event, among others.

KEYWORDS:

• moral identity
• theory of organizing models of thinking
• moral self
• moral values

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.