Exploring the relationship between purpose and moral psychological indicators

ABSTRACT

In the present study, I explore the relationship between purpose, which was measured by the Claremont Purpose Scale, and moral psychological indicators, moral reasoning, moral identity, and empathy. Purpose was quantified in terms of three subcomponents: meaning, goal, and beyond-the-self motivation. Moral reasoning was assessed in terms of utilization of postconventional moral reasoning. Moral identity was examined with two subscales: moral internalization, and symbolization. Among diverse subscales of empathy, I focused on empathic concern and perspective taking, which have been reported to be strongly related to morality. To explore the best prediction models using the data, I employed Bayesian Model Selection and Bayesian regression analysis. In general, purpose was significantly predicted by most surveyed moral psychological indicators but not by moral symbolization. The best prediction model for beyond-the-self motivation included the most moral psychological indicator predictors including moral reasoning, which did not significantly predict other dependent variables.

KEYWORDS:

• Purpose
• flourishing
• moral functioning
• bayesian analysis
• Data-driven analysis

Acknowledgments

I thank Kelsie J. Dawson for data collection and preliminary data analysis for the current research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/6VUK3.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2022.2142227