Morality and Self-Control: The Role of Binding and Individualizing Moral Motives

ABSTRACT

The notion that morality and self-control are linked is deeply rooted in Western scholarly and religious traditions, yet few studies have examined this notion empirically. To fill this gap, we employ a pluralistic moral framework and data from four independently gathered samples to examine the relationship between morality and self-control. We hypothesize that people with higher levels of morality (measured as individualizing and binding moral motives) will exhibit higher levels of self-control, and that these moral motives will mediate the association between prior socialization and self-control. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that the individualizing moral motive is positively associated with self-control, net of demographic and parenting measures, and that it mediates the association between prior socialization and self-control. However, contrary to our hypotheses, we find that the binding moral motive is inversely associated with self-control. These divergent results, found across four data sets, indicate that the relationship between morality and self-control is more complex than previously understood, and highlight the importance of expanding the conceptualization of morality to include both individualizing and binding moral motives in order for a more complete understanding of the relationship between morality and self-control to be obtained.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Inga Dora Sigfusdottir, Director of the Icelandic Center for Social Research and Analysis at Reykjavik University for granting us access to the Youth in Iceland Survey data.

Notes

¹ Haidt and colleagues further theorize that there may be a sixth foundation, Liberty/Oppression, but it has not yet been integrated into their measurement instrument (Graham et al. 2018; Haidt 2012; Iyer et al. 2012).

² An analogous distinction between individual- and group-oriented morality is made in the literature on values (for examples, see Longest, Hitlin, and Vaisey 2013; Miles 2015; Shin, Dovidio., and Napier 2013; for a review, see Schwartz 2012), as well as in other theoretical perspectives in moral psychology (see, e.g., Gray, Young, and Waytz 2012; Greene 2013; Janoff-Bulman and Carnes 2013; Sinn and Hayes 2017).

³ These items are considered optional and were not included in the other surveys.

⁴ Ancillary analyses suggested that the main results were robust to different combinations of the MFQ Part 2 binding and individualizing items (e.g., using all MFQ Part 2 items) (data available upon request).

⁵ Due to the homogenous nature of the Icelandic population, which is primarily white, respondents were not asked to report their race or ethnicity. As of 2018, the largest immigrant populations in Iceland were from Poland (39% of immigrants), Lithuania (6% of immigrants), and the Philippines (4% of immigrants).

⁶ Because some functions of the KHB program are not compatible with imputation, these supplemental analyses were conducted using listwise deletion.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eric Silver

Eric Silver is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Penn State University. His research focuses on deviance, morality, punishment, and sigma. He has also done work in violence and mental disorder, communities and crime, and actuarial risk assessment. His published work appears in Criminology, Social Problems, American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, and Deviant Behavior, among other outlets.

Jasmine R. Silver

Jasmine R. Silver is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University–Newark. She received her PhD in criminal justice from the University at Albany in 2018. Broadly, her research centers on moral intuition and ideology as drivers of attitudes and behaviors related to crime and criminal justice. Her published work appears in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Law and Human Behavior, Law and Society Review, and Punishment and Society.