Prosociality and morality through the lens of personality psychology

Abstract

Prosociality and morality are critical to the functioning and flourishing of society. There is, however, great variation in the degree to which individuals help or hinder one another, or adhere to ethical standards of "rightness." One way to understand this variation is by drawing on theories and models within personality psychology, which may illuminate the basic individual characteristics that drive a wide range of other-regarding tendencies. In this review, we provide a snapshot of three research strands addressing these themes. The first concerns how personality traits map onto prosocial preferences for fairness and cooperation, as studied using classic social decision-making tasks called economic games. The second concerns the robust associations between personality traits and indicators of inter-group prejudice (e.g., authoritarian ideology). The third concerns the emerging concept of moral exceptionality, and the personality traits that may characterise individuals at the forefront of moral progress. These examples demonstrate the core role that personality psychology is playing in the study of prosocial and moral behaviour, as well as the critical mass emerging in the Australian context around these themes.

Personality and moral judgment: Curious consequentialists and polite deontologists (Journal of Personality)

“…There is growing evidence that our personalities frame our social, political, and moral worldviews. For example, basic traits within the "Big Five" personality taxonomy (John, Soto & Naumann, 2008) show robust associations with political orientation and voting preferences (Garretsen, Stoker, Soudis, Martin, & Rentfrow, 2018;Hirsh, DeYoung, Xu, & Peterson, 2010), prejudice (Perry & Sibley, 2012;Sibley & Duckit, 2008), cooperation and other forms of prosocial behavior (Ferguson, Zhao, & Smillie, 2020;Smillie, Lawn, Zhao, Perry, & Laham, 2019), and moral values (Hirsh et al 2010;Lewis & Bates, 2011). In the present studies we examine how these basic traits may influence moral judgments.…”

“…Drawing on Greene and colleagues' Dual Process Model (DPM) of moral judgment (Green, 2007;Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004;Green, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001), alongside other theoretical perspectives (e.g., Baron, 1994Baron, , 2012, we focus our investigation on three trait aspects of the Big Five domains (DeYoung, Quilty, & Peterson, 2007): the intellect aspect of openness/intellect, and the compassion and politeness aspects of agreeableness. In doing so, we build on a budding literature (e.g., Kroneisen & Heck, 2020;Smillie et al, 2019) that has begun to explore how personality traits may guide the way people approach ethical questions and resolve moral dilemmas.…”

Bridging Personality and Online Prosocial Behavior: The Roles of Empathy, Moral Identity, and Social Self-Efficacy

“…A growing body of literature has examined the association between personality and moral behaviors, such as voluntary helping, cooperation, fairness, inclusiveness/prejudice, and universalism (for a review, see Smillie et al, 2019). This suggests that personality is predictive of moral cognition, emotion, and conduct.…”

Personality psychology in Australia: Introduction to the special issue

“…This overlooks the rich history of quasi‐experimental research in personality psychology (Revelle, ) and more recent research that has sought to directly manipulate personality traits and their associated processes (e.g., Jacques‐Hamilton, Sun, & Smillie, in press). There is also extensive use of behavioural paradigms in personality psychology as exemplified by Smillie, Zhao, Lawn, Perry and Laham (, this issue), whose review of personality in relation to prosocial and moral behaviour includes coverage of the bourgeoning literature at the interface of personality psychology and behavioural economics. This research shows how personality traits map onto a variety of social preferences modelled within economic games—such as fairness, reciprocity, punishment, and helping behaviour.…”

“…Although it recognises that biological processes underpin personality phenomena (as is equally the case for phenomena studied by social psychologists), it is not biologically “reductionist”. It is not politically right‐leaning either, and in fact, it has elucidated individual differences that are intrinsically relevant to social and political progressivism (see Smillie et al, ). Concurrently, Australian social psychology is a broader and richer field than it once was, with a greater diversity of theoretical approaches and a growing openness to individual differences.…”