Personality processes of everyday moral courage

Introduction: Moral courage manifests in acts intended to intervene to stop or redress witnessed moral norm violations, despite the risk of negative consequences for the intervener. We investigate moral courage in everyday life and ask what personality processes are involved. Based on an extended process model of moral courage, we derived hypotheses on cognitive and emotional processes that should facilitate or hinder intervention. Further, we identified candidate personality dispositions that should shape these processes and thereby predict who tends to intervene against others' norm violations and who does not.

Methods: Using a quota-based sample of the German population (N = 1108), we conducted a personality assessment, followed by a 7-day experience sampling during which participants reported norm violations witnessed in their daily life as well as their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions.

Results: In total, 678 participants reported 1965 norm violations and intervened against 32% of them. Dispositional self-efficacy facilitated intervention by increasing a sense of efficacy when confronted with others' norm violations. Conversely, dispositional moral disengagement hindered intervention by reducing perceived own responsibility.

Discussion: Our findings provide novel insights into the situations affording moral courage in everyday life, and the personality processes that uniquely guide this behavior.