Abstract
Most people want to change some aspects of their personality, but does this phenomenon extend to moral character and to close others? Targets (n = 800) rated their personality traits and reported how much they wanted to change on each trait; well-acquainted informants (n = 958) rated targets’ personality traits and how much they wanted the targets to change on those same traits. Targets and informants reported a lower desire to change more morally relevant traits (e.g., honesty, compassion, fairness) compared with less morally relevant traits (e.g., anxiety, sociability, productiveness)—even after we controlled for current trait levels. Moreover, although targets generally wanted to improve more on traits that they had less desirable levels of, and informants wanted their targets to improve more on those traits as well, targets’ moral change goals were less calibrated to their current trait levels. Finally, informants wanted targets to change in similar ways, but to a lesser extent, than targets themselves did. These findings suggest that moral considerations take a back seat when it comes to self-improvement.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
