The Relationship Between Moral Reasoning and The Big Five Personality Factors

Abstract

The research aims to: study the relationship between moral thinking and the Big Five personality factors, a field study on a sample of teenage girls in the city of Mosul.

The research belongs to the descriptive research, in which the researcher relied on the descriptive approach and the psychological survey method. The study sample represented secondary school students in the city of Mosul. The research sample amounted to (407) female students, who were chosen randomly from the research community, with (4) secondary schools on the right side of the city of Mosul.

The researcher constructed the moral reasoning scale based on theoretical frameworks and previous studies that addressed the research topic, in addition to using the Big Five Personality Factors Scale prepared by (Costa and McCrae, 1992), which was translated into Arabic by "Badr Mohammed Al-Ansari". After verifying the apparent validity of the scale by presenting it to a group of experts and arbitrators specialized in psychology, in addition to verifying the factorial, discriminant and construct validity, in addition to discrimination indicators, reviewing the relative reliability of the scale and extracting its reliability using the retest method and Cronbach's alpha method. After that, the researcher applied the two scales to the basic research sample, and the data were processed through the Statistical Package for Social Sciences program. The study concluded that:

There is a significant correlation between moral reasoning styles and each of the following Big Five personality factors (extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) at the 0.01 level, compared to no significant correlation between the components of the moral reasoning scale and neuroticism.

There is a negative correlation between neuroticism and (emotional balance and unconditional self-acceptance), compared to no significant correlation between moral reasoning styles (optimism, acceptance of others, personal responsibility, and self-satisfaction) and neuroticism as a component of the Big Five personality factors.

There is a statistically significant correlation between extroversion and the dimensions of moral reasoning (optimism, emotional balance, acceptance of others, personal responsibility, unconditional self-acceptance, and self-satisfaction) at the 0.01 level.

There is a statistically significant correlation between openness to experience and the dimensions of moral reasoning (emotional balance, acceptance of others, personal responsibility, unconditional self-acceptance, and self-satisfaction) at the 0.01 level.

There is astatistically significant relationship between acceptability and the dimensions of ethical thinking (acceptance of others, personal responsibility, self-satisfaction, unconditional self-acceptance, optimism, and emotional balance) at a significance level of 0.01.

There is a statistically significant relationship between conscientiousness, as a component of the Big Five personality factors, and the dimensions of ethical thinking (emotional balance, unconditional self-acceptance, personal responsibility, self-satisfaction, and optimism) at a significance level of 0.01, with the exception of the dimension (acceptance of others).