Moral Identity in Psychopathy

Psychologists who study morality have argued that moral behavior is influenced by how central morality is to one’s sense of self. For instance, individuals who are considered to be moral exemplars tend to place more importance on moral traits and values when defining their self-concepts (Colby & Damon, 1995). This paper takes the next step of examining individual variation in a construct highly associated with immoral behavior – psychopathy. Within a large community sample, we found that individuals scoring higher on a measure of psychopathy were less likely to base their self-concepts on moral traits. Furthermore, such individuals placed less importance on self-transcendent moral values, such as benevolence and universalism, and greater importance on self-focused non-moral values, such as power, hedonism, and stimulation-seeking. These findings offer insight into the nature of psychopathic personality and are suggestive of the processes that may lead individuals with such traits to behave immorally.