Moral courage - Antecedent conditions and interventions

Project 5: Moral courage - Antecedent conditions and interventions

Modern societies are confronted by many forms of intolerance, discrimination, and violence not only on a large scale, as in international political clashes or armed conflicts, but also on a smaller scale. There are numerous indicators of such smaller-scale crises within society: antisemitism, xenophobia, homophobia, neighborhood violence, juvenile delinquency, domestic violence, vandalism, bullying at school, mobbing at the workplace, cybermobbing to name just a few (Brandstätter & Jonas, 2012). Policy makers as well as social scientists agree on the citizens’ role as guardians of peaceful and tolerant coexistence by combating intolerance and violence in their community – a phenomenon that is described in German-speaking countries as “Zivilcourage” and internationally as “moral courage”. In our project on moral courage we address two independent though related agendas: (a) the analysis of situational and person-specific determinants of perceiving situations as calling for moral courage, and (b) developing further our behavioural training of moral courage, which we have developed on the basis of motivational and social psychological theory (Zürcher Zivilcourage-Training, Brandstätter, 2007), and which is regularly conducted in diverse educational contexts. In our research on moral courage we reason that the starting point for intervening as an act of moral courage lies in the perception and assessment of relevant situations. The perception that a norm has been infringed and the perception of the risk involved in intervening are central determinants of moral courage. Whereas there has been a great deal of research into the situational influences, the determinants on the level of the persons involved have received little attention so far. This project therefore pays special attention to the person-specific determinants (e.g. values, Big Five personality dimensions, action/state orientation, chronic approach/avoidance orientation) of the perception of situations calling for moral courage. In our research we also compare different national samples in order to test for generalizability of our theorizing. First results emphasise the importance of personal characteristics for the perception of situations requiring moral courage and thus augment the currently prevailing perspective in moral courage research, which has focused on situational influences.

Prof. Dr. Veronika Brandstätter

Dr. Mirjam Ghassemi Tabrizi

Stiftung Suzanne und Hans Biäsch zur Förderung der Angewandten Psychologie (PI: Veronika Brandstätter)

Brandstätter, V., Jonas, K. J., Koletzko, S. H., & Fischer, P. (2016). Self-regulatory processes in the appraisal of moral courage situations. Social Psychology, 47, 201–213. doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000274

Backes, S., Brandstätter, V., & Brandstätter, H. (2014). Moral courage: Its personal and situational determinants. Politische Psychologie, 3, 5-23.

Brandstätter, V., & Jonas, K. J. (2012). Moral courage training programs as a means of overcoming societal crises. In K. J. Jonas & T. A. Morton (Eds.), Restoring civil societies: The psychology of intervention and engagement following crisis (pp. 265-283). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Brandstätter, V. (2007). Kleine Schritte statt Heldentaten. Ein Training zur Förderung von Zivilcourage gegen Fremdenfeindlichkeit. In K. J. Jonas, M. Boos & V. Brandstätter (Hrsg.). Zivilcourage trainieren! Theorie und Praxis (pp. 245-302). Göttingen: Hogrefe.