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How Culture Shapes Our Moral Identity: a Cross-Cultural Investigation in Saudi Arabia and Britain

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How Culture Shapes Our Moral Identity: a Cross-Cultural Investigation in Saudi Arabia and Britain How Culture Shapes Our Moral Identity: A Cross-Cultural Investigation in Saudi Arabia and Britain by Mona AlSheddi Thesis submitted to the University of Surrey in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Psychology Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences University of Surrey September 2017 © Mona AlSheddi 2017 Declaration of Originality This thesis and the work to which it refers are the results of my own efforts. Any ideas, data, images or text resulting from the work of others (whether published or unpublished) are fully identified as such within the work and attributed to their originator in the text, bibliography or in footnotes. This thesis has not been submitted in whole or in part for any other academic degree or professional qualification. I agree that the University has the right to submit my work to the plagiarism detection service TurnitinUK for originality checks. Whether or not drafts have been so assessed, the University reserves the right to require an electronic version of the final document (as submitted) for assessment as above. Signed: Mona ALSheddi Date: 28-9-2017 I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them. Baruch Spinoza I'm always asking questions - not to find 'answers,' but to see where the questions lead. Dead ends sometimes? That's fine. New directions? Interesting. Great insights? Over-ambitious. A glimpse here and there? Perfect. Lesley Hazleton Abstract Moral identity, which is based on moral concerns, is one of the many types of identities that an individual may have. In recent literature, spanning the period from the 1980s to the present - including the work of the prominent researcher into moral identity, Blasi, and Aquino and Reed, who developed their widely used moral identity scale in 2000 - there has been a persistent assumption that fairness and caring, or the individualising moral foundations, comprise the entire contents of moral identity. However, it is well documented that broader cultural differences are considered to have a clear effect on individuals, as cultures vary in the degree to which their norms, values and beliefs influence individual identities. Despite this, no published studies have explored moral identity with respect to culture. Thus, in this thesis, I argued that culture influences people’s moral identity, and that we need to consider and expect more moral variation between people across different cultures. I aimed here to develop an understanding of the importance of culture influence on moral identity in two cultural contexts, those of Britain and Saudi Arabia. In Study 1 (n=160), I employed the prototype approach, and my results show that traits related to fairness/reciprocity and care/harm were prototypical of the concept of a moral person among both the British and Saudi participants. Meanwhile, respect, as well as traits related to religiousness, were prototypical of the concept of a moral person in only the Saudi sample. In Study 2, (n = 539), participants from each culture were randomly assigned one of six conditions where they completed moral identity measures. In each condition, participants were presented either with a person characterised by the exact moral traits listed in Aquino and Reed’s (2002) moral identity scale, or with a person characterised by moral traits represent one of the five moral foundations. Also, for each condition, the moral traits important in the participants’ own culture were examined. The results showed large differences between the British and Saudi samples with regard to three moral foundations: in- group/loyalty; authority/respect and purity/sanctity, all three of which relate to binding concerns. These differences were mediated by the perceived cultural importance of these traits in each sample, particularly the binding traits. In Study 3 (n=938), I developed a novel moral identity scale and tested it for its reliability and validity in overcoming the shortcomings of previous scales used to measure moral identity, i particularly the overlooked element of cultural variations in morality. Finally, in Study 4 (n=496), and given that there is an assumption in the literature that moral identity which is based on the individualising moral foundations (particularly caring and fairness) has always pro-social implications. I argued in this study that when we expand our understanding of moral identity to include the long-overlooked binding moral approach (e.g., authority, purity, in-group loyalty), moral identity may relate to negative attitudes toward out-groups. The results supported the idea that we need not take for granted that moral identity contributes to a reduction in prejudice. The results also indicated that the new moral identity scale is better than Aquino and Reed’s (2002) moral identity scale in its ability to predict prejudice attitudes. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that the contents of moral identity are more diverse than has been assumed in the moral identity research. In addition, the results indicate that there is a need to be mindful of a dark side to moral identity that is often neglected, specifically when we, as researchers, recognise and include various moral concerns in the conceptualisation and measurements of moral identity. ii Publications Arising From Thesis Peer-reviewed journal articles - ALSheddi, M., Russell, PS., & Hegarty, P. (2017). How Does Culture Shape Our Moral Identity? Moral Foundations in Saudi Arabia and Britain. Paper submitted to The European Journal of Social Psychology (under review). This paper is derived from studies 1 and 2 presented in Chapter 4 and 5. Conference presentations -ALSheddi, M., Coyle, A., & Russell PS. (2014, April). How might culture shape our moral identity? Moral Identity: A Cross-Cultural Investigation in Britain and Saudi Arabia. Poster presented at the School of Psychology, Annual Research Students Conference, University of Surrey, UK. - ALSheddi, M., Russell, PS., & Hegarty, P. (2015, February). How might culture shape our moral identity? Moral Identity: A Cross-Cultural Investigation in Britain and Saudi Arabia. Poster presented at the 8th Saudi Students Conference, Imperial College London, UK. - ALSheddi, M., Russell, PS., & Hegarty, P. (2015, July). How might culture shape our moral identity? Moral Identity: A Cross-Cultural Investigation in Britain and Saudi Arabia. Poster presented at the Social Science Research Conference, University of Kent, UK. - ALSheddi, M., Russell, PS., & Hegarty, P. (2015, September). How might culture shape our moral identity? Moral Identity: A Cross-Cultural Investigation in Britain and Saudi Arabia. Paper presented at the Developmental Psychology Section and Social Psychology Section Annual Conference, UK. - ALSheddi, M., Russell, PS., & Hegarty, P. (2016, April). How might culture shape our moral identity? Moral Identity: A Cross-Cultural Investigation in Britain and Saudi Arabia. Poster presented at the School of Psychology, Annual Research Students Conference, University of Surrey, UK. - ALSheddi, M., Russell, PS., & Hegarty, P. (2017, July). How might culture shape our moral identity? Moral Identity: A Cross-Cultural Investigation in Britain and Saudi Arabia. Poster presented at the 18th General meeting of The European Association of Social Psychology, Granada, Spain. - ALSheddi, M., Russell, PS., & Hegarty, P. (2017, September). A Double-Edged Sword: When Moral Identity Leads to Prejudice. Paper presented, (five minutes challenge presentation), at the British Psychological Society Social Psychology Section Conference, Leicester, UK. - ALSheddi, M., Russell, PS., & Hegarty, P. (2018, March). How might culture shape our moral identity? A Cross-Cultural Investigation in Britain and Saudi Arabia. Poster presented at the APA Social Psychology Section Conference, Atlanta, USA. iii Acknowledgements There are many people to thank and give credit to who have contributed to my PhD journey and to my life in general over the past five years I have spent in Britain. Here, I would like to reflect on these past five years, which have been a time of significant growth for me both academically and personally. I would first like to thank my principle supervisor Dr Sophie Russell, who opens my eyes to a whole new research area, the realm of morality. She showed me the road and guided me to the right sources and theories. Without her encouragement, patience, time, advice and constructive feedback, this thesis would not have been possible. I am indebted to my co-supervisor, Professor Peter Hegarty. At the end of my first year, Peter agreed to be my co-supervisor when my previous supervisor, Adrian Coyle, moved to another institution. Peter then took on full supervisory responsibility when Sophie was away on maternity leave twice during my PhD. There is so much I can say about how his supervision has positively impacted me. Many academics are brilliant and challenging; others are encouraging and inspiring, but only a few, like Peter, are the whole package! He is always smiling, energetic and positive no matter how busy or tired he is, which always amazes me! I am grateful for his generosity and guidance and that he made the PhD journey a truly enlightening learning experience. Thank you, Peter, for inspiring me to think creatively about psychology and for inspiring me to achieve the greatness you have. Special thanks are also due to my first-year supervisor, Professor Adrian Coyle. I was incredible lucky that he taught me two courses,
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