Who Cares More About Morality? Evidence from 67 Countries

The self-importance of moral identity is about being moral for yourself (internalization) and for others (symbolization). We tested sex, age, and cultural differences in participants from 67 counties. We used Uz’s cultural tightness and looseness index and Hofstede’s dimensions. We found women had higher internalization and symbolization than men. Older individuals cared more about being moral for themselves and others. Symbolization was positively related to power distance, individualism, masculinity, indulgence, and domain general tightness; negatively to long-term orientation and both the domain-specific and combination indexes of tightness and looseness and was unrelated to uncertainty avoidance. Internalization was positively related to indulgence and domain-specific index of tightness and looseness; negatively to power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, domain-general, and combination indices of tightness and looseness; and unrelated to masculinity. We observed country-level differences for all variables, so our results should not be treated as universal.