Revisiting the link between true-self and morality: Replication and extension Registered Report of Newman, Bloom, and Knobe (2014) Studies 1 and 2

Abstract

<p>Newman et al. 2014 Value judgments and the true self. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 40, 203-216. (doi:10.1177/0146167213508791) demonstrated that behaviours that are more aligned with moral values are perceived as more strongly reflecting a person's 'true-self', suggesting that morality plays an important role in how people perceive others' essential self. In this Registered Report, we conducted a close replication of Newman et al. 2014 Value judgments and the true self. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 40, 203-216. (doi:10.1177/0146167213508791)'s Studies 1 and 2 with an online US American sample recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk using CloudResearch (N = 803). We found support for Study 1's findings that morally positive changes in others are perceived as more reflective of true-self than morally negative changes, in both the forced-choice (original: η²p = 0.39, 95% CI [0.25, 0.51]; replication: η²p = 0.20, 95% CI [0.16, 0.23]) and the continuous scale (original: η²p = 0.33, 95% CI [0.19, 0.45]; replication: η²p = 0.22, 95% CI [0.15, 0.25]) measures. We found support for Study 2's findings that changes more aligned with observers' political moral views are perceived as more reflective of true-self (original: η²p = 0.04, 95% CI [0.00, 0.11]; replication: η²p = 0.35, 95% CI [0.29, 0.41]). Extending the replication, we examined associations between true-self attributions and perceived social norms and found that social norms were positively associated with true-self attributions (Study 1: most rs ranged from 0.07 to 0.21; Study 2: rs = 0.10 to 0.30). Materials, data and analysis code are available on https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/9FVTQ. This Registered Report has been officially endorsed by Peer Community in Registered Reports: https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.rr.100372.</p>