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Increasing Self-Knowledge to Promote Moral Behavior

Objective

The functioning of societies and the quality of interpersonal relationships heavily depend on moral behaviors such as fairness, cooperation, and honesty, whereas immoral behaviors bear tremendous societal costs. A long-standing puzzle facing the social sciences and the humanities is how to promote moral behavior. The prevalent approach is to modify the situation, e.g. through implementing rewards for moral and sanctions for immoral behavior or through nudging. Community and organizational policies invariably resort to such interventions to foster moral action. However, situation-based approaches are distinctly limited: they inhibit more consistent behavior change that extends to situations where the intervention is absent, and they often fail or even backfire.

In KNOW-THYSELF, I pursue a person-centered approach that can more widely and sustainably promote moral behavior than existing approaches. I draw on a yet unexploited resource for desirable behavior change rooted in ancient Greek philosophy: self-knowledge, defined as an accurate representation of what one is like. In the moral domain in particular, self-knowledge is restricted by self-enhancement – the pervasive bias to see oneself more favorably than implied by one's actions. I propose that increasing self-knowledge about moral character can promote moral behavior across contexts and even give rise to long-term change of personality traits that underlie moral action.

Adopting a multi-disciplinary perspective and combining rigorous experiments with cutting-edge field methods (e.g. experience sampling), I address three key challenges:
(1) How to advance self-knowledge most effectively
(2) Increase self-knowledge to promote moral behavior
(3) Increase self-knowledge to initiate long-term personality change

Tackling these challenges offers ground-breaking insights for theory, research, and practice into how self-knowledge can be advanced and utilized to boost moral behavior – in the short- and long-term.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2021-STG

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Host institution

MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTEN EV
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 499 130,00
Address
HOFGARTENSTRASSE 8
80539 MUNCHEN
Germany

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Region
Bayern Oberbayern München, Kreisfreie Stadt
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 499 130,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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