Moral Identity (Internalization) (MI)

1. Abstract

The Moral Identity (Internalization) (MI) subscale, developed by Karl Aquino and Americus Reed II in their seminal 2002 psychometric investigation published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, is a prominent measurement instrument in contemporary social, organizational, and developmental psychology. Designed to operationalize the degree to which moral character traits are integrally embedded within an individual’s core self-concept, the Internalization dimension captures the private, psychological centrality of morality rather than its public or interpersonal display (which is assessed by the companion Symbolization subscale). The Internalization subscale comprises 5 self-report items presented following an imaginative priming stimulus involving nine prototypical moral traits: caring, compassionate, fair, friendly, generous, helpful, hardworking, honest, and kind.

Respondents evaluate the extent to which these moral attributes define their personal identity, emotional well-being, and self-worth using a standardized Likert response format (typically a 5-point or 7-point scale anchored from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 or 7 = strongly agree). Psychometrically, the Internalization scale demonstrates robust structural properties across diverse adult, adolescent, student, and cross-cultural samples. Confirmatory factor analyses consistently confirm that the Internalization factor is empirically distinct from Symbolization, exhibiting high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha typically ranging from α = .71 to α = .86) and temporal stability over longitudinal intervals. The scale demonstrates substantial construct validity, converging with principled moral reasoning, empathy, authentic prosocial behavior, charitable donations, and organizational citizenship behaviors, while demonstrating negative associations with moral disengagement, deceptive negotiation practices, antisocial tendencies, and unethical workplace conduct.

2. Keywords

Moral Identity, Internalization, Self-Concept, Social-Cognitive Theory, Aquino and Reed, Prosocial Behavior, Moral Psychology, Ethical Decision-Making, Self-Importance, Psychometrics

3. Authors

The Moral Identity scale was formulated and validated by two scholars in organizational behavior, social psychology, and consumer psychology:

• Karl Aquino, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science, and Richard Poon Professor of Organizations and Society at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Aquino’s scholarship centers on moral identity, status conflict, interpersonal victimization, revenge and forgiveness in organizational settings, and the cognitive mechanisms underlying social justice.
• Americus Reed II, Ph.D. — The Whitney M. Young, Jr. Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States. Dr. Reed’s research examines brand identity, consumer social identity, self-concept congruence, and the social-cognitive processes governing moral rationalization and ethical decision-making.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Moral Identity (Internalization) scale is to quantitatively assess the subjective, private importance that an individual assigns to moral characteristics within their hierarchical self-schema. Prior to Aquino and Reed’s (2002) conceptualization, psychological inquiry into morality was predominantly dominated by cognitive-developmental frameworks, most notably those articulated by Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. These structural approaches emphasized prescriptive moral reasoning stages, ethical dilemma resolutions, and deliberative justice principles. However, empirical investigations repeatedly revealed a persistent “judgment-action gap”: an individual’s cognitive capacity to reason at advanced moral stages frequently failed to predict whether that individual would genuinely act in an ethical or prosocial manner when confronted with real-world incentives, social pressures, or opportunities for self-enrichment.

To resolve this theoretical and empirical divergence, scholars recognized that moral reasoning does not operate within a motivational vacuum. Rather, moral knowledge must be coupled with an emotional and self-definitional imperative. The Moral Identity (Internalization) scale was constructed to measure precisely this link: the degree to which being a moral person constitutes a vital, emotionally significant pillar of subjective identity. In this framework, moral action is sustained because failing to act in accordance with one’s moral self-schema induces severe self-regulatory dissonance, identity inconsistency, and diminished self-worth.

In applied research, the Internalization scale serves extensive empirical functions:

• Organizational Behavior and Workplace Ethics: Investigating whistleblowing, authentic leadership, unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), workplace deviance, abusive supervision, and the mitigation of corporate fraud.
• Prosocial Behavior and Philanthropy: Predicting spontaneous altruism, blood and organ donation willingness, international relief contributions, and community volunteerism.
• Consumer Ethics: Assessing public resistance to sweatshop-manufactured goods, green consumption, ethical boycott participation, and responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.
• Clinical and Forensic Psychology: Examining self-regulatory deficits, antisocial personality traits, moral disengagement mechanisms in criminal populations, and adolescent delinquency.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct of moral identity is formally conceptualized as a self-conception organized around a specific set of moral traits. Within Aquino and Reed’s (2002) theoretical architecture, this construct is bifurcated into two correlated yet structurally distinct dimensions: Internalization and Symbolization. The Internalization dimension reflects the internal, psychological centrality of these moral traits to one’s self-definition, whereas Symbolization reflects the public manifestation of these traits through observable actions, memberships, and social signaling.

The Internalization construct is anchored in several distinct psychological properties:

Self-Schema Centrality

According to social-cognitive schema theory, an individual’s self-concept represents a multifaceted memory structure composed of domain-specific self-schemas (e.g., professional, athletic, relational, academic). A self-schema is chronically accessible when it is central to how the person routinely interprets personal experience. High moral identity internalization signifies that moral constructs occupy a high rank within this cognitive hierarchy. When confronted with everyday events, individuals with high internalization automatically categorize stimuli through an ethical lens, experiencing moral sensitivity without requiring overt prompting or external incentives.

Affective and Emotional Grounding

Unlike purely cognitive knowledge structures, moral identity internalization is intrinsically coupled with affective well-being and self-esteem. As captured directly in the scale items, a person’s emotional equilibrium is tethered to embodying these virtues. Living in alignment with internal moral standards produces feelings of psychological wholeness, self-respect, and moral elevation. Conversely, hypothetical or actual transgressions evoke profound moral distress, internalized guilt, and shame, rather than merely the social fear of detection or reputational sanctions.

The Moral Semantic Cluster

To ground the construct in empirical reality rather than abstract philosophical terminology, Aquino and Reed identified a set of nine moral adjectives that systematically loaded onto a unified semantic space representing everyday moral virtue: caring, compassionate, fair, friendly, generous, helpful, hardworking, honest, and kind. These traits reflect a balance of benevolent, justice-oriented, and prosocial qualities. In the administration of the instrument, respondents are instructed to visualize a person possessing these characteristics and then evaluate the extent to which that mental representation matches their own self-understanding.

A crucial conceptual nuance is that Internalization is not identical to general moral goodness or social desirability. An individual may hold conventional moral beliefs yet maintain a low level of internalization; for such an individual, morality is viewed as an external social obligation rather than a foundational axiom of identity. When moral traits are internalized, moral principles transition from external rules into constitutive elements of the self.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Moral Identity (Internalization) scale is anchored at the intersection of three major theoretical traditions in psychology: social-cognitive theory, self-identity theory, and moral self-regulation frameworks.

1. Social-Cognitive Theory and Chronic Accessibility

Rooted in the social-cognitive principles developed by Albert Bandura and Hazel Markus, self-knowledge is structured as a network of cognitive nodes. Social stimuli activate nodes based on their chronic accessibility (how frequently and easily they are retrieved) and transient accessibility (how they are primed by immediate environmental cues). Aquino and Reed (2002) conceptualized moral identity as an accessible self-schema. For individuals with high moral identity internalization, moral concepts possess high chronic accessibility. Consequently, moral obligations are continuously cognitively salient, exerting ongoing governance over intentionality, goal setting, and behavioral monitoring without necessitating situational reminders.

2. The Blasi Moral Agent Model

The foundational philosophical and psychological framework for moral identity was articulated by Augusto Blasi in his pioneering Self-Model of Moral Functioning (1983, 1984). Blasi sought to resolve Kohlberg’s judgment-action dilemma by asserting that moral reasoning translates into ethical conduct only when filtered through two developmental processes: moral judgment of responsibility (determining that an obligation applies directly to oneself) and moral identity (incorporating moral concerns into the essential self). According to Blasi, the ultimate psychological motive for moral behavior is the preservation of self-integrity and personal identity consistency. Aquino and Reed operationalized Blasi’s qualitative, phenomenological insights into an empirically testable, psychometrically sound instrument.

3. Self-Regulatory Consistency and Moral Disengagement

Moral self-regulation functions through continuous self-monitoring, judgment of behavior against personal benchmarks, and affective self-consequences. High internalization serves as an internal bulwark against moral disengagement—the cognitive maneuvers (e.g., moral justification, euphemistic labeling, displacement of responsibility, dehumanization) through which people selectively deactivate their self-censure mechanisms. Because an internalized moral identity demands behavioral fidelity to maintain self-worth, individuals high on internalization find it significantly harder to utilize disengagement rationalizations when self-serving or harmful opportunities arise.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Moral Identity (Internalization) scale has been established through extensive construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validation studies across multiple behavioral settings.

Construct and Convergent Validity

In the original validation studies by Aquino and Reed (2002), the Internalization dimension demonstrated robust convergent validity with established measures of moral functioning and social disposition:

• Empathy and Perspective Taking: Internalization is positively correlated with Davis’s Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), particularly the Empathic Concern subscale (r ≈ .39 to .45, p < .001) and Perspective Taking (r ≈ .28, p < .01), demonstrating that deep moral self-concept is inherently tied to compassionate affective responses.
• Principled Moral Reasoning: Positive correlations have been found with the Defining Issues Test (DIT / DIT-2) P-scores (principled moral reasoning stage scores; r = .20 to .27, p < .05), supporting the theoretical premise that internalization aligns with principled ethical cognitions while remaining conceptually non-redundant.
• Implicit Self-Concept: In implicit association tests (IAT) measuring the reaction-time association between the self and moral attributes, internalization scores positively predicted implicit moral associations, demonstrating that the scale measures authentic self-schematic organization rather than superficial self-enhancement.

Discriminant Validity

Aquino and Reed (2002) conducted extensive analyses to rule out rival explanations regarding self-presentation biases and personality confounders:

• Social Desirability: Correlations between the Internalization subscale and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale have consistently proved negligible to modest (typically r = .09 to .16, often non-significant), demonstrating that the instrument does not merely reflect a response style of presenting oneself favorably.
• General Big Five Personality: While Internalization exhibits moderate positive links with Agreeableness (r ≈ .30 to .38) and modest associations with Conscientiousness (r ≈ .20), multi-trait multi-method analyses confirm that moral identity internalization accounts for substantial incremental variance in ethical behavior above and beyond the Big Five personality factors.

Predictive and Behavioral Validity

The behavioral predictive power of the Internalization subscale is documented across hundreds of experimental and field investigations:

• Actual Charitable Giving and Altruism: In laboratory experiments, participants high in internalization were significantly more likely to donate their actual experimental earnings to organizations providing food relief (e.g., donating canned goods to local food banks) and supported outgroups or marginalized populations even under conditions of scarce resources (Aquino & Reed, 2002).
• Organizational and Workplace Misconduct: Research by Skarlicki, Aquino, and colleagues has demonstrated that employees high in moral identity internalization are significantly less likely to engage in interpersonal aggression, organizational retaliation, employee theft, or deceptive negotiation tactics, even when they perceive high levels of organizational injustice or personal provocation.
• Mitigation of Moral Disengagement: Detert, Treviño, and Sweitzer (2008) showed that moral identity internalization significantly reduces the likelihood that an individual will activate moral disengagement mechanisms, thereby directly curbing unethical choices in academic and business contexts.

8. Reliability

The Internalization subscale exhibits high internal consistency and stability across diverse demographic, cultural, and linguistic groups.

Internal Consistency

In the original scale development research by Aquino and Reed (2002), Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the 5-item Internalization subscale consistently demonstrated satisfactory to strong internal reliability across sequential studies:

• Study 1 (Scale Construction & EFA, N = 360): α = .73
• Study 2 (CFA Validation Sample, N = 347): α = .77
• Study 3 (Nomological Network Sample, N = 140): α = .71
• Study 4 (Experimental Donation Study, N = 111): α = .83

Subsequent international validations, meta-analyses, and organizational studies have confirmed these values. Hertz and Krettenauer’s (2016) comprehensive meta-analysis of moral identity literature reported an average sample-weighted internal consistency reliability estimate of α = .80 for the Internalization subscale across dozens of empirical studies. Composite reliability values (ρ_c) in structural equation modeling routinely exceed the standard .70 benchmark, frequently registering between .78 and .86.

Test-Retest Stability

Aquino and Reed examined the temporal stability of the scale across a 4-to-6-week test-retest administration window, yielding a test-retest reliability coefficient of r = .72 (p < .001). Other longitudinal investigations over extended multi-month periods in academic and occupational settings have confirmed that moral identity internalization functions as a relatively stable trait-like disposition over time, while retaining sufficient sensitivity to developmental maturation, ethical interventions, and leadership priming.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of Aquino and Reed’s (2002) overall 10-item instrument was originally explored using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and subsequently confirmed through rigorous Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

In Study 1, Aquino and Reed subjected a broader pool of candidate items reflecting self-importance and public projection to principal components analysis with varimax and oblimin rotations. A distinct two-factor solution emerged based on the scree test and eigenvalue criteria (> 1.0), clearly separating into:

• Factor 1: Internalization (5 items) — Explaining approximately 31.5% of the total variance, with all five items loading heavily on this factor (factor loadings ranging from .61 to .81) and exhibiting minimal cross-loadings on the second factor (all cross-loadings < .20).
• Factor 2: Symbolization (5 items) — Explaining approximately 22.3% of the total variance, capturing public signaling actions.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To establish structural stability, Aquino and Reed (2002, Study 2) tested alternative competing structural models using maximum likelihood CFA on an independent sample (N = 347):

• One-Factor Model: A baseline model in which all 10 items loaded onto a single undifferentiated “Moral Identity” latent factor yielded poor fit: χ²(35) = 286.72, p < .001, GFI = .83, CFI = .69, RMSEA = .144.
• Two-Factor Oblique Model (Hypothesized): Modeling Internalization and Symbolization as distinct, correlated latent factors yielded an excellent fit to the empirical data: χ²(34) = 71.36, p < .001, GFI = .96, CFI = .95, RMSEA = .056. The Δχ² test between the one-factor and two-factor models was highly significant (Δχ²(1) = 215.36, p < .001), demonstrating structural multidimensionality.

Within the measurement model for the Internalization factor, standardized factor loadings (λ) for the five indicators were consistently strong, typically ranging from .58 to .82:

• Item 1 (“It would make me feel good…”): λ ≈ .68
• Item 2 (“Being someone who has these characteristics…”): λ ≈ .82
• Item 3 (“A big part of my emotional well-being…”): λ ≈ .72
• Item 4 (“I would be ashamed…”): λ ≈ .60
• Item 5 (“Having these characteristics is not really important…”): λ ≈ .65

Measurement invariance testing (configural, metric, and scalar invariance) has been repeatedly confirmed across biological sexes, adolescent versus adult cohorts, and diverse national samples (e.g., North American, European, and East Asian populations).

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Standardized self-report psychometric rating scale; social-cognitive attitudinal inventory.
• Construct Measured: Internalization dimension of Moral Identity (the self-importance of moral traits to personal identity and self-concept).
• Item Count: 5 items (representing the Internalization subscale of the 10-item Aquino & Reed instrument).
• Response Format: 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree) or 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree).
• Administration Stimulus: Prior to reading the items, respondents are presented with a standardized list of nine moral traits (caring, compassionate, fair, friendly, generous, helpful, hardworking, honest, kind) and asked to visualize the kind of person who has these characteristics.
• Scoring Procedures:
  • In versions containing reverse-worded statements, negative items must be reverse-coded prior to index calculation (e.g., on a 5-point scale: 1 → 5, 2 → 4, 3 → 3, 4 → 2, 5 → 1; on a 7-point scale: 1 → 7, 2 → 6, etc.).
  • An overall Internalization index is calculated by summing or computing the arithmetic mean across all 5 items.
  • Higher scores indicate a higher degree of moral identity internalization (greater centrality of moral traits within the core self-concept).

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Publication Year: 2002.
• Original Publication Venue: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 83, No. 6, pp. 1423–1440.
• Copyright & Ownership: Copyright © 2002 by the American Psychological Association (APA) and the authors (Karl Aquino and Americus Reed II).
• Usage Permissions and Fees: The scale items are published in the open scientific literature and are widely permitted for non-commercial academic, clinical, and scholarly research purposes without payment of licensing fees, provided proper academic attribution is given. Commercial applications, corporate consulting assessments, or inclusion within fee-charging digital assessment systems may require formal permission through the APA Rights & Permissions clearance portal.

12. References

Below is a selection of foundational peer-reviewed literature documenting the conceptual development, validation, and empirical application of the Moral Identity (Internalization) scale:

• Aquino, K., & Reed, A., II. (2002). The self-importance of moral identity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6), 1423–1440. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1423
• Aquino, K., Freeman, D., Reed, A., II, Lim, V. K., & Felps, W. (2009). Testing a social-cognitive model of moral behavior: The interactive influence of situations and moral identity centrality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 123–141. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015406
• Bandura, A. (1991). Social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. In W. M. Kurtines & J. L. Gewirtz (Eds.), Handbook of moral behavior and development (Vol. 1, pp. 45–103). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Blasi, A. (1983). Moral cognition and moral action: A theoretical perspective. Developmental Review, 3(2), 178–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/0273-2297(83)90029-1
• Blasi, A. (1984). Moral identity: Its role in moral functioning. In G. G. Noam & T. E. Wren (Eds.), Morality, moral behavior, and moral development (pp. 128–139). MIT Press.
• Detert, J. R., Treviño, L. K., & Sweitzer, V. L. (2008). Moral disengagement in ethical decision making: A study of antecedents and outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), 374–391. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.2.374
• Hertz, S. G., & Krettenauer, T. (2016). Does moral identity effectively predict moral behavior? A meta-analysis. Review of General Psychology, 20(2), 129–140. https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000062
• Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(2), 63–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.35.2.63
• Reed, A., II, & Aquino, K. (2003). Moral identity and the expanding circle of moral regard toward out-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(6), 1270–1286. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.6.1270
• Skarlicki, D. P., van Jaarsveld, D. D., & Walker, D. D. (2008). Getting even for customer mistreatment: The role of moral identity in the relationship between customer interpersonal injustice and employee sabotage. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(6), 1335–1347. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012704

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)