Perceived self-society moral discrepancies predict depression but not anxiety Müjde Peker, Nurdan Gündog ˘ du and Robert W. Booth Department of Psychology, Is ¸ ık University, Istanbul, Turkey Discrepancies between one’s own beliefs, standards and practices and the standards expected by others are associated with increased vulnerability to depression and anxiety. Perhaps the most important personal standard is morality, one’s standard of acceptable behaviour.We therefore reason that perceived discrepancies between one’s own moral standards and those of society predict anxious and depressed moods. We tested this hypothesis, for the first time, in a sample of 99 female Turkish students. Moral discrepancies were assessed using an adapted moral foundations scale: participants were asked how much payment they would require to perform a series of potentially immoral acts, and how much payment they thought the average person in society would require. Participants also completed standard questionnaire measures of depression and trait anxiety. Results show that perceived self-society moral discrepancies were significantly related to depression scores, but not to anxiety scores. Furthermore, only discrepancies related to the moral dimensions of respect for ingroups and avoiding harm were related to depression. We argue that perceiving a discrepancy between one’s own standards of behaviour and those of society can increase vulnerability to depression, much as other kinds of self-other discrepancies can; however, the specific moral standards which predict depression may vary with culture and the characteristics of the sample. Key words: anxiety, depression, moral discrepancies, morality, psychopathology, self-discrepancies. Individuals are guided by moral beliefs in their everyday lives: some give more importance to protecting animals, while others are more concerned with respecting the elderly. However, what happens when our moral concerns do not match those of society? The present study investi- gates the psychological consequences of perceiving a dis- crepancy between one’s own moral beliefs and those of the society in which one lives. To our knowledge, this issue has not been investigated before. Much research suggests that discrepancies of attitude or practice are associated with psychopathology. For example, Higgins (1987) posited two types of self–other discrepancy: a discrepancy between one’s actual self and the person others would ideally like one to be (actual : ideal), and a discrepancy between one’s actual self and the minimum standard others expect one to attain (actual : ought). Higgins suggested these two discrepancies led to depres- sion and anxiety respectively (e.g. Higgins, Bond, Klein & Strauman, 1986; Strauman, 1989). Although this precise hypothesis has not always been supported (e.g. Boldero & Francis, 1999; Weilage & Hope, 1999), there is a reliable association between self-discrepancies and anxiety and depression. One important personal standard is morality, so we reason that a perceived discrepancy between one’s own standards of behaviour and those of society might predict vulnerability to depression and/or anxiety in much the same way. According to Graham, Haidt and Nosek (2009), there are five foundations of morality, namely harm/care, fairness/ reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/ sanctity. At a societal level, the clashes between moral concerns are mainly caused by different political stand- points. Graham et al. showed that political liberals value care and fairness more than do conservatives, while con- servatives value their ingroup, authority and purity more than do liberals. We suggest that when an individual per- ceives a discrepancy between the importance they attribute to a particular moral foundation compared to the impor- tance society attributes to that foundation, this will be asso- ciated with distress. An analogy can be drawn with findings on acculturation of immigrant communities: individuals who take their iden- tity, culture and morality from one nation but live in another nation inevitably experience self–other discrepancies regarding their beliefs, practices and moral concerns, and integrating bicultural identities is crucial for immigrants’ adjustment and success (Chen, 2014). In the United States, Hispanic youth are known to be at a higher risk for depres- sion than are the majority of European American youth (e.g. Potochnick & Perreira, 2010). The acculturation Correspondence: Müjde Peker, Department of Psychology, Is ¸ık University, S ¸ile 34980, I ˙ stanbul, Turkey. Email: mujde.peker@ gmail.com Received 7 March 2014; revision 21 December 2014; accepted 21 December 2014. Asian Journal of Social Psychology © 2015 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd, Asian Association of Social Psychology and Beijing Normal University Asian Journal of Social Psychology (2015) DOI: 10.1111/ajsp.12100