Some personality correlates of conduct in two situations of moral conflict' Shalom H. Schwartz, University of Wisconsin, Kenneth A. Feldman, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Michael E. Brown, Queens Co//ege, and Alex Heingartner, University of Michigan The scientific study of morality has usually focused on three topics the generality of moral conduct and its relation to moral knowledge ( e g , Hartshome & May, 1928), the development of moral judgment ( e g , Piaget, 1932, KoUberg, 1963a, 1963b, 1964, 1969), the infiuence of parental practices and other social experi- ences (e.g, Freud, 1933, Miller & Swanson, i960, Aronfreed, 1961, Bandura & Walters, 1963, Sears, Rau, & Alpert, 1965) The present paper is based on an mvestigation of mterrelationships among variables from all three areas Here we examme relation- ships between conduct m two distmct situations of moral con- flict—one mvolvmg cheatmg, the other helpfulness—and a set of personahty vanables thought to affect decision-makmg m these situations In our conception, a person subjectively faces a moral decision when he can knowmgly affect the welfare of others through his own choices This decision arouses moral confiict if he is moti- vated to act m two or more ways that differ m the degree to which their consequences promote or harm another's welfare Altemately, we consider moral confiict to occur whenever a person's mclmation to act might lead to the knowmg violation of fundamental norms of his reference groups Two Types of Personality Characteristics It IS useful to distmguish two types of personality character- istics that come mto play when people face moral decisions 1 This research was si^ported m part by funds from NIH predoctoral fellow- ship (5-Fi-MH-i5,7Oi) to one of the authors (Feldman) We wish to thank Drs Eugene Bumstem, Theodore M Newcranb, and Gerald Gurm for their help and encouragement