People Prioritize Well-Being Over Morality in the Context of Self-Improvement

Most people are interested in improving themselves, but they are not particularly interested in becoming more moral. Why don’t people want to be more moral, and why do people prioritize improving certain traits? Three preregistered studies (NStudy 1 = 252, NStudy 2a = 303, NStudy 2b = 301), show that over and above the desire to address perceived deficiencies, people particularly seek to improve the traits that they expect will help them achieve their goals and increase their happiness. More morally relevant improvements were expected to improve these outcomes to a lesser extent, and were therefore deprioritized. Finally, beliefs about consequences for various well-being outcomes more strongly predicted change goals to the extent that people explicitly valued the respective outcomes. These results show that personal well-being is a central motivation for personality change, clarify the perceived tradeoffs between well-being and morality, and highlight individual differences in motivations for personality change.