关键词: 善良人格, 基本心理需要, 道德需要, 交叉滞后, 追踪研究

Abstract: Basic Psychological Needs, as a key concept in the field of personality and social psychology, has received lot of attention from scholars since it was proposed. Self-determination theory indicated people have needs to feel autonomous, competent, and related (ACR). However, in recent years, researchers have proposed a new concept of basic psychological needs - moral need, which refers to subjective feelings and experiences of one is moral. How do personality and moral needs interact with each other? Good personality provides an approach for answering the question. The concept of good personality was proposed in Chinese culture, it conducts an individuals’ inherent positive moral character, and reflects the light side of human nature. The current research was a longitudinal study examining the concurrent and prospective relation of good personality with moral need satisfaction. The present study was part of a more extensive project that was conducted to explore individuals’ personalities and values. Data were obtained through an online questionnaire survey platform called Creator of Data and Model and refer to three measurement waves, which were conducted in February, March, and July 2020. Demographic information and other variables were collected on the first wave (T1). Participants completed both the good personality and moral need satisfaction measures at T2 and T3. Each participant was presented with the informed consent form and debriefing statement and received RMB 10 as a reward for each survey wave completed. A total of 1,187 (681 males, Mage = 28.06, SD = 7.02) participants’ data were included in the analysis, and 968 participants were recruited in T3 (81.55% of T2 sample). Attrition analyses were conducted to examine whether there were systematic differences between the stayers and non-stayers. Results found significant education, age, and subjective social class. In contrast, there were no differences in gender, monthly income, baseline good personality, and moral need satisfaction. The full information maximum likelihood (FIML) estimation approach was used in this study. The results showed that rank-order stability was moderate for good personality (r = .69, p < .001) and moral need satisfaction (r = .57, p < .001). Good personality was significantly positively correlated with moral need satisfaction at the current period and the next period (ps < .001). Longitudinal cross-lagged analyses were conducted to examine the bidirectional relationships between good personality and moral need satisfaction in the structural model. The results indicated that all cross-lagged pathways were significant. The association between good personality and moral need satisfaction was bidirectional, after adjusting for respective autoregressive effects, autonomy, relatedness, competence need satisfactions and demographic influences. Specifically, current good personality levels were positively predicted future moral need satisfaction levels at adjacent time points, and vice versa (βT2good personality→T3moral need satisfaction = .24, SE = .03，p < .001; βT2moral need satisfaction→T3good personality = .10，SE = .03，p = .003). In sum, the results suggested good personality and moral need satisfaction were mutually reinforcing, a higher level of good personality positively predicted increased moral need satisfaction, and a higher level of moral need satisfaction was associated with increased good personality. This study provided evidence with regard to morality as a basic psychological need in the Chinese cultural background, which promoted the generalization of the concept of moral need and expanded theories related to basic psychological need satisfaction. In addition, the study found the role of moral need satisfaction in promoting good personality, which also provided the theoretical basis for the development of good personality and the construction of civic morality.

Key words: good personality, basic psychological needs, moral need, cross-lagged analysis, longitudinal study