Luppo Kuillman

Moral reasoning explained by personality traits 73 3 Strengths and limitations Although this study’s findings are novel and contribute to understanding the influence of personality structures and mechanisms of moral disengagement on the level of principled moral reasoning, some methodological weaknesses should be addressed. First, the study data were derived from a cross-sectional sample, which confines the researchers to drawing causal conclusions. Second, one could dispute the appropriateness of performing path analyses on data retrieved from cross-sectional collected self-report measures. This is especially true because the collected data may be subject to some extent of common method bias. However, prior to performing the path analysis, we used Harman’s single-factor test to confirm that a single factor accounted for only 10.1% and thus less than the majority (i.e., 50%) of the variance in our data (Podsakoff & Organ 1986). This indicates that, although there was likely some shared common method variance, it should have little to no effect on the conclusions drawn. Finally, our findings may not be generalizable to populations outside the NP and PA workforces. Nevertheless, their sociodemographic characteristics are comparable to those of the national workforces at large, which makes the results generalizable to the population of NPs and PAs. In addition, this study involved NPs and PAs from the Netherlands, which may imply that the model should be tested in other countries that employ these types of healthcare professionals. CONCLUSION The personality meta-trait Stability is an indicator of the level of moral reasoning among Dutch NPs and PAs. This is explained by a lower propensity to morally disengage among highly stable people. In contrast, the meta-trait Plasticity also exerted an indirect effect on moral reasoning through moral disengagement, but it was not a direct indicator of moral reasoning.