The importance of feeling above-average morally versus agentically

Which is more important for a positive self concept: feeling moral or feeling agentic? Research on self-superiority (better-than-average) beliefs, “self-superiority” for short, offers inconsistent evidence. Seemingly supporting the “morality hypothesis,” mean self-superiority is greater for morality. Seemingly supporting the “agency hypothesis,” individual differences in self-esteem correlate more strongly with self-superiority on agency. In three studies, we replicate past results and offer an explanation reconciling these inconsistent previous results. The morality hypothesis predicted that participants would find morality traits more personally important; greater moral self-superiority would be mediated by that greater importance; and the stronger correlation of agentic self-superiority with self-esteem would be moderated by the lower personal importance of agency. In contrast, the agency hypothesis predicted that participants would find morality traits more socially important and agency traits more personally important; that greater moral self-superiority would be mediated by the greater social importance of morality, and that the stronger correlation of agentic self-superiority with self-esteem would be moderated by the greater personal importance of agency. Participants generally showed moral self-superiority, but only those with high self-esteem showed agentic self-superiority (Studies 1–3). Participants rated morality traits as more socially important (Studies 1–2) and more extremely valenced (Study 3) but also more personally important than agency traits (Studies 1–3). Higher personal importance was, just like social importance and extremity of valence, associated with greater mean self-superiority but not with stronger correlations of self-superiority with self-esteem (Studies 1–3). These findings are more consistent with the morality hypothesis than with the agency hypothesis.