School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia.
Anxiety Stress Coping. 2024 Nov;37(6):711-720. doi: 10.1080/10615806.2024.2387607. Epub 2024 Aug 8.
Moral injury is a potentially debilitating outcome of exposure to events involving transgressions against an individual's moral code. It is often observed in the context of PTSD; however, treatments that do not differentiate the two are often ineffective for moral injury, suggesting different mechanisms contribute to the conditions. The most widely accepted model of moral injury proposes an important role for self-discrepancy processes in generating and maintaining event-related distress, but this has yet to be examined.
This study recruited 172 adults online who had been exposed to a potentially morally injurious event in the previous 5 years. Participants completed measures of event-related distress, PTSD, depression, and anxiety, as well as a self-discrepancy task involving subjective representations of their ideal, ought, and feared selves.
Multiple regression analyses found a small but significant relationship between self-discrepancy and event-related distress, with higher levels of ought self-discrepancy independently predicting higher event-related distress scores.
This study provides the first empirical evidence of the relationship between self-discrepancy and moral injury. We identified the ought self as a domain of self-discrepancy salient to moral injury, further differentiating moral injury from PTSD.
道德伤害是接触违反个人道德准则的事件的潜在致残后果。它通常在 PTSD 的背景下观察到；然而，不分青红皂白地治疗这两种情况的治疗方法往往对道德伤害无效，这表明不同的机制对这些情况有不同的影响。最广泛接受的道德伤害模型提出了自我差异过程在产生和维持与事件相关的痛苦方面的重要作用，但这尚未得到检验。
本研究在线招募了 172 名在过去 5 年内接触过潜在道德伤害事件的成年人。参与者完成了与事件相关的痛苦、创伤后应激障碍、抑郁和焦虑相关的测量，以及一项自我差异任务，涉及他们理想、应该和恐惧自我的主观表现。
多元回归分析发现，自我差异与事件相关的痛苦之间存在微小但显著的关系，较高的应该自我差异独立预测较高的事件相关痛苦评分。
本研究首次提供了自我差异与道德伤害之间关系的实证证据。我们确定了应该自我是与道德伤害相关的自我差异的一个领域，进一步区分了道德伤害和创伤后应激障碍。
