Predicting Moral Reasoning With Spiritual Well-being and Personality: The Mediating Role of Empathy in Physicians and Nurses

The COVID-19 pandemic has created many problems. This paper aims to predict moral reasoning through spiritual health and personality via the mediating role of empathy in physicians and nurses.

The current research is a cross-sectional analysis conducted on 320 physicians and nurses working in hospitals’ COVID-19 wards. We used the available sampling method, and the research tools included the brief form of personality inventory for The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (Krueger et al. 2012), the spiritual well-being scale (Dehshiri 2009), the defining issue test-2 (Rest et al. 1986), and the interpersonal reactivity index (Davis 1983). 

The results of the current investigation indicated that spiritual well-being has a positive and significant effect on empathy (P<0.0001, β=0.236). Empathy has a positive and significant correlation with moral reasoning (P=0.032, β=0.117). And finally, the moral reasoning variable in the current model was calculated at 0.019.

The current study shows that empathy can predict moral reasoning. Meanwhile, understanding the feelings of others can be more useful in judgment and decision-making. In addition, spiritual health can play an important role in empathy.