The Mediating Role of Perception of Social Interaction in the Relationship between Moral Behavior and Identity Dimensions among Students

Students' moral behaviors can be related to identity components and their perception of social interactions. This research aimed to investigate the mediating role of perception of social interaction in the relationship between moral behavior and identity dimensions among students.

The research method was descriptive-correlation and the statistical population included all senior high-school students of the second period in Hamedan city in the academic year 2021-2022. Two hundred and fifty students were selected by a multi-stage cluster sampling method. The data collection tools were Moral Behavior, Types of Identity, and Perception of Social Interaction questionnaires. Data analysis was done with the Structural Equation Modeling method by Lisrel software.

The findings indicated that the proposed model has a good fit with the experimental data (x2/df = 1.86, GFI = 0.92, NFI = 0.96, CFI = 0.95, and 0.059 = RMSEA). The results of the Structural Equation Modeling indicate that the perception of social interaction has a significant mediating role in the relationship between moral behavior and identity dimensions. The results of the Sobel test also indicated that the perception of positive interaction (P < 0.01, Z = 4.55) and the perception of negative interaction (P < 0.01, Z = 8.89) have a significant mediating role in the relationship between moral behavior and identity dimensions.

Based on the findings of this research, it can be said that the moral behavior among students is related to the type of identity they have formed; and in this regard, the students' perception of their interactive patterns is also effective.