A generational study in Iranian University students' moral changes at post-COVID atmosphere

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, some psychological changes have been tracked and reported across the world. Post-COVID-19 freshman university students can be classified as generation Z. The aim of this study was to examine changes in moral and moral-related variables among Iranian Freshman University students in generation Z compared with generation Y, in the post-COVID-19 era. Variables, including prosocial behaviors, types of prosocial moral reasoning, dimensions of moral identity and religiosity, identity styles, empathy, and social desirability, were assessed among 212 freshman students at Salman Farsi University of Kazerun in 2014. However, another assessment of those variables by the same measures and methods was performed among 114 similar students in 2022. Social desirability and lie/nonsense responses were statistically controlled by multiple analysis of covariance and partial correlation methods. Among the post-COVID group, there was less total prosocial moral reasoning, hedonistic, approval-oriented and internalized prosocial moral reasoning, normative identity, symbolization of moral identity, public prosocial behavior, and total, ideological and experimental religiosity; additionally, there was more needs-oriented and stereotypic prosocial moral reasoning, informational identity, altruistic prosocial behaviors, consequential and ritualistic religiosity and empathy. There were different correlations among the two groups, whereas religiosity and its dimensions were positively correlated with many moral variables in the 2014 group, the correlations were negative in the 2022 group. The findings indicate that in this Iranian post-COVID-19 generation Z, sentimental aspects (e.g., empathy and altruism) of morality increased and that rational (e.g., prosocial moral reasoning) or traditional (e.g., religiosity) aspects decreased.