RESUMO
This review covers theory and research on the psychological characteristics and consequences of attitudes that are experienced as moral convictions, that is, attitudes that people perceive as grounded in a fundamental distinction between right and wrong. Morally convicted attitudes represent something psychologically distinct from other constructs (e.g., strong but nonmoral attitudes or religious beliefs), are perceived as universally and objectively true, and are comparatively immune to authority or peer influence. Variance in moral conviction also predicts important social and political consequences. Stronger moral conviction about a given attitude object, for example, is associated with greater intolerance of attitude dissimilarity, resistance to procedural solutions for conflict about that issue, and increased political engagement and volunteerism in that attitude domain. Finally, we review recent research that explores the processes that lead to attitude moralization; we integrate these efforts and conclude with a new domain theory of attitude moralization.
Assuntos
Princípios Morais , Atitude , Processos Grupais , HumanosRESUMO
Social psychology is not a very politically diverse area of inquiry, something that could negatively affect the objectivity of social psychological theory and research, as Duarte et al. argue in the target article. This commentary offers a number of checks to help researchers uncover possible biases and identify when they are engaging in hypothesis confirmation and advocacy instead of hypothesis testing.
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Lista de Checagem , Psicologia Social , Humanos , Política , Teoria Psicológica , Psicologia , Projetos de PesquisaRESUMO
Hibbing et al. argue that the liberal-conservative continuum is (a) universal and (b) grounded in psychological differences in sensitivity to negative stimuli. Our commentary argues that both claims overlook the importance of context. We review evidence that the liberal-conservative continuum is far from universal and that ideological differences are contextually flexible rather than fixed.
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Atitude , Individualidade , Modelos Psicológicos , Personalidade/fisiologia , Política , HumanosRESUMO
Moral foundations theory (MFT) argues that liberals and conservatives form different moral positions because liberals emphasize the values of harm and fairness, whereas conservatives emphasize the values of group loyalty, authority, and purity. In five studies (total N = 3,327), we investigated whether political orientation moderated the relationship between the perceived relevance of each moral foundation and moral conviction (i.e., the extent to which one perceives their attitude as based on morality) across four issues. Political differences in this relationship emerged but were inconsistent across issues and did not always align with the predictions of MFT or several other theoretical explanations. Our findings together with previous research indicate that MFT may do a better job predicting attitude position than it does predicting whether people perceive that their attitudes are moral convictions, and that some foundations may reflect conventional rather than moral values (e.g., authority).
RESUMO
We contacted a random sample of social/personality psychologists in the United States and asked for copies of their graduate syllabi. We coded more than 3,400 papers referenced on these syllabi for gender of authors as well as other characteristics. Less than 30% of the papers referenced on these syllabi were written by female first authors, with no evidence of a trend toward greater inclusion of papers published by female first authors since the 1980s. The difference in inclusion rates of female first-authored papers could not be explained by a preference for including classic over contemporary papers in syllabi (there was evidence of a recency bias instead) or the relative availability of female first-authored papers in the published literature. Implications are discussed.
Assuntos
Personalidade , Psicologia Social , Feminino , Humanos , Fatores Sexuais , Estados Unidos , RedaçãoRESUMO
Americans on the political left and right are engaged in a Culture War with one another, one that is often characterized by mutual fear, antipathy, and avoidance. Are there safe havens from the socially straining effects of this Culture War, times and places where Americans of different political stripes gather and put aside their political differences? Previous research (Chen & Rohla, 2018) implied that there might not be insofar as even intimate family gatherings seem to be subject to Culture War tensions. They found that politically diverse Thanksgiving Dinners were 35-70 minutes shorter than politically uniform ones, representing a 14-27% reduction in overall dinner duration. Noting analytical and methodological limitations in the prior analysis, we conducted two pre-registered studies to test whether diverse dinners are shorter than uniform ones and to attempt to conceptually replicate and extend this prior analysis. Individual analyses yielded mixed results, with null models generally supported but effect estimates generally overlapping with those of Chen and Rohla (2018). A mega-analysis found that, when controlling for various covariates, politically diverse dinners were 24 minutes shorter than politically uniform ones, 95% confidence interval = [9, 39], representing a 6% decrease in the total dinner time [2%-10%]. This final result successfully replicates Chen and Rohla (2018) both in terms of effect overlap and direct-and-significance criteria while nonetheless favoring the conclusion that politics is not straining family ties as much as previously thought.
Assuntos
Comportamento Alimentar/fisiologia , Política , Adulto , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Refeições , Fatores de Tempo , Estados UnidosRESUMO
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behaviour with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping. In each section, we note the nature and quality of prior research, including uncertainty and unsettled issues. We identify several insights for effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight important gaps researchers should move quickly to fill in the coming weeks and months.
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Infecções por Coronavirus/prevenção & controle , Coronavirus , Conhecimentos, Atitudes e Prática em Saúde , Atividades Humanas , Pandemias/prevenção & controle , Pneumonia Viral/prevenção & controle , Quarentena , Adaptação Psicológica , Betacoronavirus , COVID-19 , Controle de Doenças Transmissíveis , Infecções por Coronavirus/diagnóstico , Infecções por Coronavirus/epidemiologia , Infecções por Coronavirus/transmissão , Tomada de Decisões , Monitoramento Epidemiológico , Saúde Global , Humanos , Liderança , Pneumonia Viral/epidemiologia , Pneumonia Viral/transmissão , Saúde Pública , SARS-CoV-2 , Mídias Sociais , Estresse PsicológicoRESUMO
Theory and research point to different ways moral conviction and religiosity connect to trust in political authorities to decide controversial issues of the day. Specifically, we predicted that stronger moral convictions would be associated with greater distrust in authorities such as the U.S. Supreme Court making the "right" decisions regarding controversial issues. Conversely, we predicted that stronger religiosity would be associated with greater trust in authorities. We tested these hypotheses using a survey of a nationally representative sample of Americans (N = 727) that assessed the degree to which people trusted the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the legal status of physician-assisted suicide. Results indicated that greater religiosity was associated with greater trust in the U.S. Supreme Court to decide this issue, and that stronger moral convictions about physician-assisted suicide were associated with greater distrust in the U.S. Supreme Court to decide this issue. Also, the processes underlying religious trust and distrust based on moral convictions were more quick and visceral than slow and carefully considered.
Assuntos
Autoritarismo , Obrigações Morais , Política , Religião e Psicologia , Confiança , Adulto , Idoso , Idoso de 80 Anos ou mais , Coleta de Dados , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Suicídio Assistido/legislação & jurisprudência , Suicídio Assistido/psicologia , Decisões da Suprema Corte , Estados Unidos , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Various versions of legitimacy theory predict that a duty and obligation to obey legitimate authorities generally trumps people's personal moral and religious values. However, most research has assumed rather than measured the degree to which people have a moral or religious stake in the situations studied. This study tested compliance with and reactions to legitimate authorities in the context of a natural experiment that tracked public opinion before and after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case that challenged states' rights to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Results indicated that citizens' degree of moral conviction about the issue of physician-assisted suicide predicted post-ruling perceptions of outcome fairness, decision acceptance, and changes in perceptions of the Court's legitimacy from pre- to post-ruling. Other results revealed that the effects of religious conviction independently predicted outcome fairness and decision acceptance but not perceptions of post-ruling legitimacy.
Assuntos
Princípios Morais , Opinião Pública , Religião e Psicologia , Direito a Morrer/legislação & jurisprudência , Suicídio Assistido/psicologia , Adulto , Idoso , Idoso de 80 Anos ou mais , Feminino , Humanos , Estudos Longitudinais , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Obrigações Morais , Oregon , Percepção/fisiologia , Suicídio Assistido/legislação & jurisprudência , Adulto JovemRESUMO
M. W. Montagu asserted that, "civility costs nothing and buys everything." In the realm of social judgment, the notion that people generally evaluate civil people more favorably than uncivil people may be unsurprising. However, the Montagu Principle may not apply in a hyper-partisan political environment in which politicians "throw red meat to their base" by unleashing uncivil, personal attacks against their opponents, satisfying the aggressive desires of their most hyper-partisan supporters, and thus potentially redoubling their approval among them. We conducted 2 longitudinal/observational studies of U.S. Congress and President Trump, and 4 experiments (N = 4,837) involving real exchanges between President Trump and his adversaries and a speech by a fictitious politician. Civility helped or did not affect-but never harmed-the reputation of the speaker, supporting the Montagu Principle. Even self-identified "diehard supporters" of President Trump, for example, evaluated the president more favorably after he responded with civility to a personal attack. Uncivil remarks uniquely diminished the speaker's reputation, and had little impact on the reputation of the targets of the attack, the perceived winner of the verbal exchange, the reputation of the speaker's party, or the sense that the country is moving in the right direction. Incivility made the speaker seem less warm and did less to affect perceptions of dominance or honesty. This warmth deficit explained the reputational costs of incivility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
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Incivilidade , Julgamento , Política , Fala , Adolescente , Adulto , Idoso , Idoso de 80 Anos ou mais , Agressão , Feminino , Humanos , Relações Interpessoais , Estudos Longitudinais , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Estados Unidos , Adulto JovemRESUMO
People often assume that moral and religious convictions are functionally the same thing. But are they? We report on 19 studies (N = 12,284) that tested whether people's perceptions that their attitudes are reflections of their moral and religious convictions across 30 different issues were functionally the same (the equivalence hypothesis) or different constructs (the distinct constructs hypothesis), and whether the relationship between these constructs was conditional on political orientation (the political asymmetry hypothesis). Seven of these studies (N = 5,561, and 22 issues) also had data that allowed us to test whether moral and religious conviction are only closely related for those who are more rather than less religious (the secularization hypothesis), and a narrower form of the political asymmetry and secularization hypotheses, that is, that people's moral and religious convictions may be tightly connected constructs only for religious conservatives. Meta-analytic tests of each of these hypotheses yielded weak support for the secularization hypothesis, no support for the equivalence or political asymmetry hypotheses, and the strongest support for the distinct constructs hypothesis.
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Cultura , Princípios Morais , Religião , Humanos , Modelos Teóricos , PolíticaRESUMO
The present research investigated event-related, contextual, demographic, and dispositional predictors of the desire to punish perpetrators of immoral deeds in daily life, as well as connections among the desire to punish, moral emotions, and momentary well-being. The desire to punish was reliably predicted by linear gradients of social closeness to both the perpetrator (negative relationship) and the victim (positive relationship). Older rather than younger adults, conservatives rather than people with other political orientations, and individuals high rather than low in moral identity desired to punish perpetrators more harshly. The desire to punish was related to state anger, disgust, and embarrassment, and these were linked to lower momentary well-being. However, the negative effect of these emotions on well-being was partially compensated by a positive indirect pathway via heightened feelings of moral self-worth. Implications of the present field data for moral punishment research and the connection between morality and well-being are discussed.
Assuntos
Ira , Emoções , Princípios Morais , Punição , Adulto , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Comportamento SocialRESUMO
The current research tested whether exposure to disgusting images increases moral conviction and whether this happens in the presence of incidental disgust cues versus disgust cues relevant to the target of moralization. Across two studies, we exposed participants to one of the four sets of disgusting versus control images to test the moralization of abortion attitudes: pictures of aborted fetuses, animal abuse, non-harm related disgusting images, harm related disgusting images, or neutral pictures, at either sub- or supraliminal levels of awareness. Moral conviction about abortion increased (compared with control) only for participants exposed to abortion-related images at speeds slow enough to allow conscious awareness. Study 2 replicated this finding, and found that the relationship between attitudinally relevant disgust and moral conviction was mediated by disgust, and not anger or harm appraisals. Findings are discussed in terms of their relevance for intuitionist theories of morality and moral theories that emphasize harm.
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Atitude , Emoções , Princípios Morais , Ira , Sinais (Psicologia) , Humanos , Julgamento , Modelos PsicológicosRESUMO
People are more likely to become politically engaged (e.g., vote, engage in activism) when issues are associated with strong moral convictions. The goal of this research was to understand the underlying motivations that lead to this well-replicated effect. Specifically, to what extent is moralized political engagement motivated by proscriptive concerns (e.g., perceived harms, anticipated regret), prescriptive concerns (e.g., perceived benefits, anticipated pride), or some combination of these processes? And are the motivational pathways between moral conviction and political engagement the same or different for liberals and conservatives? Two studies (combined N = 2,069) found that regardless of political orientation, the association between moral conviction and political engagement was mediated by the perceived benefits of preferred but not the perceived harms of non-preferred policy outcomes, and by both anticipated pride and regret, findings that replicated in two contexts: legalizing same-sex marriage and allowing concealed weapons on college campuses.
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Princípios Morais , Motivação , Política , Atitude , Emoções , Feminino , Humanos , MasculinoRESUMO
The scientific quality of social and personality psychology has been debated at great length in recent years. Despite research on the prevalence of Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) and the replicability of particular findings, the impact of the current discussion on research practices is unknown. The current studies examine whether and how practices have changed, if at all, over the last 10 years. In Study 1, we surveyed 1,166 social and personality psychologists about how the current debate has affected their perceptions of their own and the field's research practices. In Study 2, we coded the research practices and critical test statistics from social and personality psychology articles published in 2003-2004 and 2013-2014. Together, these studies suggest that (a) perceptions of the current state of the field are more pessimistic than optimistic; (b) the discussion has increased researchers' intentions to avoid QRPs and adopt proposed best practices, (c) the estimated replicability of research published in 2003-2004 may not be as bad as many feared, and (d) research published in 2013-2014 shows some improvement over research published in 2003-2004, a result that suggests the field is evolving in a positive direction. (PsycINFO Database Record
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Atitude do Pessoal de Saúde , Personalidade , Psicologia/normas , Pesquisa/normas , Ética em Pesquisa , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Psicologia Social/normas , Projetos de Pesquisa , Inquéritos e QuestionáriosRESUMO
When people have strong moral convictions about outcomes, their judgments of both outcome and procedural fairness become driven more by whether outcomes support or oppose their moral mandates than by whether procedures are proper or improper (the moral mandate effect). Two studies tested 3 explanations for the moral mandate effect. In particular, people with moral mandates may (a) have a greater motivation to seek out procedural flaws when outcomes fail to support their moral point of view (the motivated reasoning hypothesis), (b) be influenced by in-group distributive biases as a result of identifying with parties that share rather than oppose their moral point of view (the group differentiation hypothesis), or (c) react with anger when outcomes are inconsistent with their moral point of view, which, in turn, colors perceptions of both outcomes and procedures (the anger hypothesis). Results support the anger hypothesis.
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Ira , Conflito Psicológico , Julgamento , Princípios Morais , Justiça Social , Aborto Induzido , Adolescente , Adulto , Análise de Variância , Chicago , Crime/legislação & jurisprudência , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Motivação , Gravidez , Teoria Psicológica , Psicologia Social , Identificação SocialRESUMO
In the present article we demonstrate stable individual differences in the extent to which a reliance on logic and evidence in the formation and evaluation of beliefs is perceived as a moral virtue, and a reliance on less rational processes is perceived as a vice. We refer to this individual difference variable as moralized rationality. Eight studies are reported in which an instrument to measure individual differences in moralized rationality is validated. Results show that the Moralized Rationality Scale (MRS) is internally consistent, and captures something distinct from the personal importance people attach to being rational (Studies 1-3). Furthermore, the MRS has high test-retest reliability (Study 4), is conceptually distinct from frequently used measures of individual differences in moral values, and it is negatively related to common beliefs that are not supported by scientific evidence (Study 5). We further demonstrate that the MRS predicts morally laden reactions, such as a desire for punishment, of people who rely on irrational (vs. rational) ways of forming and evaluating beliefs (Studies 6 and 7). Finally, we show that the MRS uniquely predicts motivation to contribute to a charity that works to prevent the spread of irrational beliefs (Study 8). We conclude that (1) there are stable individual differences in the extent to which people moralize a reliance on rationality in the formation and evaluation of beliefs, (2) that these individual differences do not reduce to the personal importance attached to rationality, and (3) that individual differences in moralized rationality have important motivational and interpersonal consequences.
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Cultura , Lógica , Princípios Morais , Adulto , Emoções , Análise Fatorial , Feminino , Humanos , Julgamento , Masculino , Distância Psicológica , Reprodutibilidade dos TestesRESUMO
Attitudes held with strong moral conviction (moral mandates) were predicted to have different interpersonal consequences than strong but nonmoral attitudes. After controlling for indices of attitude strength, the authors explored the unique effect of moral conviction on the degree that people preferred greater social (Studies 1 and 2) and physical (Study 3) distance from attitudinally dissimilar others and the effects of moral conviction on group interaction and decision making in attitudinally homogeneous versus heterogeneous groups (Study 4). Results supported the moral mandate hypothesis: Stronger moral conviction led to (a) greater preferred social and physical distance from attitudinally dissimilar others, (b) intolerance of attitudinally dissimilar others in both intimate (e.g., friend) and distant relationships (e.g., owner of a store one frequents), (c) lower levels of good will and cooperativeness in attitudinally heterogeneous groups, and (d) a greater inability to generate procedural solutions to resolve disagreements.
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Atitude , Princípios Morais , Aborto Induzido , Adolescente , Adulto , Afeto , Idoso , Idoso de 80 Anos ou mais , Pena de Morte , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Distância Psicológica , Inquéritos e QuestionáriosRESUMO
Voelkle challenges our conclusions regarding the relationship between morality and momentary happiness/sense of purpose based on methodological concerns. We show that our main conclusions are not affected by this methodological critique and clarify that the discrepancies between our and Voelkle's effect size estimates can be reconciled by the realization that two different (but compatible) research questions are being asked.