Moral Conviction & Moral Mandates: Recent Projects

Scholars often assume that some issues or dilemmas globally evoke moral reactions or sentiments, whether these issues are presented as moral dilemmas (e.g., trolley problems; Heinz dilemmas) or as controversial issues of the day (e.g., the legal status of abortion). My research, however, reveals that there is considerable individual variation in the degree that people report that their position on specific issues -including such polarized topics as abortion and gay marriage--reflect their core moral convictions. It may therefore be more appropriate to conceive of morality and moral conviction as a characteristic of attitudes that is more idiographically aroused, rather than something that defines and characterizes certain issues, choices, or situations. Consistent with the notion that moral conviction is an important and heretofore neglected characteristic of attitudes, our research finds that variance in moral convictions associated with various issues of the day have important social and political implications and that moral convictions represent something psychologically distinct from otherwise strong attitudes. Specifically, our research indicates that issue-specific moral convictions predict (a) higher levels of political engagement (e.g., voting, and voting intentions), (b) greater preferred social and physical distance from attitudinally dissimilar others, (c) lower levels of good will and cooperativeness in attitudinally heterogeneous groups, (d) greater inability to generate procedural solutions to resolve disagreements, (e) greater distrust of otherwise legitimate authorities to "get it right," (e) rejection of non-preferred decisions and policy outcomes, regardless of whether they are associated with exemplary fair or legitimate procedures and authorities (a reversal of the usual "fair process effect"), and (f) greater acceptance of vigilantism and violence to achieve morally convicted ends. The normative implications of these findings are both reassuring (moral conviction acts as protection against obedience to potentially malevolent authorities) and terrifying (moral convictions as associated with rejection of the rule of law, and provide a motivational foundation for violent protest and acts of terrorism). My current research is beginning to focus more on the antecedents of moral convictions, that is, exploring where moral convictions "come from," and factors that might lead to increased or decrease moralization of different issues.

Skitka, L. J., Bauman, C. W., & Lytle, B. L. (in press). The limits of legitimacy: Moral and religious convictions as a constraints on deference to authority. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

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 state's 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.

Wisneski, D. C., Lytle, B. L. & Skitka, L. J. (2009). Gut reactions: Moral conviction, religiosity, and trust in authority. Psychological Science DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02406.x,

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, and stronger religiosity would be associated with greater trust in authorities such as the U.S. Supreme Court to get controversial issues "right." 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 (PAS). Results indicated that religiosity was associated with greater trust, and moral convictions about PAS were associated with greater distrust in the U.S. Supreme Court to decide this issue. Also, the processes underlying religious trust and morally convicted distrust were both more visceral than considered.

Skitka, L. J., & Bauman, C. W. (2008). Moral conviction and political engagement. Political Psychology, 29, 29 - 54.

The 2004 presidential election led to considerable discussion about whether moral values motivated people to vote, and if so, whether it led to a conservative electoral advantage. The results of two studies-one conducted in the context of the 2000 presidential election, the other in the context of the 2004 presidential election-indicated that stronger moral convictions associated with candidates themselves and attitudes on issues of the day uniquely predicted self-reported voting behavior and intentions to vote even when controlling for a host of alternative explanations (e.g., attitude strength, strength of party identification). In addition, we found strong support for the hypothesis that moral convictions equally motivated political engagement for those on the political right and left and little support for the notion that a combination of morality and politics is something more characteristic of the political right than it is of the political left.

Mullen, E., & Skitka, L. J. (2006). Exploring the psychological underpinnings of the moral mandate effect: Motivated reasoning, identification, or affect? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 629 - 643.

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 were proper or improper (the moral mandate effect, MME). Two studies tested three explanations for the MME. Specifically, 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, that in turn colors perceptions of both outcomes and procedures (the anger hypothesis). Results supported the anger hypothesis.

Skitka, L. J., Bauman, C. W., & Sargis, E. G. (2005). Moral conviction: Another contributor to attitude strength or something more? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 895 - 917.

Attitudes held with strong moral conviction ("moral mandates") were predicted to have different interpersonal consequences than strong, but non-moral, attitudes. Four studies tested this hypothesis by exploring the unique effect of moral conviction on the degree that people preferred greater social (Studies 1 and 2) and physical distance (Study 3) from attitudinally dissimilar others after controlling for indices of attitude strength, as well as by comparing 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: Even when controlling for a host of alternative explanatory variables, stronger moral conviction led to (a) greater preferred social and physical distance from attitudinally dissimilar others, (b) more universal intolerance of attitudinally dissimilar others in both intimate (e.g., friend) and more 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.

Bauman, C. W., & Skitka, L. J. (2009). In the mind of the perceiver: Psychological implications of moral conviction. In D. Bartels, C. W. Bauman, L. J. Skitka, & D. Medin (Eds.) Moral judgment and decision making. Psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 50, pp. 341 - 364). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Moral conviction is a subjective assessment that one's attitude about a specific issue or situation is associated with one's core moral beliefs and fundamental sense of right or wrong. A growing body of research demonstrates that level of moral conviction reliably predicts changes in the way that people think, feel, and act in situations, irrespective of whether that situation fits normative definitions of morality. Therefore, it is important to measure whether and how much individuals perceive a given situation to be moral rather than assert that a situation is moral based on philosophical criteria. The current chapter compares and contrasts moral conviction and moral judgment research. Among other things, we argue that (a) moral judgment and decision making research might benefit by expanding beyond studying people's reactions to moral dilemmas (e.g., trolley problems) and consider studying issues that people tend to associate with morality in their everyday lives. In addition, judgment and decision making researchers tend to focus on normative models of morality to the neglect of descriptive models of the antecedents and consequences of the psychological experience of moral conviction on judgments and decisions. Although much can be learned from traditional research focusing on moral dilemmas and normative theory, much can also be learned by studying how people's moral concerns play out in shaping their decisions in their everyday lives.

Skitka, L. J., Bauman, C. W., & Lytle, B. L. (2008). Morality as a foundation of leadership and a constraint on deference to authority. In D. Forsyth & C. Hoyt (Eds.), Social psychology and leadership, (pp. 300-315). Westport, CN: Praeger Press.

Milgram's (1965; 1974) classic experiments led to the widely accepted conclusion that the perceived duty and obligation to obey legitimate authorities overwhelms people's personal moral standards. We argue that this conclusion may be premature; it is impossible to know whether people are willing to compromise their moral convictions to comply with authorities' dictates unless researchers measure or manipulate the extent that people perceive a given situation to have moral relevance. Moreover, recent research supports two basic hypotheses derived from an integrative theory of moral conviction: (a) people are more likely to reject rules, commands, and decisions when they are incompatible with personal moral convictions than their non-moral preferences (the authority independence hypothesis), and (b) moral decision making contexts serve as crucial tests of the true legitimacy of authorities and authority systems (the litmus test hypothesis). Taken together, this research suggests that authorities' ability to lead rather than simply coerce compliance is tied closely to subordinates' perceptions of whether authorities share their moral vision.

Skitka, L. J., & Morgan, G. S. (2009). The double-edged sword of a moral state of mind. In D. Narvaez & D. K. Lapsley (Eds.), Moral self, identity, and character: Prospects for new field of study, (pp. 355 Ð 374). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Most morality research has focused on the psychological antecedents and consequences of virtue. However, the ways in which people's moral concerns play out in everyday social interaction may not always have normatively virtuous implications. For example, stronger moral conviction about specific issues is associated with more intolerance of attitudinally dissimilar others; lower levels of good will and cooperativeness in attitudinally heterogeneous groups; decreased ability to compromise on procedural solutions for conflict. People are also more likely to perceive vigilantism and other sacrifices of due process as fair when they achieve "moral" ends. Although primarily associated with pro-social and positive consequences, people's moral convictions, motives, and sentiments are sometimes associated with negative and anti-social consequences as well. Efforts to increase the centrality of moral identity or moral concerns may therefore yield double-edged swords.