The Role of Threat and Conformity in Moral Judgements

Download or read book The Role of Threat and Conformity in Moral Judgements written by Georgia Birnie and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral norms vary greatly across groups and individuals. The present study investigated two factors which research suggests may influence moral judgements, specifically threat and conformity to an ostensible group norm. 148 participants completed an online survey in which moral judgements were assessed using the Moral Foundation Questionnaire (MFQ) (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). Demographic information, such as age, gender, ethnicity, religious orientation and political orientation was also gathered. Participants were assigned to one of two conditions, a threatening prime condition and a non-threatening prime condition. Participants were also randomly assigned to either a social information condition or a no social information condition. In the social information condition, each MFQ question was presented with information claiming to depict scores of fellow ingroup members. The extent to which threat, as well as ingroup response information, predicted MFQ scores was explored by conducting a multiple linear model analysis after adjustment for gender and political orientation for each of the MFQ subscales. Interaction effects were calculated in order to test firstly, whether the extent to which ingroup response information predicted MFQ scores would be greater among participants who were threatened, and secondly, to test the hypothesis that the tendency for threat to predict MFQ scores would depend on the participants’ political orientation. Results show that participants who were presented with a threatening prime gave significantly higher scores for questions relating to loyalty and purity than participants who were presented with a non-threatening prime. Also, those participants that were presented with information regarding ingroup responses gave scores which were significantly more in line with the group norm (high or low) for questions relating to harm, authority and purity. Contrary to our hypothesis, the presence of a threatening prime did not appear to be associated with either the tendency for participants to be influenced by the scores of fellow group members or political orientation scores. These results are in line with the evolutionary theory which proposes that, given the benefits associated with holding values such as loyalty and purity in threatening contexts, elevated concern for these values following threat may have evolved as an adaptive response. Implications of the findings of this study are explored, including implications regarding violent conflict, resolution of moral disagreement and the role of the media.