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Deviant Behavior Beyond Harm and Fairness: a Study of Deviance and Morality

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Deviant Behavior Beyond Harm and Fairness: a Study of Deviance and Morality Deviant Behavior Volume No. 37 | Issue No. 5 2016-03-08 Beyond Harm and Fairness: A Study of Deviance and Morality Leslie Abell California State University Channel Islands This document is made available through ScholarWorks, the shared institutional repository of the California State University System. Visit https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/ for more openly available scholarship from the CSU. Repository Citation Abell, L., Silver, E. (2016). Beyond harm and fairness: A study of deviance and morality. Deviant Behavior, 37(5), 496-508. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2015.1060746 DEVIANT BEHAVIOR 2016, VOL. 37, NO. 5, 496-508 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2015.1060746 Beyond Harm and Fairness: A Study of Deviance and Morality Eric Silvera and Leslie Abellb aPenn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA; bCalifornia State University-Channel Islands, Camarillo, California, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Using data from 1,429 students, we test whether a moral foundations Received 19 August 2014 approach focusing on both individual- and group-oriented measures of Accepted 10 February 2015 morality improves our ability to predict deviant behavior over and above the effects of individual-oriented measures alone. Results show that the emphasis individuals place on group-oriented moral concerns is inversely associated with a range of deviant behaviors. Moreover, these associations are stronger and more pervasive than the emphasis placed on individual­ level moral concerns. Additionally, we find that a recently developed “moral identity” measure does not add to the prediction of deviant behavior over and above group-oriented measures. Prior studies of the relationship between morality and deviance have tended to measure morality in terms of justice and care (for a review, see Stets and Carter 2012). The underlying assumption of this approach is that deviant behavior is less likely among those whose morality emphasizes protecting the rights and safeguarding the welfare of other individuals. Less understood are the effects of group- oriented dimensions of morality, such as ingroup loyalty, respect for authority and tradition, and adherence to group norms regarding purity and sanctity in leading people to abstain from deviance. Are people whose morality centers on loyalty to others or respect for authority or tradition less likely to engage in deviant behavior? Prior research has found that when individuals are asked to define morality in their own words, they often mention duty, obedience, respect, preserving traditions, religious norms, God, decency, and the soul—in addition to notions of care and justice (Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009; Haidt and Hersh 2001). This raises the question of whether focusing exclusively on care and justice provides a sufficiently rich picture of the relationship between morality and deviant behavior. Drawing on moral foundations theory (Haidt and Joseph 2004; Haidt 2012), this study extends our understanding of the relationship between morality and deviance by comparing the effects of individual- and group-oriented dimensions of morality (e.g., care and justice versus loyalty, author­ ity, and purity) on a range of deviant behaviors. If group-oriented measures of loyalty, authority, and purity turn out to be as, or more, predictive than the more traditional individual-based measures of care and justice, then our entire understanding of the relationship between morality and deviance must be revised. Prior research Morality has long been a concern of sociologically oriented thinkers. Foundational theorists such as Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx made morality a key focal point of their works (Hitlin and Vaisey 2013). Yet, up until very recently, mainstream sociological interest in morality has been lacking (Hitlin and Vaisey 2010) while other fields such as law (e.g., Sunstein 2003), neuroscience CONTACT Eric Silver [email protected] Penn State University, 105 Sparks Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA. © 2016 Taylor & Francis DEVIANT BEHAVIOR 497 (e.g., Greene et al. 2004), philosophy (e.g., Knobe and Leiter 2007), and psychology (Hauser 2006; Haidt 2001) have increased their focus. One reason for sociology’s relatively weak engagement with morality is that “morality” is an all-encompassing term touching on both individual values and group oriented norms, and is notoriously difficult to measure (Maguire, Weatherby, and Sandage 2000; Ostini 2010). Thus, sociologists who study morality have tended to parse it out into more conceptually distinct and measureable constructs, such as altruism (Hoffman 1981), norms (Terry and Hogg 1996; Gorsuch and Ortberg 1983), cooperation (Stone et al. 2002), truthfulness (Matsueda 1989), and, more recently, moral identities (Stets and Carter 2012). A second reason for mainstream sociology’s weak engagement with morality can be attributed to the growth of criminology, a field based on the notion that laws reflect moral codes and that law violators (criminals) are also moral violators (Gallupe and Baron 2014). Although morality has been shown to play a role in predicting crime and deviance (Bachmann, Paternoster, and Ward 1992; Burkett and Ward 1993; Gallupe and Baron 2014; Grasmick and Bursik Jr. 1990; Grasmick and Green 1981; Hindelang 1974; Mears, Ploeger, and Warr 1998; Paternoster and Simpson 1996; Rogers, Smoak, and Liu 2006), the term “morality” is seldom used in the criminological literature (but, see Wikstrom and Treiber 2007). At the time of this writing, morality remains a vaguely conceptualized construct, and its role in predicting deviant behavior relative to other predictors remains unclear (Antonaccio and Tittle 2008). Moral foundations theory The question of what should be included in the domain of morality has long been debated in the literature in moral psychology. For decades, cognitive psychologists have largely conceptualized morality as a universal construct rooted in principles of care and justice (Gilligan 1982; Kohlberg 1969, 1971); whereas cultural psychologists have argued that moral concerns vary across cultures and extend beyond care and justice (Haidt, Koller, and Dias 1993; Miller 1994). For instance, Shweder et al. (1997) found that moral judgments are often based on ethics of community (belonging to a group) and ethics of divinity (thinking of oneself as a spiritual entity striving for purity and sanctity). However, it is currently unclear whether these broader conceptions of morality have much to do with deviant behavior. To address this question we draw on moral foundations theory. Moral foundations theory describes the psychological mechanisms underlying human moral intuitions, which consist of the more or less instantaneous flashes of judgment that arise in human consciousness in response to morally charged stimuli. The theory was developed by Haidt and colleagues (Haidt and Joseph 2004; Haidt and Graham 2007; Graham et al. 2009, 2011) based on reviews of the literature in evolutionary psychology and anthropology in which common themes regarding moral regulation were sought across cultures. The reviews produced five top candidates for the psychological “foundations” on which morality is based: (1) Harm/Care, (2) Fairness/ Reciprocity, (3) Ingroup/Loyalty, (4) Authority/Respect, and (5) Purity/Sanctity. Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity generally correspond to the ethics of care and justice in which protecting individuals from harm and unfair treatment is paramount. Ingroup/Loyalty and Authority/Respect generally correspond to the ethic of community in which the maintenance of group coherence and appropriate relations among group members is paramount. Purity/Sanctity generally corresponds to the ethic of divinity in which cultural practices pertaining to the body, the handling of food, and so on are paramount.1 Haidt and Graham (2007) initially applied moral foundations theory to understand the cultural divide between liberals and conservatives in the United States. Drawing on Shweder et al. (1997) and a long line of political theorists (Burke 1790/2003; Lakoff 2002; Mill 1859/2003; Muller 1997; Sowell 1These five moral foundations are consistent with, but expand on, several existing taxonomies of moral concern, including Fiske’s (1992) four models of social relationships; Shweder et al.’s (1997) three ethics of autonomy, community, and divinity; and Hogan, Johnson, and Emler’s (1978) theory of moral development. 498 E. SILVER AND L. ABELL 2002), liberalism was hypothesized to be the expression of a morality in which the individual is the primary locus of moral concern. From this perspective, moral regulation centers on protecting individuals from involuntary harm or unfair treatment by others, including social institutions such as the government. In contrast, conservatives were hypothesized to value more tightly ordered communities in which proper relationships between parents and children, men and women, and humans and God are the primary locus of moral regulation. From the conservative perspective, the individual is not the sole focus of moral concern; instead, emphasis on the individual is balanced against an emphasis on group-oriented virtues, such as loyalty, and on social institutions, such as family and church that bind people into roles, duties and mutual obligations (for a detailed discussion, see Graham et al. 2011). In empirical tests using a variety of methodological approaches, Graham et al. (2009) found that liberals endorsed and used the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity foundations to make
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