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Moral Conviction As Social Identity

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Moral Conviction As Social Identity 1 We’re Good People Moral Conviction as Social Identity Abstract Moral convictions—attitudes that people construe as matters of right and wrong—have unique effects on behavior, from activism to intolerance. Less is known, though, about the psychological underpinnings of moral convictions themselves. I propose that moral convictions are social identities. Consistent with the idea that moral convictions are identities, I find in two studies that attitude-level moral conviction predicts (1) attitudes’ self-reported identity centrality and (2) reaction time to attitude-related stimuli in a me/not me task. Moral conviction also predicted participants’ scores on a latent identity-centrality variable derived from those two measures. Consistent with the idea that moral convictions are social identities, I find evidence that participants used their moral convictions to perceive, categorize, and remember information about other individuals’ positions on political issues, and that they did so more strongly when their convictions were more identity-central. Keywords: Moral Conviction, Politics, Identity, Intergroup Relations Word count: 9,988 words 2 We’re Good People: Moral Conviction as Social Identity The attitudes that people imbue with moral significance are uniquely powerful. These moralized attitudes are resistant persuasion, elicit strong emotions, and inspire political action and intolerance. Moreover, attitude moralization—or, to use Skitka and colleagues’ term, moral conviction—has effects distinct from other attitude-strength variables, suggesting that there is something psychologically unique about regarding an attitude as a matter of right and wrong (e.g., Skitka, 2014). Although this work has produced useful insights regarding the many consequences of construing attitudes in moral terms, it provides fewer clues about what moral convictions are. That is, in what ways does the psychological representation of a moral conviction differ from the representation of a non-moral attitude? I propose that, unlike non-moral attitudes, moral convictions are represented as social identities—as a key element of individuals’ self-concept that guides how they perceive and relate to others. Moral Conviction Skitka and colleagues have defined moral convictions as attitudes that individuals attribute to their “fundamental beliefs about right and wrong” rather than to social conventions or to personal preferences (Skitka, 2010). Moral convictions have a number of special properties. For example, people tend to believe that their moral convictions are universally and objectively correct—injunctions by which all people ought to abide. People who hold moral convictions on a given issue are also uniquely resistant to persuasion, even controlling for the certainty and personal importance of their attitude, and they manifest strong positive and negative emotions about these issues (Skitka & Wisneski, 2011). In addition, moral convictions mobilize; people with issue-specific moral convictions were especially likely to vote in line with their attitudes in 3 the 2004 presidential election (Skitka & Bauman, 2008) and appear to be more likely to vote overall (Morgan, Skitka, & Wisneski, 2010). Finally, moral convictions have a potent influence on how people evaluate other social actors. People prefer greater social distance from others who disagree with them in moral domains than they do from others who disagree with them in non- moral domains. Moreover, where political norms favoring civil liberties are not especially strong, people are even willing to subject moral dissenters to government surveillance and censorship (Skitka, Liu, Yang, Chen, Liu, & Xu, 2012). In sum, moral convictions are resistant to change and have a strong impact on individuals’ reasoning, their emotions, and their behavior, with important consequences for how they evaluate and interact with others. That said, the rich body of literature documenting the consequences and correlates of moral conviction has done less to clarify the psychological bases of moral convictions. The construct is operationalized as the average score across 2-4 interrelated self-report items. One item, for example, asks respondents to indicate “the extent to which [their] position on [an attitude object]” is “a reflection of [their] core moral beliefs and convictions.” All of the questions ask respondents directly whether their attitude is a moral one. And although moral- conviction research has shown time and again that this “moral” label is affixed to a heady psychological cocktail with important effects, the ingredients of that cocktail remain unclear. What psychological characteristic distinguishes a moral conviction from other strong attitudes? The current study tests the hypothesis that moral convictions are unique in that they delineate social identities—that is, unlike other attitudes, they help individuals define who they are, who is like them, and who is not. Morality and the Self-Concept 4 Psychologists have long assumed that individuals’ sense of self is connected to their beliefs about what is good, desirable, and right, without formally testing this connection. In his “functional approach” to attitudes, for example, Katz (1960), proposed that value expression is one of the key functions that attitudes might serve—that people might hold an attitude because it helps them to express their beliefs, and in turn, something about who they are. In a similar vein, scholars of attitude strength have examined attitudes’ value-relevance as a type of “personal involvement” in an issue (Boninger, Krosnick, Berent, & Fabrigar, 1995; Thomsen, Borgida, & Lavine, 1995). In short, attitudes researchers have at times assumed that individuals’ beliefs and values are connected to the self. This assumption is not unreasonable. When people realize that they have violated some widely-held value, they behave as though their positive self-image is threatened (Pagliaro, Ellemers, Barretto, Di Cesare, 2016). This evidence suggests a motive to be “moral” as a means to feel good about oneself. This motive (and the ease with which it can be satisfied) is evident in moral licensing—when people indulge in less-than-ethical behavior after performing some token good (Merritt, Effron, & Monin, 2010). Evidence suggests that this pattern is at least partly attributable to a private desire to be moral, not just to impress others (Khan & Dhar, 2006; Monin & Miller, 2001). The motive to be moral is also evident in “do-gooder-derogation”—the tendency for perceivers to resent others who are more moral than themselves. The fact that this tendency is attenuated when perceivers have the opportunity to affirm themselves prior to evaluating the “do-gooder” (Minson & Monin, 2012) underscores the role of identity in the phenomenon; others’ morality is only threatening when it reflects poorly on the self. Taken together, these findings suggest individuals’ moral beliefs provide a rubric for self-evaluation. 5 That said, most of the evidence that morality structures self-evaluation comes from traits and behaviors that are consensually viewed as moral or immoral. Lying, cheating, and overt discrimination are bad. Helping others and being honest are good. People may generally define themselves by how well they uphold these broadly shared values, but if moral convictions are social identities, then individuals’ more idiosyncratic, concrete moral beliefs (e.g., that legal access to abortion is a moral necessity vs. a moral wrong) should also help constitute their self- concept. No existing research of which I am aware directly tests the idea that individuals’ moral attitudes toward specific issues are uniquely central to identity.1 This is the first hypothesis I test in the current study—that an attitude’s identity centrality (i.e., the connection between an attitude and an individual’s self-concept) is positively related to the moral conviction that individuals ascribe to that attitude. Morality and Social Groups Morality is no less important in social perception than it is in self-perception. For instance, people can classify targets as trustworthy or untrustworthy within milliseconds of exposure to the target’s face (Todorov, Pakrashi, & Oosterhof, 2009; Willis & Todorov, 2006). Moreover, information about targets’ morality tends to dominate evaluations of those targets, trumping information about competence (Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007) and sociability (Landy, Piazza, & Goodwin, 2016). Beyond its relevance for how people perceive individuals, however, morality also plays an important role in how people perceive and interact with social groups. 1 Aquino and Reed’s (e.g., 2002) program of research on moral identity is related but distinct from this line of inquiry. They focus on traits widely agreed upon to be morally desirable (e.g., honesty, generosity), and find that the identity centrality (or “self-importance”) of these traits predicts desirable behaviors (e.g., volunteer behavior, charitable giving). I focus on attitudes with no clear moral consensus (e.g., attitudes toward gun control and the death penalty) and whether variance in moral conviction predicts variance in identity centrality. 6 First, the moral attitudes that prevail within a group govern intragroup dynamics by defining what behavior is appropriate among members of that group (Ellemers & van den Bos, 2012). The idea that people conform to group norms is not new (e.g., Asch, 1956) but moral norms are especially influential. Ellemers, Pagliaro, Barreto, and Leach (2008) found
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