Communication, Legitimation and Morality in Modern Politics

Studying Public Justification

Uriel Abulof, Markus Kornprobst

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351371018
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Why? This question drives scientific inquiry, not least in the social sciences: why war, revolution, racism and inequality? Asking and debating about 'why?', however, is not the prerogative of scholars; social actors, endowed with thought, reflection and speech, do it too. While we all dance to the beat of genes, emotions, identities and habituated norms, we occasionally stop to ask 'why?' The social sciences have been long preoccupied with the ostensibly objective 'why' while sidelining the social, intersubjective 'why?' This book focuses on the latter, analysing the social actors' search for justification in their public, political sphere. Justifications, broadly understood, are answers to why-questions given and debated by social actors. The chapters focus on public justifications. While the contributors do not submit that private encounters addressing why-questions do not matter, they choose to put public encounters addressing these questions under scrutiny. Given the ongoing telecommunications revolution, and new political practices associated with it, these public encounters become increasingly pertinent in our evolving political orders.

This book originally published as a special issue in Contemporary Politics.

A psychological perspective on moral reasoning, processes of decision-making, and moral resistance

Elliot Turiel

ABSTRACT

This article presents a psychological approach on the development of social and moral judgments that has relevance for the topics of public justification and world politics. In contrast with approaches assuming that morality is primarily determined by emotions and non-rational, the research discussed shows that moral development involves the construction of thinking about welfare, justice, and rights. In parallel with judgments in the moral domain, individuals construct judgments about conventions in the social system and areas of personal jurisdiction. Research documents that moral and social decisions involve processes of coordination, or weighing and balancing, moral and non-moral considerations and goals, as well as different moral goals. Processes of coordination are also involved in decisions about cultural practices that include social inequalities and relationships between those in dominant and subordinate positions in social hierarchies. Judgments about the fairness of practices entailing inequalities produce social opposition and moral resistance.

Researchers in political science who have thought long and hard about on the topics of public justification and world politics author most of the articles in this volume. These are not topics I have researched. I am a psychologist and have studied the development of social and moral judgments from childhood to adolescence and adulthood. I have also researched aspects of relations between morality and culture, with a focus on evaluations and processes of decision-making about cultural practices involving social hierarchies and social inequalities. That work has yielded findings of social opposition and moral resistance to systems of social organization and inequalities. Consequently, people’s participation in cultural practices has, at least, a dual and sometimes conflictful orientation in that they are both accepting and critical of cultural practices.

I believe, however, that the body of research I discuss in this article has a bearing on politics. Certainly, the topic of morality is not unrelated to politics. Moreover, there is likely to be a connection between political thought and the research on social hierarchies, social inequalities, and moral resistance. Another feature of the approach I take that should bear on politics is the presumption that people actively think and reason about morality, social relationships, social institutions, and the norms of society.

A little background

The theoretical approach of my research on development is based on the proposition that children construct ways of thinking through varied types of interactions and social relationships in multifaceted environments. Children attempt to understand, make sense of, experiences of many kinds. This includes the formation of moral judgments and reasoning, stemming from children’s interactions with other children, as well as with adults. In this perspective, moral judgments do not reflect an acceptance of or accommodation to societal norms or cultural practices nor a reflection of predetermined biological dispositions, but involve understandings of substantive issues such as welfare and harm, fairness and justice, and the rights of individuals and groups.

The proposition that morality involves the formation and application of judgments and reasoning is at odds with some past and current psychological theorizing. For a long time now – going back to behaviourism – many psychologists have rejected choice and reasoning as human attributes. They regarded thought, reasoning, and rationality as outdated ideas to be discarded in psychological explanations (except, of course, when psychologists use reasoning in generating their theories about the lack of reasoning). Although behaviourism has largely faded from the scene, the rejection of reasoning as a human attribute continues in some contemporary quarters of psychology, including social psychology and in work in psychological neuroscience (Turiel, 2010). A provocative but accurate term was coined by Kihlstrom (2004) for those contemporary formulations: the people are stupid school of psychology (PASSP). According to Kihlstrom, this school of psychology maintains ‘as we go about the ordinary course of everyday living, we do not think very hard about anything, and simply rely on biases, heuristics, and other processes that lead us into judgmental error’ (2004, p. 169). The major tenets of PASSP are: (1) that people are fundamentally non-rational; they do not engage in much reflection, are driven by emotions, and rely on shortcuts like heuristics, (2) that decisions are made on automatic pilot, which are, (3) out of awareness, of a non-conscious nature, and do not involve choice, and (4) that as a consequence decisions are often irrational. Kihlstrom (2008) also details how the evidence for these propositions is not strong. Briefly, the evidence most often comes from contrived experiments (such as those on ‘priming’) that entail implicit communications about the expectations of experimenters in what are unusual situations. The experiments produce temporary effects, and often are not replicable (Turiel, 2015). Another problem in the PASSP line of thinking is that errors are confused with irrationality. However, errors can often reflect efforts to comprehend events, interpret experiences, and make choices.

Two examples bearing on conservative and liberal political views serve to illustrate how the rejection of choice and reasoning as human attributes has been applied to arenas of politics. In one study (Oxley et al., 2008), participants classified as liberals (e.g. they support foreign aid, immigration, gun control, and gay marriage) or conservatives (e.g. they support defence spending, the war in Iraq, the death penalty, and school prayer) were assessed on physiological reactions to perceived threats (e.g. by showing them threatening images) indicating individuals’ general levels of fear. It was reported that those with conservative views showed more fearful reactions to threat than those with liberal views. The researchers’ interpretation of the findings is that the political positions associated with levels of fearfulness entail tendencies to be either more vigilant to perceived threats and to be protective of the existing social unit or to be less vigilant and supportive of changes in the social order. Accordingly, in this reductionist position, political views are not seen as due to analyses and judgments about matters such as defence, war, violence, or many other social policies. There are also problems in the logic of some of the connections drawn between the supposed emotional dispositions and the particular positions taken by conservatives and liberals. For example, would it not be expected that more fearful people would favour gun control to avoid the risks of many carrying guns, or that less fearful people would be in favour of engaging in a war? Missing in this approach is an analysis of how people make sense of the morality of the issues they support and how they apply their moral judgments and more general conceptions about society to the issues at hand.

A second example comes from propositions put forth by Haidt et al. that also included characterizations of the moral orientations of liberals and conservatives (Haidt, 2001; Haidt & Graham, 2007). Their general proposition, in line with PASSP, is that moral decisions are largely based on what they refer to as intuitions, which are defined in their own particular way as immediate, non-reflective, non-rational reactions that are emotionally driven evolutionary adaptations partially shaped by culture (see Bruner, 1960; Shweder, Turiel, & Much, 1981 for alternative definitions of intuition). In this view, reasoning is an epiphenomenon used not to come to decisions but to rationalize decisions already made (see Jacobson, 2012 and Turiel, 2015 for critiques). A further proposition is that cultures and sub-cultures shape intuitions into the so-called moral foundations. The proposed moral foundations relevant for our purposes are those that are said to distinguish between conservatives or Republican and liberals or Democrats in the United States (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009; Haidt & Graham, 2007). They proposed that the moral orientations of Rebublicans/conservatives are based on respect for authority, social hierarchy, and sanctity, whereas the fundamentally different orientations of Democrats/liberals are to harm, fairness, individual freedoms, and a disdain for authority.

These moral foundations are seen as fixed, intuitively applied orientations of a homogeneous nature derived by individuals, in these cases, from each sub-culture’s different and incommensurable morality. However, it is not at all clear that the positions of conservative and liberals divide up so neatly into these categories. A few salient examples of political and social policy positions taken in the latter part of the twentieth and early part of the twenty-first centuries serve to question the claim that these sub-groups maintain different and cohesive orientations. During these times, conservatives have championed the pronouncement in 1981 by the then President Ronald Reagan that ‘Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.’ This has been more than a slogan for conservatives as they have voted for candidates espousing this position and attempted to enact legislation and policies aimed at shrinking the role of government for purposes of promoting free enterprise and individual freedoms (e.g. to own guns, keep their money from being taxed, make individual decisions on health care and medical insurance, and to freely contribute to political candidates). In the election cycles of 2008 and 2012, liberals have championed governmental authority and initiatives that would restrict freedoms in order to promote general welfare and community interests (including on guns, taxes, and health care). Whereas conservatives invoke respect for the authority of the US Constitution (the Second Amendment) in support of the freedom and right to own guns, they disparage the Constitutional ruling in Roe versus Wade that supports the freedom and right to abortion. Liberals invoke respect for Roe versus Wade to support the right to abortion, but disparage rulings regarding the Second Amendment as a basis for gun ownership, as well as rulings in Citizens United versus Election Commission. Conservatives have shown disdain for the authority of the Presidency of the United States (as in their attitudes towards President Barack Obama during his tenure), just as liberals showed disdain for the authority of the Presidency (as in their attitudes towards President George W. Bush during his tenure). Both groups appear to be concerned with freedoms, restrictions, the role of authority, and the welfare of people and the community. For instance, liberals/Democrats have often espoused communitarian positions that rely on the moral force of the group and they value democratic institutions without distrust of authority (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985; Putnam, 2000). In turn, on the conservative/Republican side anti-abortion positions are strongly guided by commitments to avoiding harm and the value of life – as are liberal positions on abortion (Dworkin, 1993; Turiel, Hildebrandt, & Wainryb, 1991).

Part of the characterizations of the different moral orientations is the idea that the concept of rights is part of some cultures and not others. In particular, some have theorized that cultures can be divided as representing individualistic (in many cases, Western cultures) and collectivistic (in many cases, non-Western cultures) worldviews (for examples of this position, see Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Shweder & Bourne, 1982; Triandis, 1990; for discussion of their shortcomings see Sen, 1997; Turiel, 2002; Turiel & Wainryb, 1994). One feature attributed to individualistic cultures is that morality is framed to a great extent by rights, whereas collectivistic cultures deemphasize rights – a distinction applied to conservative and liberal political positions by Haidt et al. A good example is the commentary provided by Haidt and Graham (2007) on an interchange between Rick Santorum, a Republican politician (a former Senator and presidential aspirant), and Jon Stewart, a liberal journalist. On Stewart’s television programme, the two debated the validity of gay marriage, each taking opposite sides. Haidt and Graham (2007, p. 111) used the difference between them on the matter to illustrate fundamental and incommensurable differences in the morality of conservatives and liberals, asserting: ‘Santorum’s anti-gay-marriage views were based on concerns for traditional family structures, Biblical authority, and moral disgust for homosexual acts (which he had previously likened to incest and bestiality).’ By contrast, liberal positions on gay marriage and homosexual acts presumably stem from different moral foundations oriented to harm, fairness, autonomy, and rights. In essence, Haidt and Graham treat the perspective of those who are regarded with disgust and denied worth, respect, and freedom of choice as irrelevant to morality in the conservative orientation – and as simply different from the liberal orientation.

If this type of division between cultures or between the ‘culture’ of political conservatism and political liberalism were accurate, it would certainly have implications for public discourse and political strategies. A significant implication is that there would be little dialogue and argumentation that would make a difference in the public sphere since groups would simply be talking in different cultural and moral frameworks.

Thought, reasoning, and emotions

Is there an alternative and what is it? An alternative is that both groups (whether seen as cultural groups or sub-cultures), as well as individuals within groups, are not unitary or homogeneous in their moral and social orientations and that variations would exist in approaches to moral issues: that by virtue of processes of reasoning individuals maintain moral judgments of welfare, justice, and rights; that such moral judgments are not solely the province of particular groups; that judgments regarding authority and social order are not solely the province of particular groups; that moral judgments can be in conflict with other social considerations and applied in different ways in different social situations; that individuals reflect upon systems of social organization and cultural practices and thereby can be critical of systems and practices perceived to be unfair. All of the above makes for dynamic social interac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: the politics of public justification
• 1. A psychological perspective on moral reasoning, processes of decision-making, and moral resistance
• 2. Conscientious politics and Israel’s moral dilemmas
• 3. The fusion of the private and public sectors
• 4. Empirical legitimation analysis in International Relations: how to learn from the insights – and avoid the mistakes – of research in EU studies
• 5. The public valuation of religion in global health governance: spiritual health and the faith factor
• 6. Arguing deep ideational change
• 7. Caveat: addressing public justification as an empirical phenomenon
• 8. Unpacking public justification
• Index