The Social Psychology of Morality

Joseph P. Forgas, Lee Jussim, Paul A.M. Van Lange, Joseph P. Forgas, Lee Jussim, Paul A.M. Van Lange

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138929074
• eBook ISBN: 9781317288244
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Ever since Plato's 'Republic' was written over two thousand years ago, one of the main concerns of social philosophy and later empirical social science was to understand the moral nature of human beings. The faculty to think and act in terms of overarching moral values is as much a defining hallmark of our species as is our intelligence, so homo moralis is no less an appropriate term to describe humans as homo sapiens.

This volume makes a case for the pivotal role of social psychology as the core discipline for studying morality. The book is divided into four parts. First, the role of social psychological processes in moral values and judgments is discussed, followed by an analysis of the role of morality in interpersonal processes. The sometimes paradoxical, ironic effects of moral beliefs are described next, and in the final section the role of morality in collective and group behavior is considered.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers in the social and behavioral sciences concerned with moral behavior, as well as professionals and practitioners in clinical, counseling, organizational, marketing and educational psychology where issues of ethics and morality are of importance.

1 In Search of Homo Moralis

The Social Psychology of Morality

Joseph P. Forgas, Lee Jussim, and Paul A.M.Van Lange

DOI: 10.4324/9781315644189-1

Ever since Plato’s Republic was written over 2,000 years ago, one of the main concerns of social philosophy and later empirical social science has been to understand the moral nature of human beings. The faculty to think and act in terms of overarching moral values is as much a defining hallmark of our species as is our intelligence, so Homo moralis is no less an appropriate term to describe humans as is Homo sapiens. If morality has a flavor of the goodness or badness of humankind, and the ways in which individuals, groups, and societies regulate, or should regulate, individual action and behavior, then there is little doubt that we are talking about one of the broadest topics possible.

Many basic questions about human nature have at least some moral flavor. One of the most enduring philosophical debates has centered on the question of whether people are naturally bad or good. Alas, there could hardly be more disagreement among philosophers than on this issue. For example, from Plato onwards, many thinkers believed in the fundamentally flawed, emotional, and selfish nature of humankind. Most Christian religious philosophers also assumed that humans are inherently sinful, although capable of redemption and moral behavior. Nietzsche was among those most strongly convinced that people are bad by nature, and Adam Smith formulated an entire—and hugely successful—theory of economic behavior based on the assumption that individual selfishness can in fact be harnessed in service of the common good. At the other extreme, Rousseau was among those who believed in the inherent moral goodness of humankind. Paradoxically, hugely influential communalistic theories such as Marxism based on an assumption of the fundamentally good nature of humans, such as our presumed communality, empathy, and selflessness, turned out in practice to produce some of the most horrific societies in human history.

Morality is also strongly involved in views of how a society should go about controlling or regulating individuals’ selfish impulses, and aggressive or violent tendencies. Some philosophers thought that a government should strongly control individuals’ behavior by administering punishment and designing strict laws to regulate norm violations. Others were more “lenient” in their political philosophy. For the purposes of this chapter, taking an avowedly social psychological orientation, we may functionally define morality in terms of social norms—and the related sanctions that accompany norm violations. Morality tends to be less manifest in actions that conform to norms and are perceived as morally acceptable than in actions that involve norm violations. In the second half of this chapter, we will discuss the nature, functions, and consequences of social norms as embodiments of moral principles.

Topics to do with morality were traditionally addressed by scientists working in a number of disciplines, including anthropology, biology, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, psychology, and political science. In the present book, we would like to argue that social psychology occupies a privileged position when it comes to understanding the nature of human morality. In this introductory essay in particular, we will start by making a case for the pivotal role of social psychology as the core discipline for studying morality. Next, we will discuss the two fundamental alternative theoretical positions for studying morality: morality as the outcome of a rational, analytic, and deliberative process; and morality as in intrinsic, universal, intuitive, and evolutionarily determined human faculty. We will then consider the often paradoxical social effects of morality, when higher moral principles lead to often immoral and sometimes evil actions.

Next, the tangible conceptualization of moral principles in terms of social norms will be discussed, and the functions of social norms in facilitating the social life of dyads, groups, or larger collectives will be considered. And finally, the essential role of morality in defining and maintaining a stable and positive self-concept, and in informing and justifying our evaluations of others, will be discussed.

Social Psychology and Morality

Moral concerns do not occur in some abstract world characterized by ivory tower speculation—they are inherently and deeply social. Nearly all manifestations of morality involve, are based on, influence, and sometimes govern our relations with other people (see also Frimer; Haslam; Miller & Monin; and Simpson, Farrell, & Marshall, this volume). Indeed, the social bases of morality can be readily extended to other living and even nonliving things (see also Bastian & Crimston, this volume). The basic intuitive foundations of morality identified in the recent literature (e.g., Graham et al., 2013) include predominantly social concerns, such as care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation.

The first four of these moral concerns refer exclusively to our relationships with other people, and the last one, sanctity/degradation, usually does so as well. The famous “trolley problem,” deciding whether to allow one person to die in order to save several others, also involves a fundamentally social decision: What value should we place on human life? Are all lives of equal value? Should such decisions be even accepted and made? At the risk of being self- or (at least) group-serving, it appears then that social psychologists are uniquely well suited among all the sciences and humanities to seek to understand the causes, consequences, and nature of morality. This book seeks to make a contribution to this quest, by surveying some of the most recent cutting-edge research by leading social psychologists on the issue of morality.

Indeed, many of the most cherished topics in social psychology—stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, altruism, justice, inequality, obedience, conformity, group differences, intelligence, terror management theory, the fundamental attribution error, and even concern with the power of the situation—can be viewed as deeply infused with moral undertones and implications. Many forms of discrimination are clearly immoral (and, sometimes, illegal), and the moral outrage by many social psychologists at such injustices has likely fueled a century of scientific interest in these topics. Milgram’s (1974) obedience studies as well as Henri Tajfel’s social identity theory (Tajfel & Forgas, 1982) were inspired by revulsion at the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, and a need to understand how such immoral mass behavior could be explained by social psychologists. Latané and Darley’s (1970) studies were inspired by being morally appalled at reports of the failure of an entire apartment building of residents to prevent the brutal murder of Kitty Genovese (although, there are now some questions about this story; see Manning, Levine, & Collins, 2007). And of course, most research on prejudice and stereotyping, especially in the US, has long been motivated by a moral concern about overcoming the morally repugnant historical consequences of slavery and decades of entrenched racism (see also Jussim, Crawford, Stevens, Anglin, & Duarte, this volume).

Morality: Rational or Intuitive?

Historical Perspectives on Morality

The social and behavioral sciences have danced with and around issues of morality from the very beginning. One of the most basic approaches to morality is deontology, espousing the principle that the rightness or wrongness of actions is inherent in themselves, as opposed to alternative views that emphasize the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions (consequentialism), or focus instead on the character and habits of social actors (virtue) (see also Gawronski, Conway, Armstrong, Friesdorf, & Hütter, this volume).

Often, however, what early scholars addressed only partially overlapped with what we currently think of as morality. Moral philosophy was actually a vibrant topic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with many articles and texts on moral instincts and moral education (e.g., Bryant, 1912; Lull, 1911; Royce, 1893), topics that have largely evaporated from current social science discourse. Indeed, the very term “moral instincts” has a somewhat archaic sound to it. And the idea of “moral education” is not a particularly vibrant topic in modern social psychology today.

Surprisingly, the contrast between these older approaches and more modern perspectives is not as striking as it may at first appear. Although psychologists discarded most of the “instinct” theories decades ago when describing human behavior, similar ideas have resurfaced in recent evolutionary and other approaches to psychology that have become increasingly influential (e.g., Buss, 1995; see also Laham & Corless; Pyszczynski; and von Hippel, Ronay, & Maddux, this volume). According to such views, certain moral values appear universal and have an evolutionary basis (Graham et al., 2013). In this light, approaches referring to “moral instincts” received new currency in recent years. Furthermore, Royce’s (1893) early paper highlights two particular forms of morality, care (he uses terms like “love” and “charity”) and justice, which again figure prominently in one of the most influential of modern psychological theories of morality, Moral Foundations Theory (Graham et al., 2013). It seems then that there are at least two fundamental psychological approaches to understanding morality: as the outcome of a rational, analytic process; and as a fundamental, universal, and intuitive human faculty. We shall turn to considering this dichotomy next.

Morality as Rational

The modern scientific, empirical study of the psychology of morality can primarily be traced to the influential work of Kohlberg (e.g., Kohlberg & Hersh, 1977) some decades ago, who was clearly inspired by Piaget’s stage theory of cognitive development. This line of thinking, linking morality to rationality, has its philosophical and intellectual roots in the ideology of the Enlightenment, and especially, in the work of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and David Hume. Utilitarian philosophy attempted to explain the complexity of moral concerns in terms of a simple rational principle, asserting that what is good and desirable is not inherent in the action itself (deontology), but can be determined by analyzing the hedonistic consequences of alternative courses of action (consequentialism; see also Gawronski et al., this volume). Such “utilitarian calculus” assumes a cool, rational, deliberative approach to questions of morality, and it is this principle that was embodied in Piaget’s developmental theory, and Kohlberg’s subsequent work on morality as well.

Kohlberg argued for a basically cognitive, maturation-based development of morality through essentially rational reasoning processes. The person starts, as a young child, with a simple view of morality as a function of rewards and punishments, and proceeds through a series of developmental stages until, as the capacity for more abstract reasoning increases, the person adopts a set of universal and abstract moral principles. Furthermore, Kohlberg’s work (e.g., Boyd & Kohlberg, 1973; Kohlberg & Hersh, 1977) shows a close affinity with earlier movements advocating “moral education,” also a derivative of earlier utilitarian philosophies, whose aim became, for Kohlberg, to increase the child’s ability to think and reason abstractly about moral principles.

Morality as Intuitive

Kohlberg’s view predominated for the past several decades. However, Haidt (2001) disagreed with a fundamental assumption underlying much of Kohlberg’s work—that morality generally resulted from rational reasoning of any type. Instead, Haidt demonstrated in a variety of contexts (see reviews in Haidt, 2001, 2012) that people frequently claimed that behaviors were immoral (e.g., having sex with a sibling) even when they failed to violate any rational moral principle for such prohibitions (e.g., one argument against sibling sex was the risk of deformed or deficient offspring—an argument readily neutralized if the siblings used contraception). When confronted with this inconsistency, people became “dumbfounded”—insisting that the action was immoral even when compelled to agree that there were no good, rational reasons or moral principles that were violated. They were often unable to articulate a reason justifying why they considered the action to be immoral, while still insisting on its immorality.

On the basis of such findings, Haidt (2001, 2012) concluded that: (1) moral beliefs were often not based on the conscious, controlled reasoning processes as presumed by Kohlberg, and indeed, by many philosophers since the Enlightenment; (2) they were, instead, based on largely nonconscious and largely nonrational intuitions; however, (3) people were very good at enlisting their cognitive and abstract analytic abilities post hoc in order to justify their moral intuitions in order to make it appear as if their moral judgments were rational and the result of deep abstract considerations. Evolutionary approaches yield somewhat similar predictions, assuming that morality can best be understood in terms of universal, evolved tendencies that have some adaptive value (see also Laham & Corless; Pyszczynski; and von Hippel et al., this volume)....

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• 1 In Search of Homo moralis: The Social Psychology of Morality
• Part I The Nature of Moral Values and Decisions
• Part II Moral Aspects of Interpersonal Behavior
• Part III Ironic and Paradoxical Effects of Morality
• Part IV Morality and Collective Behavior
• Index