Media and the Moral Mind

Ron Tamborini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136460265
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Questions regarding the relation between media and morality have been a lasting concern. Can media exposure shape or alter moral values? Does morality influence how audience members select, interpret and respond to media content? Attempts to answer such questions are hindered by the complex nature of morality and its dynamic relation with media.

This volume brings together leading scholars in an effort to examine reciprocal processes that connect media with morality, and to set a course for understanding this association. Individual essays combine established and emerging theories from media and moral psychology to explain how fundamental mechanisms that govern moral reasoning can shape and be shaped by media exposure. Together these scholars provide an understanding of the relationship between media and morality that should serve as an invaluable resource for current and future generations of researchers.

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MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND MEDIA THEORY

Historical and Emerging Viewpoints

Allison Eden, Matthew Grizzard, and Robert J. Lewis

The idea that what we watch, listen to, or read can change our fundamental morality is an enduring topic of interest for media scholars. This concern was present from the beginnings of the scientific study of media, when Frances Fenton (1911) was concerned with the influence of newspaper reading on anti-social behavior. Indeed, one of the first large-scale mass communication research projects, the Payne Fund Studies (1929–1932), was driven by a concern that the moral standards of children were being eroded by messages in film (Lowery & DeFleur, 1995). This social concern continues today, and can be seen in heated public debates about online deception, violent and pornographic media, violent video games, and sexually explicit lyrics in music. Throughout this research, there have been varied approaches to understanding the relationship between the media and morality. This chapter provides an overview of those approaches, including their governing philosophies, in an attempt to demonstrate overlap between past and present work on morality and media, as well as aid future efforts examining the dynamic relationship between them.

Abundant research from past decades has examined the effect of media on pro-social and anti-social outcomes (cf. Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Gentile, 2003; Ostrov, Gentile, & Crick, 2006). Such research has traditionally been based on rationalist models of morality that conceptualize moral judgment as the result of deliberative, cognitive-based reasoning about right and wrong (Kohlberg, 1969; Piaget, 1932). These purely rationalist models, however, have been challenged by moral psychologists (Haidt, 2001) and neuroscientists (Cushman, Young, & Greene, 2010; Greene & Haidt, 2002). Based in evolutionary psychology, new approaches consider morality to consist primarily of intuitive/affective components, which are supported and justified by more deliberative/cognitive components (Cushman et al., 2010). While not discounting the role of rational deliberation in moral judgment, these newer frameworks are providing evidence for the importance of emotions in moral reasoning. This fresh perspective on morality allows for a comprehensive approach to understanding the effects of media on morality, and offers an integrative solution to problems encountered when attempting to explain media effects using a purely rationalist model.

To date, media effects research has given little consideration to either purely emotional or dual-process models of morality. Perhaps this is due to the lack of a theoretical model of moral judgment that applies well to the methods of study prevalent in media psychology. Newer models of morality, however, show great promise for their application to media research. This chapter starts by examining historical accounts of morality from ancient philosophers through early social scientific accounts, focusing on the (primarily rationalist) traditions that have been foundational for media research. Next, it presents recent developments in moral psychology, with specific emphasis on dual-process models. This is followed by a discussion of prominent mass communication theories in which rationalist morality plays a central role. Finally, we discuss theories of mass communication that incorporate cognition and emotion, and we suggest how mass communication theories concerned with morality could benefit by incorporating dual-process theories in future research.

Morality: A Historical Perspective

We begin by providing an overview of moral theories and models that have been the bases for assumptions regarding the relationship between media exposure and moral judgment. This is not intended to be a comprehensive overview of moral philosophy. Instead, this section highlights areas within previous understandings of morality (pre-social scientific and social scientific) that relate to concerns of current moral theorists, which will be discussed in the following section. Primary among these concerns is debate on the role of emotion in moral judgment. Secondary is discussion regarding the extent to which morality is innate or learned through social behavior. This section begins by discussing how pre-social scientific scholars approached these issues, and then moves on to discuss how social scientists have addressed these concerns.

Pre-social Scientific

Pre-social scientific moral theories were largely driven by metaphysical and prescriptive concerns. In their writings, philosophers debated the origins of morality and whether morality was based on reason or emotion. They also attempted to prescribe methods and techniques for acting in a morally virtuous manner. Three philosophers have been prominently discussed in the current literature on morality: Aristotle, Kant, and Hume. While numerous others have also had important roles, we will focus on the ideas of these three scholars due to the relevance of their contributions for both media studies and current understandings of morality.

Some of the earliest writings on morality come from Aristotle (384 BCE– 322 BCE). In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle attempted to define the moral realm in terms of being virtuous. He described the origin of virtues, presented a typology of vices and virtues, and provided guidelines on how to become a more moral person. Many of the issues Aristotle addressed became controversies for centuries to come: Is morality learned or inborn? What comprises morality and moral judgments? Is morality dependent upon thought or emotion?

According to Aristotle, virtues can be divided into virtues of thought and virtues of character (Aristotle, trans. 1999, p. 18). This dichotomy relates to whether morality is socially constructed or inborn. Aristotle argued that virtues of thought are the product of teaching and socialization processes, and can be cultivated through education. Specific virtues can be learned by individuals and, by doing so, those individuals develop new virtues of thought. For example, one can learn that it is virtuous to think of others’ feelings. By comparison, virtues of character are the product of habit and practice, are more central to the natural predispositions of an individual, and are not as easily learned. These habitual forms of virtue are related more closely to innate conceptualizations of morality and individual predispositions. Notably, although these virtues of character are more inborn, Aristotle argued that they are capable of being learned or shaped. Aristotle compared molding these virtues of character to the act of learning a craft. Just as this type of learning can produce a master craftsperson, it can also produce a poor one. The important point for our discussion here is that virtues of thought and virtues of character relate directly to the idea that morality is both shaped through socialization and naturally inborn.

In addition to debating the origins of virtues, Aristotle also compiled a typology of virtues. Although Aristotle did not provide a definition of virtue per se, we can get an idea of this definition from the traits he considered virtuous, including bravery, temperance, truthfulness, and others. Each of these virtues acts as a middle ground between two vices: a vice of excess and a vice of deficiency. Take for example bravery, which lies between cowardice and rashness. According to Aristotle, if someone is excessively brave and seeks confrontation constantly, that person is rash; if someone is deficient in seeking confrontation, then that person is cowardly. Aristotle also pointed out that most individuals trend towards one of the vices (i.e., either excess or deficiency), and prescriptively argued that people should compensate for their natural tendencies by aligning their behavior with the opposite extreme. By doing so, Aristotle argued that their behavior would become more closely aligned with the virtue, which lies between deficiency and excess. For example, people who are predisposed to being cowardly should aim for being rash, and by doing so they will fall closer to the optimal middle ground than if they had aimed for being brave. Similarly, people who are predisposed to being rash should aim for being cowardly, and by doing so they will fall closer to the virtuous middle ground than if they had aimed for being brave. This distinction of excess versus deficiency, and the natural tendency towards one or the other, again points to the idea that issues of morality may be inborn, but they are capable of being shaped through socialization.

Aristotle also addressed whether emotion or logic is more important to being a moral person. According to Aristotle, emotion is usually a detractor from virtuous behavior: “For pleasure causes us to do base actions, and pain causes us to abstain from fine ones.” However, Aristotle qualified this point by stating, “That is why we need to have had the appropriate upbringing— right from early youth, as Plato says—to make us find enjoyment or pain in the right things; for this is the correct education” (Aristotle, trans. 1999, p. 18). So while emotion generally impedes morality and virtue, Aristotle believed that one can be trained to find pleasure and pain in the “right” things, which in turn could bolster virtuous behavior.

All in all, Aristotle’s conceptualization of morality brought light to some of the controversies that faced moral philosophy after him. Yet as stated, instead of defining morality, Aristotle provided a subjective conceptualization of morality implied by his list of virtuous traits that were prized by Greek civilization. Thus the nature of morality and its bases were left unclear.

Following Aristotle, a controversy over whether emotion or rationality acted as the foundation of morality began to build. Two prominent 18th-century philosophers, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and David Hume (1711–1776), came down on opposite ends of the question in their attempts to explain morality. Kant (1785/1993), like Aristotle, believed that reason was and should be the basis of morality. Kant regarded emotion as the same kind of hindrance to truly moral behavior that Aristotle did. Furthermore, he believed that, for one to be truly moral, one must place the burden of morality on cool, calculating reason rather than interests or instincts. For Kant, the will of the individual was the only thing that could be considered virtuous; a good will, according to Kant, is intrinsically good: “A good will is good not because of what it effects or accomplishes, nor because of its fitness to attain some proposed end” (1785/1993, p. 7). In other words, the ends cannot justify the means; neither can the ends nor the means take the place of the will, which is derived in Kant’s view from reason. Hume took a drastically different approach than Kant. For Hume (1751/1998), there was no morality without emotion. In his view, emotion was the fundamental motivator for moral behavior. The passions (emotions which he referred to as “impressions”) were the most important form of experience. Ideas (what we now call cognition) were reflections of impressions; they were merely symbolic representations of the actual environment. As such, emotion played the most important role in Hume’s conceptualization of morality. Notably, the difference of opinion between Kant and Hume about whether ideas or passions were key to understanding morality foreshadowed debates on the role of cognition and emotion that are still central today.

In addition to different views on the role of reason and emotion, Kant and Hume had different opinions about how moral principles were derived. Kant began to explicate how morality and moral standards are normatively agreed upon, and located moral standards within a normatively derived or “rational” framework. In other words, Kant believed that moral standards are those that would be agreed upon by all people who used rationality as their basis. At the same time, and seeming somewhat contradictory to this, Kant did not think that the best way to determine moral standards was to see what people agreed upon. He argued that moral standards cannot be discovered by examining individuals’ behavior; instead they must be arrived at purely through reason and rationality. Hume’s position on this was very different. In contrast to Kant’s attempt to position morality in principles that are determined apart from experience and observation, Hume focused on discovering moral principles through a process of scientific observation. He believed that moral principles should be determined by scientific method and empiricism, such as observing people’s behavior. In part, Hume’s focus on empiricism led to the social scientific study of morality, moving the study of morality from the realm of philosophy to the realm of science.

Social Scientific Perspectives

Early social scientific investigations on morality focused almost entirely on rationalist understandings. Researchers considered morality to be a series of rules to be learned, and as such, morality was thought to be dependent on cognitive development. With this concept in mind, most work concentrated on how and when children developed the ability to learn various social rules. This research was largely influenced by the ideas of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. Although they echoed Kant’s contention that virtue could be “discovered” through rationality, Piaget and Kohlberg did not define the origins of these rules, they simply tried to describe the cognitive development processes that allowed for more sophisticated treatment of moral issues. As social science developed, later researchers, such as Bandura, began to postulate the origins of moral principles, which he considered to be social convention. The current section examines early social scientific work by Piaget and Kohlberg and concludes with the latest purely rationalist perspective, which was developed by Bandura.

The earliest attempts to study morality from a social scientific perspective can be seen in the cognitive developmental approaches of Piaget and Kohlberg. Like Aristotle and Kant, Piaget and Kohlberg suggested that morality should be a fundamentally rational system as opposed to an emotive one. Piaget (1932), and later Kohlberg (1969, 1981), argued that morality was dependent on the development of abstract reasoning abilities. Moreover, echoing the prescriptive elements of earlier philosophers, they believed that individuals acquired the ability to make better moral judgments as they progressed through developmental stages. But Piaget and Kohlberg did more than simply echo their predecessors. They went beyond the earlier philosophers by adding an empirical basis to our understanding of how morality is conceptualized.

Piaget, who studied the cognitive development of children, created an early framework for understanding how morality and cognition are intertwined. In his conceptualization, morality consisted of a set of rules to be learned through social interactions. These interactions force individuals to develop cognitive strategies for making decisions upon which all can agree. Piaget divided the learning process into a two-stage model. In the first stage, children learn morality through authority-based learning, which he called the “heteronomous” stage. Moral decisions in this stage are completely dependent upon the judgments of authority figures, such as parents, police, or religious figures. The development of cognitive abilities, such as a greater ability to take the perspective of others, critically evaluate rules, and selectively apply rules based on a sense of reciprocity, leads children to transition to the second stage, which he termed the “autonomous” stage. This transition, Piaget argued, allows for more sophisticated moral judgments that are not based on purely deferring to authorities. Moral decisions in this stage are determined by adherence to universal, essentialist understandings of fairness. According to this view, given equal cognitive development, all rational individuals should arrive at the same moral standards and judgments.

Kohlberg (1969) later built upon Piaget’s work to create a more comprehensive conceptualization of morality within the cognitive developmental framework. Similar to Piaget, Kohlberg defined morality in terms of a cognitive process, and adopted Piaget’s developmental stage approach to outline the manner in which rational abilities develop. Kohlberg’s approach postulated three major developmental levels. In the “preconventional level,” morality is determined by rewards and punishments (both social and material) to the self. This is followed by the “conventional level,” in which right and wrong are defined by the consensus of one’s peer group. Lastly, the “post-conventional stage” is characterized by the ability to go beyond simple rules, and make judgments according to universal understandings of morality. In this stage, a person knows what is right or wrong and can make judgments about right and wrong regardless of social contex...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Foreword
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Moral Psychology and Media Theory: Historical and Emerging Viewpoints
• 2 Universal Morality, Mediated Narratives, and Neural Synchrony
• 3 A Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars
• 4 Morality Subcultures and Media Production: How Hollywood Minds the Morals of Its Audience
• 5 The Experience of Elevation: Responses to Media Portrayals of Moral Beauty
• 6 Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?
• 7 Moral Monitoring and Emotionality in Responding to Fiction, Sports, and the News
• 8 How We Enjoy and Why We Seek Out Morally Complex Characters in Media Entertainment
• 9 The Psychological Functions of Justice in Mass Media
• 10 The Effect of Media on Children’s Moral Reasoning
• Selected Bibliography
• Index