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19 - The Consequences of Moral Conviction in Politics

More Negative Than Positive?

from Part II - The Politics of Intergroup Attitudes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2022

By
Brittany E. Hanson ,
Daniel C. Wisneski  and
G. Scott Morgan
Edited by
Danny Osborne  and
Chris G. Sibley
Danny Osborne
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
Chris G. Sibley
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
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Summary

Associating a social or political attitude with one’s subjective sense of moral right and wrong (i.e., imbuing the attitude with 'moral conviction') is related to a variety of positive and negative consequences. For example, holding an attitude with moral conviction predicts greater political engagement such as voting – a normatively positive outcome. However, it also predicts greater political intolerance – a normatively negative outcome. In this chapter, we review literature exploring moral conviction’s consequences and note that the majority of them are normatively negative. We propose two possible explanations for this 'negativity bias' in the past research. On the one hand, the asymmetry in favour of negative consequences could be due to moral conviction having more negative rather than positive outcomes. On the other hand, the asymmetry could result from researchers selecting particularly polarised issues that lead to negative outcomes rather than issues with moral consensus, which may have positive outcomes.

Keywords

Moral convictionNegativity biasMoralityPolitical beliefsAttitudes
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology , pp. 298 - 310
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

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