Jennifer Cole Wright

The Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Moral Conviction: Implications for Attitudinal and Behavioral Measures of Interpersonal Tolerance

The present studies investigate the role of both cognitive and affective dimensions of moral conviction in contributing to negative interpersonal responses. After demonstrating that the cognitive and affective dimensions of moral conviction are distinct constructs, the studies show that the cognitive dimension is sufficient to produce many forms of interpersonal intolerance. Simply believing an issue to be moral (i.e., objectively grounded, non-negotiable) results in greater intolerance for (Study 1), less sharing with (Study 2), and greater distancing from (Study 3) people with divergent attitudes. The emotional intensity with which beliefs are experienced is not alone explanatory. Nonetheless, it interacts with moral beliefs to produce the highest levels of interpersonal intolerance, distancing from dissimilar others, and context insensitivity. This interaction pattern between moral beliefs and affect was specific to emotional intensity and not other measures of attitude strength (Study 3).

Portraits of Early Moral Sensibility in Two Children's Everyday Conversations

Two childrens conversations with adults were examined for reference to moral issues using transcripts of archived at-home family talk from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database (MacWhinney, 2000). Through target words (e.g., good, wrong, mean) in transcripts of two children between ages 2.5 and 5.0 years, 1,333 moral conversations were identified. Conversations were examined for whether and when children discussed moral issues, how they used moral words (e.g., to communicate feelings, ask for reasons, etc.), what was discussed and in what contexts, and whether children were active or passive contributors. The resulting case study portraits of early moral sensibility extend and challenge extant findings, revealing substantive differences between the two childrens moral sensibilities as well as commonalities, including a tendency to be active rather than passive in moral conversation, to focus on the dispositions/behaviors of others, and to engage in moral conversation primarily to give/ask for reasons, communicate feelings, and (dis)approve.

Understanding the role of dispositional and situational threat sensitivity in our moral judgments

Previous research has identified different moral judgments in liberals and conservatives. While both care about harm/fairness (‘individualizing’ foundations), conservatives emphasize in-group/authority/purity (‘binding’ foundations) more than liberals. Thus, some argue that conservatives have a more complex morality. We suggest an alternative view—that consistent with conservatism as ‘motivated social cognition’, binding foundation activation satisfies psychological needs for social structure/security/certainty. Accordingly, we found that students who were dispositionally threat-sensitive showed stronger binding foundation activation, and that conservatives are more dispositionally threat-sensitive than liberals. We also found that in a heightened threat situation liberals (especially social liberals) showed increased binding foundation activation. These results support the view that the binding foundations function differently in our moral cognition than the individualizing foundations.

The Social Cost of Atheism: How Perceived Religiosity Influences Moral Appraisal

AbstractSocial psychologists have found that stereotypes correlate with moral judgments about agents and actions. The most commonly studied stereotypes are race/ethnicity and gender. But atheists compose another stereotype, one with its own ignominious history in the Western world, and yet, one about which very little is known. This project endeavored to further our understanding of atheism as a social stereotype. Specifically, we tested whether people with non-religious commitments were stereotypically viewed as less moral than people with religious commitments. We found that participants’ (both Christian and atheist) moral appraisals of atheists were more negative than those of Christians who performed the same moral and immoral actions. They also reported immoral behavior as more (internally and externally) consistent for atheists, and moral behavior more consistent for Christians. The results contribute to research at the intersection of moral theory, moral psychology, and psychology of religion.

The psychological significance of humility

Abstract Humility is a virtue with a rich and varied past. Its benefits and pitfalls – indeed, its status as a virtue – have been debated by philosophers and theologians. Recently, psychologists have entered into the dialectic, with a small but growing body of empirical research at their disposal. We will discuss this research on humility, including our own recent contributions. Our goal is to shed light on the following three important questions: First, what is humility? Second, why we should care about being humble? Finally, are there constructive steps we can take to induce people to adopt more humble at titudes towards themselves and others? In the process of answering these questions, we will consider the major empirical accounts of humility in the literature, highlight their primary difficulties, and then introduce a new account that cuts through the confusion, getting to the core of what we take humility to be.

Be it ever so humble: Proposing a dual-dimension account and measurement of humility

Abstract What does it mean to be humble? We argue that humility is an epistemically and ethically aligned state of awareness – the experience of ourselves as a small part of a larger universe and as one among a host of other morally relevant beings. So conceived, humility can be operationalized and measured along the dual dimensions of low self-focus and high other-focus and is distinct from other related constructs (e.g., modesty and open-mindedness). We discuss our newly developed scale (Study 1 and 2), and provide preliminary validation using self-report (Study 3) and behavioral measures (Study 4), showing that humility is related to people’s general ethical orientation (e.g., empathy, universalism/benevolence, and civic responsibility), their well-being (e.g., sense of autonomy, life-purpose, and secure attachment), mature religious beliefs/practices, and reactions to disagreement – specifically, people high in humility sat closer and less angled away from their conversation partner with whom they disagreed. Together, this provides support for our new Dual-Dimension Humility Scale.

Some Varieties of Humility Worth Wanting

In this paper we first set the stage with a brief overview of the tangled history of humility in theology and philosophy—beginning with its treatment in the Bible and ending with the more recent work that has been done in contemporary philosophy (§§1–2). Our two-fold goal at this early stage of the paper is to explore some of the different accounts of humility that have traditionally been developed and highlight some of the key debates in the current literature. Next, we present the findings from several studies we recently conducted in an effort to explore people’s intuitions and beliefs about humility as well as their experiences with being humble (or failing to be humble) (§3). Finally, we discuss the relevance of our findings to the ongoing philosophical debates about humility—suggesting that while some varieties of humility are problematic, other varieties of humility are certainly worth wanting (§4).

On the Value Integration of Successfully Reformed Ex-Convicts A Comparison With Moral Exemplars

The issue of successfully reintegrating ex-prisoners into society is a critical one. To assess the process of successful reintegration, we interviewed five male ex-convicts about their past versus present lives. Their responses were coded for self-oriented (agency) and community-oriented values. We found a shift away from “unmitigated” agency, toward community values from past to present, and also an integration of agency with community similar to that found in moral exemplars. This increase in integration was not found in a demographically matched control group. The transitions exemplified in these ex-convicts’ narratives help define potential paths for successful reintegration into society.

Imaginative Role-Playing as a Medium for Moral Development: Dungeons & Dragons Provides Moral Training

This study investigates the use of imaginative role-play games to sponsor positive development in young adult moral reasoning. Twelve college students participated in six approximately 4-hour gaming sessions using a customized game system based on Dungeons & Dragons™ (D&D, 1974, 4th ed.). The games contained embedded social/moral dilemmas (e.g., whether to torture a prisoner for information) that participants encountered and had to work through as a group. Significant growth in moral development, as measured with the Defining Issues Test and the Self-Understanding Interview was demonstrated in the gaming groups, but was not replicated in two control groups, who did not participate in the gaming sessions. This suggests that imaginative role-play gaming structures can function as an engaging, interactive “moral training ground,” a medium that promotes moral development, and highlights the difference between antisocial and prosocial violence.

Located in the Thin of It: Young Children's Use of Thin Moral Concepts.

Abstract One important socio-cultural medium through which young children’s moral understanding is cultivated is parent/child discourse. Of particular interest to us was young children’s use of basic (‘thin’) evaluative concepts (good, bad, right and wrong), which are ubiquitous in everyday discourse and serve as a potential bridge from the non-moral to the moral domain. We investigated 14 2–5-year-old children’s (and their parents’) use of thin evaluative concepts and found that while they frequently used good and bad to morally evaluate other people’s and their own psychological/dispositional states and behaviors—as well as, less frequently, to highlight relevant standards, expectations and rules—they did not use right and wrong. In contrast, a sample of US written and spoken public conversation revealed that adults did. Reasons for this are discussed, along with the frequency of different types of moral evaluations, differences between children and their parents, and age-related trends.