Exploring the psychological underpinnings of the moral mandate effect: motivated reasoning, group differentiation, or anger?

Full Abstract

When people have strong moral convictions about outcomes, their judgments of both outcome and procedural fairness become driven more by whether outcomes support or oppose their moral mandates than by whether procedures are proper or improper (the moral mandate effect). Two studies tested 3 explanations for the moral mandate effect. In particular, people with moral mandates may (a) have a greater motivation to seek out procedural flaws when outcomes fail to support their moral point of view (the motivated reasoning hypothesis), (b) be influenced by in-group distributive biases as a result of identifying with parties that share rather than oppose their moral point of view (the group differentiation hypothesis), or (c) react with anger when outcomes are inconsistent with their moral point of view, which, in turn, colors perceptions of both outcomes and procedures (the anger hypothesis). Results support the anger hypothesis.

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Author information

Author/s: Mullen, Elizabeth (E); Skitka, Linda J (LJ);

Affiliation: Department of Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. e-mullen(-atsign-)kellogg.northwestern.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Randomized Controlled Trial; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Journal: Journal of personality and social psychology (J Pers Soc Psychol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-Apr; vol 90 (issue 4) : pp 629-43

Dates: Created 2006/05/02; Completed 2006/09/28; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 16649859, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Abortion, Induced
Adolescent
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Anger
Chicago
Conflict (Psychology)
Crime - legislation & jurisprudence
Female
Humans

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