The social dynamics of morality

Abstract

In this dissertation, I try to answer fundamental questions about how morality functions in various settings. In particular, I use a wide range of content domains, measures, methods and manipulations to examine how people react to the morally motivated behavior of others. In exploring this issue, I focus on reactions towards others who take a moral stance as well as on reactions towards oneself. The starting point for the research described in this dissertation is the observation that people sometimes react negatively when others show moral behavior. For example, in one experiment, participants tasted meat during the study. Hereafter, they were confronted with the reaction of someone who refused to taste this meat out of moral or non-moral reasons. I demonstrated that people who ate meat felt threatened by moral vegetarians. Furthermore, people evaluated themselves more negatively after exposure to moral vegetarians. Moreover, I showed that these effects were attenuated when people could protect their self-concepts, for instance, by cleansing their hands. The behaviors I focus on are not moral or immoral behaviors per se. Instead, what I show is that labelling or perceiving them as moral—regardless of their exact content—has a strong influence on people’s self-concepts, their evaluations of others, and their actual behaviors. This leads to the conclusion that morality plays an important role in regulating people’s attitudes and behaviors in the social world.