Gut Reactions

Theory and research point to different ways moral conviction and religiosity connect to trust in political authorities to decide controversial issues of the day. Specifically, we predicted that stronger moral convictions would be associated with greater distrust in authorities such as the U.S. Supreme Court making the ‘‘right’’ decisions regarding controversial issues. Conversely, we predicted that stronger religiosity would be associated with greater trust in authorities. We tested these hypotheses using a survey of a nationally representative sample of Americans (N 5 727) that assessed the degree to which people trusted the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the legal status of physician-assisted suicide. Results indicated that greater religiosity was associated with greater trust in the U.S. Supreme Court to decide this issue, and that stronger moral convictions about physician-assisted suicide were associated with greater distrust in the U.S. Supreme Court to decide this issue. Also, the processes underlying religious trust and distrust based on moral convictions were more quick and visceral than slow and carefully considered. In 2006, pro-traditional-marriage groups in California distributed a news release arguing that their supporters should not trust the courts, a surprising reaction to an appellate court decision that had just affirmed their position on the issue (WorldNetDaily, 2006). Specifically, the appellate court had upheld the status of Proposition 22, which defined marriage in California as between a man and a woman. Despite this success, pro-traditional-marriage groups were concerned that this case would be appealed to the California Supreme Court and could be overturned. As a result, they favored taking the decision out of judges’ hands by passing a constitutional amendment defining marriage in traditional terms. The case suggests that when people have strong moral convictions about a cause, they are less likely to trust legal authorities to make the ‘‘right’’ decision. Allowing authorities to decide such issues opens the door to possible compromises, or authorities potentially getting it wrong. When people have moral convictions about things like the sanctity of marriage, however, to compromise or risk that authorities may get it wrong seems to undermine perceivers’ commitment to first-order truths or conceptions of the good—it is akin to embracing wickedness, if not evil. The goals of the present study were threefold: to empirically test whether people are less likely to trust even highly legitimate authorities when perceivers have a strong moral stake in the issue at hand; to examine whether religiosity and morality would have similar effects on trust in political authorities or whether, in contrast to moral conviction, religiosity would be associated with greater rather than less trust in political authorities; and to test whether morally or religiously motivated trust or distrust in authorities is a visceral emotional response or a rationally and carefully considered response. These hypotheses were tested in the context of people’s degree of trust in the U.S. Supreme Court to make a decision about the legal status of physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Before turning to additional specifics about the study, we first provide brief reviews of what we know about the psychology of moral conviction, how it might relate to trust or distrust in authority, and why religiosity and moral conviction may have different associations with trust in political authorities. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MORAL CONVICTION Attitudes held with strong moral conviction are likely to be authority independent, and may be based more on visceral emotional responses than on careful deliberation (Mullen & Skitka, 2006). When moral convictions are at stake, people are more likely to believe that duties and rights follow from greater moral purposes than from the rules, procedures, or authorities themselves (Skitka, Bauman, & Mullen, 2008; see also Kohlberg, 1976; Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999). A moral perspective also focuses people more on their ideals, and the way they believe things ‘‘ought to’’ or ‘‘should’’ be done. Address correspondence to Daniel C. Wisneski, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, 1007 West Harrison St., MC 285, Chicago, IL 60607, e-mail: [email protected]. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume ]]]—Number ]] 1 Copyright r 2009 Association for Psychological Science Consistent with this idea, research indicates that people have more difficulty coming up with procedures to resolve conflict when they have strong moral convictions about the issue at hand (Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005). These results suggest that people do not trust procedural solutions to reach the correct decision. One goal of the current study was to directly test the distrust hypothesis. Specifically, we tested whether people were more likely to distrust highly legitimized political authorities, such as the Supreme Court, when they have a strong moral stake in the issue to be decided. Additionally, we explored the degree to which moral conviction and religiosity have similar or different effects on trust in political authorities to decide issues of the day. RELIGIOSITY AND TRUST IN AUTHORITY People’s feelings about PAS have clear connections to religiosity. Fundamental Judeo-Christian and Islamic tenets insist that taking a human life defies the divine, and the vast majority of official church positions explicitly forbid the practice of PAS (Melton, 1991). Furthermore, disapproval of PAS is three times higher among self-reported religious people than nonreligious people in the U.S. (Hamil-Luker & Smith, 1998). Given that religious individuals tend to have particularly strong feelings about PAS, stronger religiosity may be associated with weaker trust in secular authorities to decide the issue of PAS. What remains a more open question is whether moral convictions represent the same thing as, or something different from, people’s religious beliefs. Theories in moral development suggest that people’s religious beliefs are based more on authorities and rules, whereas people’s moral beliefs are comparatively authority independent (Nucci & Turiel, 1978; Turiel, 2002). Religious authorities or institutions determine what is permissible or impermissible, and at least some of these determinations evaporate in the absence of authority or institutional support. Conversely, people’s moral imperatives hold even in the absence of authority or institutional support (Nucci & Turiel, 1978). Moreover, belief in God and a general high level of trust in religion load on the same factor structure as general trust in the state and average trust in the government to handle a host of specific issues (Proctor, 2006). In short, these results suggest that religiosity reflects a generalized willingness to trust authority, regardless of whether the authority is secular or religious. Therefore, we predicted that the effects of moral conviction and religiosity on trust in the U.S. Supreme Court to make a decision about PAS would diverge. Specifically, we predicted that stronger moral convictions about PAS would be associated with greater distrust in the Supreme Court to decide the legal status of this practice, and that stronger religiosity would be associated with greater trust in the Supreme Court to decide the status of this practice. How moral convictions and religiosity related to response latencies to report trust in the court would inform whether trust or distrust in the court is a more visceral or considered response. IS TRUST IN AUTHORITY VISCERAL OR CONSIDERED? Psychologists are deeply divided on the question of whether moral judgments are based more on emotion or considered thought. Moral intuitionists argue that people base their moral judgments on fast, affectively laden gut feelings. Reasoning comes into play only in the form of post hoc justifications for these more visceral responses (e.g., Haidt, 2001). Rationalists argue that people’s moral sense comes from cognitive appraisal of conditions such as harm or injustice. According to these theories, strong affect follows, rather than precedes, moral cognition (e.g., Kohlberg, 1984; Nucci, 2001). These different schools of thought yield different predictions about how quickly people decide whether they trust or distrust an authority to make a decision on a moralized issue. If moral convictions are based more on intuition and emotion than rational weighing of alternatives, then people should make their trust/distrust judgments very quickly. Therefore, stronger moral convictions about the issue at hand should be associated with faster response latencies in reporting trust or distrust in authority. However, if people carefully weigh their trust in authority to make a moral decision, they should take longer to make a decision when moral conviction is high. Legitimacy is believed to create a duty and obligation to obey as an imperative that replaces even personal moral standards as a guide or primary motivation (Kelman & Hamilton, 1989). As a result, people may feel some tension between personal moral convictions and trusting or distrusting an authority. Regardless of whether people report high or low trust in authority, if people are rationally weighing these kinds of considerations, moral conviction should be associated with longer response latencies to provide a trust judgment.