Moral decision-making among young muslim adults on harmless taboo violations: The effects of gender, religiosity, and political affiliation

Abstract

Shweder's Big Three Theory of Intuitive moral approach has not yet been investigated in Muslim culture. We aim at replicating Haidt and his colleagues' (1993) work using harmless taboo violation stories with a Muslim population of 167 young adults in Turkey. Participants' justifications and victim references were examined in terms of the three ethics of morality and their subsequent link to perceived harmfulness. Results revealed that moral judgments differed by participants' gender, political affiliation, and religiosity. Women were more supportive of interference and felt more bothered than men. Secularists, Islamists, and also highly religious people were similar on most of the dimensions of moral decision making. Consequently, influences of moral intuitions varied by culture, political affiliation, religiosity level, and gender, while perceived harmfulness was most correlated to the ethic of divinity.