Proscriptive Morality Research Articles

The role of moral identity in the salience of the prescriptive and proscriptive systems of moral self-regulation

ABSTRACT There are two fundamental self-regulatory systems for moral action reflecting an approach-oriented system promoting moral action (prescriptive morality) and an avoidance-oriented system restraining immoral action (proscriptive morality). Despite the presence of these systems, individuals may vary in the extent to which the systems regulate their moral responses. One factor that may heighten prescriptive and proscriptive moral self-regulation is individuals’ moral identity. Three studies examined if the systems of moral regulation are more salient among individuals with a strong internalized moral identity. Possessing a strong internalized moral identity was associated with greater salience of the prescriptive system – with heightened perceptions that prescriptive behaviors should be enacted, that prescriptive behaviors are less a matter of personal preference, and that prescriptive behaviors are expected to yield greater social approval – compared to the proscriptive system. Possessing a strong internalized moral identity appears to orient individuals toward engaging in good (rather than only avoiding bad) behaviors.

Influence of reputational concern and social distance on moral decision-making under the harmful dilemma: Evidence from behavioral and ERPs study

<p id="p00005">Reputational concern has been suggested as an important determinant of human cooperative behavior and moral judgment in social interactions. Previous studies have demonstrated that reputational concern influences behavioral and neural responses during prosocial behaviors and decision-making, such as moral decision-making. Moral decision- making is a typical social decision-making process involving trade-offs between the self and others. It refers to the process in which individuals make optimal choices under the guidance of social systems and norms according to their own value orientations when faced with a variety of possible dilemmas and conflicts in behavioral choices. Emerging studies have shown that social distance modulates behavioral and neural responses during moral decision-making. However, little is known about how reputational concern and social distance interact to affect moral decision-making, particularly regarding the underlying cognitive neural mechanism of moral decision-making associated with proscriptive morality (i.e., harmful behavior). <break/>In the present study, we adopted the “shock-benefit dilemma” task and event-related potential (ERP) technology to examine temporal processing of the interactive influence of reputational concern and social distance on moral decision-making when faced with harmful dilemmas. Participants were instructed to complete a series of alternative dilemmas in an anonymous or public context. After being instructed whether their decisions were going to be made public to the target person, participants decided whether to deliver a certain intensity of painful electric shocks toward the targets (i.e., friends, acquaintances, or strangers) to receive money. A choice not to shock the targets meant that they would forego the benefit. Behavioral and neural responses were recorded while the participants made their decisions. The experiment consisted of 360 trials, including two blocks of anonymous and public situations and 120 trials with friends, acquaintances, and strangers. <break/>The results showed that participants administered fewer electric shocks to friends than to acquaintances and strangers, which suggested an obvious “egoistic altruism” decision tendency in anonymous situations. Participants spent more time and experienced greater disgust in dilemmas involving acquaintances relative to those involving friends and strangers, which showed an obvious “acquaintance effect”. However, these differences were weakened in public situations. As for the ERP results, the dilemmas involving acquaintances elicited a larger P260 component, which is associated with emotional responses, and late positive potential (LPP, 300~450 ms), which is associated with cognitive reasoning. However, these differences in ERP indices disappeared in public situations. <break/>The aim of this study was to explore the interaction between reputational concern and social distance in behavioral and neural responses during moral decision-making involving harmful dilemmas. The results supported the hypothesis that individuals follow the egoistic altruism moral principle to conduct moral decision-making involving reputational concern and social distance. These findings suggest that the uncertainty of acquaintance relations induces stronger negative emotions and cognitive load during moral decision-making, and reputational concern effectively weakens the aversion and dilemma conflict brought about by self-interest tendencies and interpersonal uncertainties.

Motivation and morality: Insights into political ideology.

Our past work linking motivation and morality provides a basis for understanding differences in political ideology and positions across the political spectrum. Conservatism is rooted in avoidance-based proscriptive morality, whereas liberalism is rooted in approach-based prescriptive morality. Two distinct, binding, group moralities reflect these different regulatory systems and emphasize social coordination through Social Order versus social cooperation through Social Justice.

Parenting and Politics: Exploring Early Moral Bases of Political Orientation

Based on Lakoff’s (2002) Strict Father and Nurturant Parent metaphors for political conservatism and liberalism respectively, two studies explored parenting styles, political ideology, and the moral orientations that might link the two. Restrictive parenting (by both mother and father) predicted political conservatism, and this path was mediated by a strong Social Order orientation (Study 1) reflecting, more broadly, an inhibition-based proscriptive morality (Study 2). Political liberalism was associated with a Social Justice orientation, but was not predicted by nurturant parenting in either study. Study 1 included mothers’ reports of their own parenting, and these were correlated with the students’ responses. Findings support a restrictive moral underpinning for conservatism, but raise questions about the assumed unique association between parental nurturance and political liberalism, which is addressed in the discussion.

Paradoxical consequences of prohibitions.

Explanations based in attribution theory claim that strong external controls such as parental restrictiveness and punishment undermine moral internalization. In contrast, 3 studies provide evidence that parental punishment does socialize morality, but of a particular sort: a morality focused on prohibitions (i.e., proscriptive orientation) rather than positive obligations (i.e., prescriptive orientation). Study 1 found young adults' accounts of parental restrictiveness and punishment activated their sensitivity to prohibitions and predicted a proscriptive orientation. Consistent with the greater potency of temptations for proscriptively oriented children, as well as past research linking shame to proscriptive morality, Study 2 found that restrictive parenting was also associated with greater suppression of temptations. Finally, Studies 3A and 3B found that suppressing these immoral thoughts is paradoxically harder for those with strong proscriptive orientations; more specifically, priming a proscriptive (versus prescriptive) orientation and inducing mental suppression of "immoral" thoughts led to the most ego depletion for those with restrictive parents. Overall, individuals who had restrictive parents had the lowest self-regulatory ability to resist their "immoral" temptations after prohibitions were activated. In contrast to common attributional explanations, these studies suggest that harsh external control by parents does not undercut moral socialization but rather undermines individuals' ability to resist temptation.

Moral Context Matters

In response to Graham’s comments, we attempt to clarify aspects of the Model of Moral Motives (MMM). The columns of our model represent three primary contexts for morality, involving behaviors focused on the self, another person, and one’s group. The rows of MMM represent proscriptive morality and prescriptive morality, which broadly reflect motives to protect (from harm) and provide (help); these general motives have distinct manifestations depending on context (i.e., the columns of MMM). The article addresses misunderstandings in Graham’s interpretation of MMM and includes discussions of criteria for categorizing prescriptive versus proscriptive moral motives, the central role of restrictiveness in proscriptive moral regulation, an inconsistency that provides support for the inclusion of group-based Social Justice, and further distinctions between Social Order and Social Justice informed by recent cross-cultural research.

The Effects of Moral Self-Regulation on Prosocial Behavior and Rule Infraction

Moral self-regulation, the dynamic process through which an individual’s moral behavior history influences subsequent moral action, includes a negative-feedback mechanism. When people recall their own moral (immoral) behavior, moral self-perception will deviate from the ideal moral self-image, motivating them to engage in decreased (increased) moral action or increased (decreased) immoral action to compensate their bolstered (threatened) moral self-perception, and thereby activating a moral licensing (cleansing) effect. Whereas moral licensing and cleansing have been frequently reported in studies on prosocial behavior, less is so in rule infraction (e.g., cheating). In the current study, the authors designed two experiments to study the effects of moral self-regulation on prosocial behavior and rule infraction. We predicted that after moral (immoral) priming, participants would demonstrate less (more) charitable giving and more (less) cheating. Moreover, because people are more motivated to avoid harms than to approach benefits, the moral self-regulation process may be asymmetric in terms of prescriptive morality (what we should do) versus proscriptive morality (what we should not do). Specifically, we hypothesized that moral licensing would be more readily observed in charitable giving than in cheating; in contrast, we expected the reverse in moral cleansing. In Study 1, 155 undergraduate students were randomly assigned into positive-traits, negative-traits, or neutral-words condition. In each condition, participants were asked to copy a list of positive or negative moral traits, or inanimate objects; they were also instructed to recall past self-experience relevant to the keywords that they had copied. After the priming task, participants were invited to make a hypothetical donation. A one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted to examine the influence of moral priming on the amount of money that participants intended to donate. In Study 2, 96 undergraduate students' moral self-perception was manipulated using the same method as that in Study 1. Then, participants' cheating behavior was observed. A 3×2 contingency table and a one-way ANCOVA were conducted to explore the effects of moral priming on the occurrence rates and severity of cheating among the three conditions, respectively. Results indicated that participants in the positive-traits condition were more willing to donate higher amount of money than those in the negative-traits and neutral-words conditions (Study 1). Moreover, participants in both experimental conditions were less likely to engage in cheating than those in the control condition, and their cheating behavior was less severe (Study 2). Taken together, the current study partially confirmed the moral cleansing effect in the proscriptive, but not the prescriptive morality system. However, the opposite of moral licensing effect was observed in both conditions. In conclusion, the motivational mechanism of moral action could be far more complex than previously suggested. For one thing, the self-regulation process could be different in prescriptive versus proscriptive morality. For another, people's moral action may be influenced by both moral self-regulation (a compensatory process) as well as moral identity (a consistent process). To better understand and predict moral actions, future research should investigate both processes in the contexts of proscriptive and prescriptive moralities.

Perceptions of parents on how religion influences adolescents' sexual behaviours in two Ghanaian communities: implications for HIV and AIDS prevention.

To understand the role of religion in the sexual behaviours of adolescents, the views of parents who are key agents of socialization were examined from two south-eastern communities in Ghana. Focus Group interviews were conducted with mothers (and female caregivers) of adolescents and one with fathers (and male caregivers) of adolescents. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Findings indicated that parents from one community perceived religion as playing a double-edged role in adolescents' sexual behaviours as on one hand it played a protective role by restraining adolescents from risky sexual behaviours; on the other hand it disparaged the existing traditional measures that regulated adolescents' sexual behaviour. However, parents from the other community found a collaborative interface between the existing social control measures-communal socialization and proscriptive morality with religious ethics. Religious socialization, social capital theory and the concept of social suffering are used to explain some of the findings of this study. Implications for HIV and AIDS education and prevention are also discussed.

Unintended Consequences of Moral “Over-Regulation”

A proscriptive moral orientation, involving a focus on “should nots,” is used to resolve a contradiction in the moral socialization literature made evident by findings related to shame. The traditionally accepted view that underregulation of morality (i.e., absence of internalized moral standards) accounts for increased moral transgressions by children of highly restrictive parents is reconceptualized as a problem of overregulation of proscriptive morality, reflected in the internalized focus on prohibitions. Implications of a strong proscriptive orientation for hypocritical punitive responses towards others and for the ironic role of sin emphasized in some religions are briefly discussed.

Proscriptive versus prescriptive morality: Two faces of moral regulation.

A distinction is made between two forms of morality on the basis of approach-avoidance differences in self-regulation. Prescriptive morality is sensitive to positive outcomes, activation-based, and focused on what we should do. Proscriptive morality is sensitive to negative outcomes, inhibition-based, and focused on what we should not do. Seven studies profile these two faces of morality, support their distinct motivational underpinnings, and provide evidence of moral asymmetry. Both are well-represented in individuals' moral repertoire and equivalent in terms of moral weight, but proscriptive morality is condemnatory and strict, whereas prescriptive morality is commendatory and not strict. More specifically, in these studies proscriptive morality was perceived as concrete, mandatory, and duty-based, whereas prescriptive morality was perceived as more abstract, discretionary, and based in duty or desire; proscriptive immorality resulted in greater blame, whereas prescriptive morality resulted in greater moral credit. Implications for broader social regulation, including cross-cultural differences and political orientation, are discussed.