Strong Moral Convictions Research Articles

Moral Intelligence –Theory and in Education

Morality and intelligence influence various aspects of human life and action. They contribute to a certain stabilisation of a young person's functioning in a given society. The development and technological progress that is taking place is conducive to the development of young people, the satisfaction of certain needs, but it cannot guarantee the possibility of shaping basic values such as freedom, justice or responsibility. Currently, material and individualistic values are increasingly promoted. References to moral ideals based on truth, honesty and love, on the other hand, are less frequent. These are important when making future choices or decisions. A particularly important task today, in the face of various threats, addictions and value crises, is to shape the moral intelligence of young people. It involves having strong ethical and moral convictions and acting in accordance with them. The purpose of this article is to introduce the concept of moral intelligence, to provide a definition and a conception of the research issue under consideration on a psychological level. It also shows some conditions of its formation during childhood and adolescence. The considerations undertaken in the article show the importance of moral intelligence in developing appropriate social attitudes, behaviour, acquiring moral principles, teaching responsibility, sensitivity to the suffering of others in adolescents.

The Influence of Religious and Ethical Values on Mitigating Money Politics Among Women in Aceh

Money politics continues to pose a significant challenge in Aceh, notably among populations less acquainted with political processes and facing urgent economic needs. This study aims to explore the influence of religious and ethical values in countering money politics among Acehnese women. Employing a qualitative phenomenological approach, this research gathers primary data through interviews and supplements it with secondary data from existing literature. The findings reveal that although financial and material incentives are compelling, they do not invariably secure women's votes. Adherence to religious teachings, ethical considerations, and personal life philosophies significantly influence their decision-making processes. Although women in Aceh are highly susceptible to money politics, they are more likely to decline such offers compared to men, primarily due to their strong religious and moral convictions. To combat money politics effectively, strategies should emphasize political education and economic empowerment, reinforced by robust religious and ethical instruction, aiming to cultivate a more equitable and healthier democratic environment in Aceh.

The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy. By J. Russell Hawkins

J. Russell Hawkins frames his remarkable book, The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy, with two gatherings at the White House five years apart. In June 1963, John F. Kennedy summoned nearly 250 religious leaders to the East Room to enlist their help in passing civil rights legislation. Following the president’s appeal to emphasize “the moral position of racial equality,” he took questions from the audience (p. 2). Most of the comments were friendly, but a Baptist pastor from Florida dissented, arguing that he and other southerners held a “strong moral conviction” that racial integration defied the will of God (p. 2). When Lyndon B. Johnson convened a group of Southern Baptist ministers five years later, following the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the appeal was different. Whereas Kennedy had sought help to pass legislation, Johnson wanted the assistance of clergy to help change hearts and minds on the matter of racial inclusion.

Can moral convictions against gender inequality overpower system justification effects? Examining the interaction between moral conviction and system justification.

It has been shown that disadvantaged groups who endorse system-justifying beliefs tend to internalize their state of inferiority by expressing ingroup derogation and opposing collective action for change. In the present research, we recruited women - as disadvantaged group - from different countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy) and examined whether their moral conviction against gender inequality, as an absolute stance that does not tolerate any violation, may interact with and overpower system-justifying beliefs. Results from three studies provided support for our hypotheses. First, when women held strong moral conviction, they expressed higher identification with their disadvantaged ingroup and, in turn, higher collective action intentions, independent of system-justifying beliefs. Second, when women held weak moral conviction, higher system-justifying beliefs reduced women's ingroup identification and, in turn, undermined their collective action intentions. This support is found across different contexts of gender inequality (the gender leadership gap, the gender pay gap, and the gender power imbalance), using different methodological approaches (online survey, online experiment, laboratory experiment). Implications, limits, and future directions are discussed.

Нравственно-историческая школа криминалистики

The article considers ways to overcome corruption in the investigation and inquiry bodies by improving the course of criminology and establishing and implementing a moral and historical school. Named origins and pioneers of the ethical-historical school of criminology, given their views on the quality of justice investigator from the psychological side: integrity, strong moral convictions, skill in complex conflict situations, to remain master of their feelings and aspirations, to remain faithful to the moral principles of intolerance to evil, the pursuit of justice, ethical behavior in relations with the suspect, accused, witness, excluding physical or mental violence. It is argued that the communication of the investigator with the accused should not be based on deception and immorality; in such a profession necessary moral fortitude, and perseverance of the investigator in an atmosphere of total temptation and corruption, the ability to effectively resist illegal pressure, selfless dedication in any environment, selflessness, and humanism. The abovementioned application of the content of ethical-historical school of criminology, such as: the development and adoption of a code of ethics for CSI, the CSI oath, improvement or adoption of such codes for various categories of employees of law enforcement bodies and subjects of law enforcement; the implementation of the educational process on criminology interactive exploration of film documents on the history of the sections and fields of criminology, political processes, the Nuremberg trials, investigation and conviction of Nazi criminals and their accomplices, the investigation of disasters, terrorist attacks, the death of political and cultural figures, investigation of resonant crimes from different eras and in recent years, return to the detailed development and implementation in the training of lawyers clear criteria of admissibility of tactics; creation of self-regulating communities in state and law enforcement agencies that can be contacted in cases of corruption pressure. Scientific results demonstrate an extremely low knowledge of the recent history of criminology and the Nuremberg trials by law school graduates. The results are new and have not been published before.

Carl H. Muendel

Carl H. Muendel, 86, died on April 22 in Hockessin, Del. “Carl had a lifelong passion for mineral and stamp collecting, was an active member of the Delaware Mineralogical Society, and also served in Meals on Wheels and Read Aloud Delaware during his retirement. He maintained close ties to his relatives in Germany and traveled there extensively. Carl was a man of strong faith and moral convictions; his modesty, kindness, and intellect will be treasured and dearly missed.”—Christopher Arico-Muendel, son Most recent title: technical service manager for engineering and product safety, DuPont Education: B.S., chemical engineering, 1952, and Eng.Sci.D., chemical engineering, 1959, Columbia University Survivors: wife, Renate; daughter, Anne; sons, Martin and Christopher Arico-Muendel; four grandchildren To recognize your late loved one or colleague, submit obituary information at cenm.ag/obits.

Liars, Damned Liars, and Zealots

This research explored people’s reactions to targets who “went too far” to support noble causes. We hypothesized that observers’ moral mandates would shape their perceptions of others’ advocacy, even when that advocacy was transgressive, that is, when it used norm-violating means (i.e., lying) to achieve a preferred end. Observers were expected to accept others’ advocacy, independent of its credibility, to a greater extent when it bolstered their strong (vs. weak) moral mandate. Conversely, observers with strong (vs. weak) moral conviction for the cause were expected to condemn others’ advocacy—independent of its credibility—to a greater degree when it represented progress for moral opponents. Results supported these predictions. When evaluating a target in a persuasive communication setting, people’s judgments were uniquely shaped by the degree to which the target bolstered or undermined a cherished moral mandate.

Situational Peer effects on Adolescents’ Alcohol Consumption: The Moderating Role of Supervision, Activity Structure, and Personal Moral Rules

ABSTRACTUsing five waves of unique space-time budget data, this study investigates the relevance of peer presence and behavior on adolescents’ alcohol consumption at a situational level, addressing to which degree these situational peer effects are moderated by the setting and by individual differences. Multilevel models, predicting the probability of alcohol consumption in a given hour, show that peers’ alcohol misuse is most relevant during unstructured activities while unsupervised. However, individuals differ in their susceptibility to these situational processes, with adolescents holding strong moral convictions against alcohol consumption being basically immune to situational peer effects, even during unstructured and unsupervised activities.

Lecture two: The evolution of morality: The emergence of personhood

In a series of three articles, presented at the Goshen Annual Conference on Science and Religion in 2015, with the theme ‘Interdisciplinary Theology and the Archeology of Personhood’, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen considers the problem of human evolution – also referred to as ‘the archaeology of personhood’ – and its broader impact on theological anthropology. This trajectory of lectures tracks a select number of challenging contemporary proposals for the evolution of crucially important aspects of human personhood. Lecture Two argues that, on a postfoundationalist view, some of our religious beliefs are indeed more plausible and credible than others. This also goes for our tendency to moralise and for the strong moral convictions, we often hold. It demonstrates that, in spite of a powerful focus on the evolutionary origins of moral awareness, ethics emerge on a culturally autonomous level, which means that the epistemic standing of the particular moral judgements human beings make is independent of whatever the natural sciences can says about their genesis.

Utopian Hopes or Dystopian Fears? Exploring the Motivational Underpinnings of Moralized Political Engagement.

People are more likely to become politically engaged (e.g., vote, engage in activism) when issues are associated with strong moral convictions. The goal of this research was to understand the underlying motivations that lead to this well-replicated effect. Specifically, to what extent is moralized political engagement motivated by proscriptive concerns (e.g., perceived harms, anticipated regret), prescriptive concerns (e.g., perceived benefits, anticipated pride), or some combination of these processes? And are the motivational pathways between moral conviction and political engagement the same or different for liberals and conservatives? Two studies (combined N = 2,069) found that regardless of political orientation, the association between moral conviction and political engagement was mediated by the perceived benefits of preferred but not the perceived harms of non-preferred policy outcomes, and by both anticipated pride and regret, findings that replicated in two contexts: legalizing same-sex marriage and allowing concealed weapons on college campuses.

By any means necessary: The effects of regulatory focus and moral conviction on hostile and benevolent forms of collective action

In two studies, we investigate the effect of individuals' promotion and prevention focus on engagement in collective action. We show that responding to group-based disadvantage out of a sense of moral conviction motivates prevention-oriented- but not promotion-oriented- individuals to engage in collective action. Furthermore, holding such strong moral convictions about the fair treatment of their group causes the prevention-oriented to disregard societal rules against hostile forms of collective action (i.e., forms of action that are aimed at harming the interests of those held responsible for the group's disadvantage). Study 1 showed that prevention-oriented individuals, but not promotion-oriented individuals, with a strong moral conviction about the fair treatment of their group are willing to support both hostile and benevolent forms of collective action. Study 2 replicated this effect and showed that for prevention-oriented individuals but not for promotion-oriented individuals, holding a strong moral conviction about the fair treatment of the group overrides moral objections to hostile forms of collective action in the decision to support these forms of action.

Moral Conviction

We often praise people who stand by their convictions in the face of adversity and practice what they preach. However, strong moral convictions can also motivate atrocious acts. Two significant questions here are (1) whether conviction itself — taken as a mode of belief — has any distinctive value, or whether all the value of conviction derives from its substantive content, and (2) how conviction can be made responsible in a way that mitigates the risks of falling into dogmatism, fanaticism, and other vices. In response to the first question, I suggest that conviction has instrumental value that derives from its relationship to integrity and courage. On the second question, I articulate the roles that reflection, discourse (engagement with others), and humility must play in the dialectical process of maintaining responsible convictions.

Relationships of Equality: A Camping Trip Revisited

G. A. Cohen incisively argued that our judgments of social justice should fit our convictions about how to interact with others in our personal lives. Ironically, the ordinary morality of cooperation invoked in his last book undermines his favored principle of equality, and supports John Rawls’ reliance on a relevantly impartial choice promoting appropriate fundamental interests as a basis for distributive standards. His further objections to Rawls’ account of distributive justice neglect the role of social relations in establishing the proper scope of that impartiality and the moral force of Rawls’ taxonomy of non-ideal societies. In contrast, the powerful evocation of goods of community at the end of Cohen’s last book points to a genuine inadequacy. Conscientious fellow-citizens must take account of the impact of their political choices on options for sharing and caring. In finding a proper balance between these goods and competing individualist concerns, the original position is of too little use to sustain Rawls’ assessment of his conception of justice as complete. In the face of our strong moral convictions about how to live together, both Cohen’s luck egalitarianism and Rawls’ barriers between aspirations to community and political choice must give way.

The Psychology of Moral Conviction

This paper reviews current theory and research that indicates that attitudes held with strong moral conviction (‘moral mandates’) represent something psychologically distinct from other constructs (e.g., attitude strength, partisanship, or religiosity), and that variance in moral conviction has important social and political consequences, such as increased intolerance of attitudinally dissimilar others, difficulties in conflict resolution, increased political participation, willingness to accept violent means to achieve preferred ends, strong ties to positive and negative emotions, and inoculation against the usual pressures to obey authorities, obey the law, or to conform to majority group influence. The normative implications of these findings are both reassuring (moral convictions can protect against obedience to potentially malevolent authorities) and terrifying (moral convictions are associated with rejection of the rule of law, and can provide a motivational foundation for violent protest and acts of terrorism). Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Romanus Egudu As A Historical And Virtuous Poet

This is a critical essay that examines the Nigerian Romanus Egudu‟s poetry, contained in his new book of poems called Prayer of the Powerless, as the work of a historical and virtuous poet. The argument posited is that the poet dwells on the past, present and future history of governance in his country in such a way that reveals him as a rebel with strong moral convictions. Egudu‟s pre-occupancy and poetic strategy are such that enable him to present a collective “mourning” over the social and moral death and preemption of liberty in the advent of civil democracy or in the wake of military and post-military rule in contemporary Nigeria. Visible in his poetry is the power of genuine sympathy, which could resuscitate a broadly comprehensive vision of moral governance.

Moral disagreement and procedural justice: Moral mandates as constraints to voice effects

Procedural voice is a widely used and effective means to reduce or eliminate conflict. Moral disagreements, however, are particularly inflammatory, divisive, and difficult to manage. The current article reports two studies that demonstrated the unique challenge that moral disagreements pose. Specifically, the studies tested the extent to which procedural voice affected justice judgements, group climate, and decision acceptance when people perceived decisions to have moral implications. Results indicated that when people's outcome preferences represent strong moral convictions, outcomes were the primary determinant of perceived fairness and related judgements, irrespective of whether people had voice in the decision-making process.

Moral Convictions Often Override Concerns About Procedural Fairness: A Reply to Napier and Tyler

Napier and Tyler (this issue) question whether moral convictions about outcomes really override the influence of procedural fairness (PF) on fairness judgments and decision acceptance. The empirical answer to this question is “yes.” When people have strong moral convictions about outcomes, perceptions of outcome fairness and decision acceptance are primarily shaped by whether the morally “correct” outcomes are achieved. Pre-decision perceptions of PF have surprisingly little or no effect on these judgments. That said, pre-outcome perceptions of PF sometimes predict post-outcome perceptions of PF, even when people have morally vested outcome preferences. We provide further details supporting the validity and superiority of our data analytic approach and argue that our original conclusions were justified.

Commentary on “Framing Reparations Claims: Differences between the African and Jewish Social Movements for Reparations”

Comment by Victor T. Le Vine Emeritus, Washington University in St. Louis First, in the interest of full disclosure and in deference to the authors of this essay, I admit to having reviewed the article last year and advising the editors of the African Studies Review not to publish it. I do, however, applaud their decision to make it available-with minor revisions by the authors-for open discussion in these pages and therefore agreed to add my comments to those of other reviewers. Two considerations prompted my negative review: one was what I saw were shortcomings in the analysis due to a failure to address the larger contextual issues raised by the original question, and the other, the willingness of the authors, in my view unwarranted, to accept the conjunction of Jewish Holocaust reparations with the demands for reparations for slavery and colonialism. My reading of the revised manuscript confirmed my earlier judgment, particularly with reference to the latter problem, raising serious questions about the authors' analytic logic and arguments. My comments focus on these matters. The authors are certainly correct in concluding that success in reparations claims depends to large extent on how the claim for reparations is framed. They then proceed to point out that the Jewish claims were successful because the event from which claims arose was comparatively recent, that survivors of the Holocaust, or members of their immediate families, or the families of victims, were/are present to make the claims; that appeals for compensatory justice resonated with those with strong moral convictions about genocide-or with residual feelings of guilt about the event. (It should be added the Holocaust itself, as a unique event, had a worldwide audience, at least after the end of World War II, to whom the appeal could be directed.) So far so good. The problem is that the original question, put as Why Africans can't imitate Jews? and also as Why did the Jews obtain reparations, yet we can't? is itself a complex loaded question (in logic, it begs the question) which presupposes definite answers to a previous set of unstated, loaded questions, such as (here), Q: Is the Holocaust the moral equivalent of slavery, or A: Yes. Q. Are not Africans as worthy of compensation for their collective injury, as were the Jews for theirs? A: Yes. Q: Should the Jews be privileged in getting reparations over Africans demanding compensation for the injury they suffered? A: No. All of these unstated questions and answers (which can also be restated as unstated premises) are worth examining on their own merits for the attitudes they imply and the historical-ideological context(s) in which they were raised. That is not, however, the analytical path taken by the authors: they accept the original question as their point of departure without looking at its implications or premises. In short, the original question, used as die conundrum for investigation, violates at least one canon of scientific inquiry: you cannot use a loaded question as the basis of analysis, at least not until it is rephrased without its hidden overload. Without losing the import of the authors' argument, or vitiating their conclusions, how could the issues they raise be put as a valid question(s) for analysis? For example, How have African demands for reparations been framed, and why? Can Jewish claims for Holocaust reparations be compared to African claims involving slavery and colonialism? If so, how? If not, why not? Once stated without its load, the main question could then subsume reasonable discussion of the comparative success (or lack thereof) of the Holocaust and black reparations campaigns. One further reservation directed at the authors' methodology. This study is based on seventy-five interviews with African ambassadors, academics, policymakers, and human rights activists, many [of whom] indicated awareness of the precedent of reparations to Jews. …

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

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.

Moral Conviction: Another Contributor to Attitude Strength or Something More?

Attitudes held with strong moral conviction (moral mandates) were predicted to have different interpersonal consequences than strong but nonmoral attitudes. After controlling for indices of attitude strength, the authors explored the unique effect of moral conviction on the degree that people preferred greater social (Studies 1 and 2) and physical (Study 3) distance from attitudinally dissimilar others and the effects of moral conviction on group interaction and decision making in attitudinally homogeneous versus heterogeneous groups (Study 4). Results supported the moral mandate hypothesis: Stronger moral conviction led to (a) greater preferred social and physical distance from attitudinally dissimilar others, (b) intolerance of attitudinally dissimilar others in both intimate (e.g., friend) and distant relationships (e.g., owner of a store one frequents), (c) lower levels of good will and cooperativeness in attitudinally heterogeneous groups, and (d) a greater inability to generate procedural solutions to resolve disagreements.