Moral Foundations Theory and Attitudes Towards the Punishment and Criminalisation of Drug Offenders

<p>Research on punitive attitudes has generally found some level of consensus on the relative seriousness of different offence types. However, how to approach the issue of drug offending is often a heavily debated issue, with some portions of society supporting harsh punishments for drug offenders, and others arguing for no sanctions at all. The current study, using both a student and general population sample, aimed to identify the underlying moral reasons behind these attitudes. Participants completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, a scale measuring the factors that influence a person’s moral judgment, as well as numerous other scales that measured their punishment responses towards a variety of drug, harm, and ‘taboo’ sexual offences and practices. The endorsement of binding moral foundations, those relating to group-based moral concerns, was found to be a predictor of increased overall levels of punitiveness, while the endorsement of the foundation of purity was found to predict punitive attitudes towards drug offences and ‘taboo’ sexual practices, but not harm offences. Additionally, there were significant links between participants’ levels of moral outrage, their preference for punishment, and their support for the criminalisation of the various offences. The results of this study suggest that punishment responses towards both drug offences and ‘taboo’ sexual practices rely on a similar moral reasoning process, one that relies on perceptions of impurity to inform the wrongfulness of an offence.</p>

Moral Foundations Theory and Attitudes Towards the Punishment and Criminalisation of Drug Offenders

<p>Research on punitive attitudes has generally found some level of consensus on the relative seriousness of different offence types. However, how to approach the issue of drug offending is often a heavily debated issue, with some portions of society supporting harsh punishments for drug offenders, and others arguing for no sanctions at all. The current study, using both a student and general population sample, aimed to identify the underlying moral reasons behind these attitudes. Participants completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, a scale measuring the factors that influence a person’s moral judgment, as well as numerous other scales that measured their punishment responses towards a variety of drug, harm, and ‘taboo’ sexual offences and practices. The endorsement of binding moral foundations, those relating to group-based moral concerns, was found to be a predictor of increased overall levels of punitiveness, while the endorsement of the foundation of purity was found to predict punitive attitudes towards drug offences and ‘taboo’ sexual practices, but not harm offences. Additionally, there were significant links between participants’ levels of moral outrage, their preference for punishment, and their support for the criminalisation of the various offences. The results of this study suggest that punishment responses towards both drug offences and ‘taboo’ sexual practices rely on a similar moral reasoning process, one that relies on perceptions of impurity to inform the wrongfulness of an offence.</p>

Stigmatization of Voluntarily Childfree Women and Men in the UK

People who choose not to have children may face negative social judgment. Using a UK sample, Study 1 ( N = 199) successfully replicated Ashburn-Nardo’s (2017) finding that childfree targets are perceived as less psychologically fulfilled than targets with children. The effect, however, appeared limited to expected decision regret rather than general fulfillment, which was later confirmed in Study 2 ( N = 329). In contrast to Ashburn-Nardo , our results did not indicate that moral outrage mediates the effect (Study 1), but exploratory findings suggested that perceivers who intend to have children of their own perceive the childfree as morally inferior and less likable (Study 2). Participants’ endorsement of conservative values was not consistently related to negative perceptions of childfree targets.

The Art of Stoic Living

Meditation is key to the art of Stoic living. But it’s not Zen or Buddhist meditation. If you are meditating like an Eastern monk, you are trying to quiet the chattering mind. If you are meditating like a Stoic, you are cultivating that busy mind. How does self-talk, and often self-blame, promote calm? Stoic living also involves monitoring the onset of disruptive emotions, and some Stoic-minded teachers have designed Stoic exercises for this kind of impulse control in their classrooms. Others practice Stoicism by looking to moral exemplars. A Cato or a Socrates, as the Stoics would say. But who is a modern moral exemplar? Take Hugh Thompson, the young American Army helicopter pilot who stopped the My Lai massacre. Would he be part of a Stoic pantheon? Moral outrage at the brutal massacre of 500 innocents prompted him to land his helicopter that day and stop the onslaught. Would a Stoic permit, or extoll, just action motivated by righteous anger?

Motivated Moral Outrage Among Meat-Eaters

Many meat-eaters experience cognitive dissonance when aware that their eating behaviors contradict their moral values, such as desires to protect the environment or animals from harm. One way in which people morally disengage from their behaviors—and thus avoid dissonance—is to displace responsibility onto others. Aligning with this notion, results of three studies (total N = 1,501) suggest that expressing moral outrage at third-party transgressors reduces dissonance and preserves moral identity among meat-eaters. When participants understood their in-group as responsible for factory farming’s negative impact or read about factory farming’s harms to animals, expressing moral outrage at third-party transgressors reduced guilt and elevated self-rated moral character. Moreover, reflecting on the morally troublesome nature of meat-eating led participants to express more moral outrage at a third-party organization responsible for animal abuse, an effect eliminated by self-affirmation. These findings substantiate moral outrage as a new mechanism to justify meat consumption.