Wasta as Social Capital and Legitimate Conservative Order

The article examines the relationship between the traditional group relations (intrafamily, clan, etc.) in the Arab society, which provide access to the political rent, and the processes of socio-political modernization and the building of civil institutions. The Arab governments usually explain the inefficiency or “deviations” in the work of such institutions by national characteristics, adherence to the idea of nation-building, etc., but never by the desire to preserve power and assets of the traditional elites that are based on group loyalty. One of the most common ways of accessing power in order to acquire and redistribute tangible and intangible benefits in the Arab world is Wasta, or a system of connections, based on group loyalty and client-patronage relationships. Loyalty to one’s group that almost everyone belongs to by birth or due to certain life circumstances ensures the interests of the individual in the broadest sense. Wasta’s network and group ties, based on the principles that are at odds with those that the civil society is built upon, impede the development and modernization of social and political institutions. While researchers have studied Wasta relations as such rather structurally, both at the micro-level (from the social network point of view) and at the macro-level (from the institutional point of view), the attempts to build a holistic model that considers Wasta simultaneously from both viewpoints have not yet been crowned with success. The article proposes the conceptualization of Wasta as social capital, which makes it possible to represent this type of relationship as one actor’s “investment” and the other actor’s “loan”. One can also use this holistic model in the analysis of other informal ties inherent in other cultures but also based on group loyalty and client-patronage relationships and provide fertile soil for maintaining conservative order.

Changing Americans’ Attitudes about Immigration: Using Moral Framing to Bolster Factual Arguments

How can the effect of appeals on immigration attitudes be bolstered? Partisans’ tendency to interpret facts consistent with their priors impedes evidence-based persuasion. Accordingly, most prior work finds that favorable information about the impact of immigration has little or no influence on policy preferences. Here we propose that appealing to moral values can bolster the persuasive power of information. Across three experiments (total N = 4,616), we find that an argument based on the value of in-group loyalty, which emphasized that immigrants are critical to America’s economic strength, combined with information about the economic impact of legal immigration, significantly increased Americans’ support for legal immigration. Additionally, we found a significant effect of the moral component of this message, whereas the effect of the information alone was of similar size but only marginally significant. These results show that moral arguments can strengthen the persuasiveness of informational appeals.

Moral Molecules: Morality as a Combinatorial System

What is morality? How many moral values are there? And what are they? According to the theory of morality-as-cooperation, morality is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. This theory predicts that there will be as many different types of morality as there are different types of cooperation. Previous research, drawing on evolutionary game theory, has identified at least seven different types of cooperation, and used them to explain seven different types of morality: family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness and property rights. Here we explore the conjecture that these simple moral ‘elements’ combine to form a much larger number of more complex moral ‘molecules’, and that as such morality is a combinatorial system. For each combination of two elements, we hypothesise a candidate moral molecule, and successfully locate an example of it in the professional and popular literature. These molecules include: fraternity, blood revenge, family pride, filial piety, gavelkind, primogeniture, friendship, patriotism, tribute, diplomacy, common ownership, honour, confession, turn taking, restitution, modesty, mercy, munificence, arbitration, mendicancy, and queuing. These findings indicate that morality – like many other physical, biological, psychological and cultural systems – is indeed a combinatorial system. Thus morality-as-cooperation provides a principled and powerful theory, that explains why there are many moral values, and successfully predicts what they will be; and it generates a systematic framework that has the potential to explain all moral ideas, possible and actual. Pursuing the many implications of this theory will help to place the study of morality on a more secure scientific footing.

Vexing visits: Variables correlating with physician perceptions of patients as “difficult” and overall enjoyment of their delivery of primary ambulatory care

All physicians experience some patients described as “difficult.” Their prevalence negatively impacts work satisfaction. Prior research identified factors present when physicians perceive patients as difficult. Numerous variables are unrelated to vexing patient visits. Three additive patient characteristics predict difficult encounters: 1) depressive or anxiety comorbidity, 2) polysymptomatic patients, and 3) high symptom severity. The sole physician variable was their score on the Physician Belief Scale (PBS) which quantifies negative attitudes towards psychosocial problems. When all three patient predictors exist, high PBS scorers judge twice as many patients as difficult. Five clinic milieu variables correlated weakly with clinic satisfaction among primary care residents. They are: 1) minimal role conflict, 2) autonomy, 3) collegiality, 4) encouragement of professional growth, and 5) work group loyalty. “Positive affect” was among the strongest physician variables but the author labeled it a confounding variable. Finally, a small “n” QI study conducted in this author’s residency explored the role of physician affectivity and identified additional physician characteristics and clinic milieu factors correlating with overall enjoyment of ambulatory clinic practice. Surprisingly, none of the five previously identified clinic milieu variables correlated directly with resident clinic satisfaction. “Supportive staff cohesion” was one milieu variable that correlated significantly with clinic satisfaction. Resident affective characteristics that significantly reduced clinic satisfaction were “hostility” and “negative affectivity.” “Joviality” was positively related to clinic satisfaction. While patient variables are uncontrollable, it is plausible that by physicians changing their beliefs and affectivity the percentage of vexing visits could be cut in half improving work satisfaction.

Moral reframing of messages about mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Despite evidence in support of the benefits of wearing masks, attitudes about mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic became politicized, and therefore tied with political values and group identities. When communicating about political issues, messages targeted to resonate with the core values of the receiver may be effective, an approach known as moral reframing. We first tested the relationships between moral values and mask-wearing in a sample (N=540) of self-identified liberals, conservatives, and moderates in the United States. Anti-mask attitudes were stronger in conservatives, and were associated with increased concerns for in-group loyalty, national identity, and personal liberty. We then crafted messages about the benefits of mask-wearing framed to resonate with these moral concerns, and in a pre-registered study of N=597 self-identified U.S. conservatives, tested the effect of moral reframing on anti-mask attitudes and behaviors. We found that messages framed in terms of loyalty, with appeals to the protection of the community and America, were effective in reducing anti-mask beliefs, compared with unrelated control messages and messages delivering purely scientific information, and that these changes in belief persisted for at least one week. Exploratory analyses showed that participants who saw loyalty-framed messages reported wearing masks in public more frequently in the subsequent week. These data provide evidence that moral reframing of messages about politicized issues can be effective, and specifically that framing messages about health behaviors in terms of group loyalty may be the most productive way of communicating with conservative audiences.

‘The cruelty of righteous people’: Niebuhr on the urgency of cruelty

This paper responds to critics of Reinhold Niebuhr by exploring two themes important for locating his views on cruelty’s emergence in modern society. The first relates to his basic insight into the relationship between individual morality and group loyalty and solidarity. Niebuhr provides a sophisticated argument for such group dynamics in his work, issued in Moral Man, Immoral Society, as well as his essays on race. These also form the basis for his second thematic argument regarding cruelty, the role of ‘righteousness’ as it relates to security and insecurity. Niebuhr’s views on race, I argue, need to be considered more broadly as an example of his views on groups, power, and cruelty. The paper concludes with some modest proposals for thinking about combatting cruelty via Niebuhr’s counsel.

Moral “foundations” as the product of motivated social cognition: Empathy and other psychological underpinnings of ideological divergence in “individualizing” and “binding” concerns

According to moral foundations theory, there are five distinct sources of moral intuition on which political liberals and conservatives differ. The present research program seeks to contextualize this taxonomy within the broader research literature on political ideology as motivated social cognition, including the observation that conservative judgments often serve system-justifying functions. In two studies, a combination of regression and path modeling techniques were used to explore the motivational underpinnings of ideological differences in moral intuitions. Consistent with our integrative model, the “binding” foundations (in-group loyalty, respect for authority, and purity) were associated with epistemic and existential needs to reduce uncertainty and threat and system justification tendencies, whereas the so-called “individualizing” foundations (fairness and avoidance of harm) were generally unrelated to epistemic and existential motives and were instead linked to empathic motivation. Taken as a whole, these results are consistent with the position taken by Hatemi, Crabtree, and Smith that moral “foundations” are themselves the product of motivated social cognition.

Loyalty over Fairness: Acceptance of Unfair Supreme Court Procedures

Evidence of procedural fairness leads individuals to support Supreme Court decisions, even ones with which they disagree. Yet, in some settings, unfair behavior is seen as acceptable, even praiseworthy, if it yields a pleasing outcome for one’s group. The loyalty norm occasionally trumps the fairness norm, and group loyalty has taken on increasing importance in American politics. I use a nationally representative survey with an embedded experiment, and a convenience sample survey experiment, to relate group (i.e., partisan) loyalty and perceptions of (un)fair behavior to support for the Court. I find that when group concerns are unclear, individuals tend to punish the Court for unfair behavior. However, despite conventional wisdom regarding fairness and support, individuals fail to censure unfair behavior when their group benefits from the Court’s impropriety. These effects hold when integrating preferences regarding specific case outcomes. Perceived unfair procedures do not universally harm evaluations of the Supreme Court.