Political Ideology and Moral Dilemma Judgments: An Analysis Using the CNI Model. Dillon M. Luke, Bertram Gawronski. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, February 22, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220987990
Abstract: Many real-world dilemmas involve disagreement about whether decisions should follow moral norms in an unconditional manner (deontology) or be based on the consequences for the greater good (utilitarianism). To examine how political ideology may account for some of these disagreements, the current research used a formal modeling approach to investigate the associations between political ideology and (a) sensitivity to consequences, (b) sensitivity to moral norms, and (c) general preference for inaction versus action in responses to moral dilemmas. Across three studies (N = 996) with samples from the United States (Studies 1 and 3) and the United Kingdom (Study 2), conservatives were less influenced by overall consequences for the greater good in comparison with liberals. Political ideology was not significantly associated with sensitivity to moral norms and general action tendencies. The findings provide more nuanced insights into how political ideology may contribute to disagreements on real-world moral dilemmas.
Keywords: CNI model, deontology, moral judgment, utilitarianism, political ideology
Discussion
The main goal of the current research was to provide deeper insights into the role of political ideology in disagreements about the right course of action in moral dilemmas. Using a battery of moral dilemmas inspired by real-world cases (Körner et al., 2020) and the CNI model to quantify sensitivity to consequences (C), sensitivity to moral norms (N), and general preference for inaction versus action (I) in responses to moral dilemmas (Gawronski et al., 2017), we found that sensitivity to consequences decreased as a function of conservative (vs. liberal) political ideology. Political ideology was not significantly associated with sensitivity to moral norms and general action tendencies. These findings replicated in two exploratory studies (Studies 1 and 2) and one preregistered study (Study 3) with participants from the United States (Studies 1 and 3) and the United Kingdom (Study 2) and remained robust after controlling for basic demographic variables (Study 3). The results also replicated in an integrative data analysis (Curran & Hussong, 2009) combining the data from all three studies (see Table S9 in the Supplemental Online Materials). Scatterplots of the associations between political ideology and the three CNI parameters in the integrative data analysis can be seen in Figure 2.
The current findings offer more nuanced insights into why conservatives and liberals may disagree about the most appropriate course of action in real-world dilemmas. Past research suggests that conservatives are less likely than liberals to endorse actions that violate moral norms for the sake of the greater good (e.g., Hannikainen et al., 2017; Piazza & Sousa, 2014). One potential interpretation of this difference is that conservatives are more concerned about violations of moral norms than liberals (see Young et al., 2013), suggesting a significant positive correlation between conservative (vs. liberal) political ideology and sensitivity to moral norms. Another interpretation is that conservatives are more concerned about actions that interfere with current states of affairs (i.e., status quo bias; see Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988), suggesting a significant positive correlation between conservative (vs. liberal) political ideology and general preference for inaction over action. Neither of these predictions received empirical support in the current studies. Instead, we found a significant negative correlation between conservative (vs. liberal) political ideology and sensitivity to consequences, suggesting that conservatives are less willing to accept consequentialist arguments about the greater good than liberals (see Piazza & Sousa, 2014). In other words, liberals and conservatives seem to agree that certain actions would be morally wrong because they violate consensually accepted moral norms. Yet, they seem to differ in the extent to which they are willing accept trade-offs when a norm violation would be beneficial for the greater good.
An interesting question regarding this finding is whether political differences in sensitivity to consequences are driven by political conservatism, political liberalism, or both. Because participants were recruited in groups based of their political ideology (i.e., conservative, moderate, liberal), follow-up analyses using a categorical classification can provide valuable insights for this question (see Table S5 in the Supplemental Online Materials). While we did not find consistent differences between groups in the three individual studies, an integrative data analysis (Curran & Hussong, 2009) combining the data from all three studies revealed that sensitivity to consequences was significantly weaker in the conservative group than in the liberal group.5 Yet, neither the conservative nor the liberal group differed from the moderate group. Together, these results suggest that sensitivity to consequences varies continuously across the political spectrum and is not driven exclusively by either conservatism or liberalism.
Another interesting question is whether sensitivity to consequences is more strongly associated with social or economic political ideology. Follow-up analyses with the data from the three individual studies did not find consistent evidence for different associations between sensitivity to consequences and social versus economic political ideology. However, when the data from all three studies were combined, an integrative data analysis revealed that sensitivity to consequences showed a significantly stronger association with social compared to economic political ideology (see Tables S6-S9 in the Supplemental Online Materials). This difference is consistent with earlier findings by Chan (2019), who found that preference for utilitarian over deontological judgments is more strongly associated with social compared to economic political ideology. The current results expand on these findings, suggesting that associations between moral dilemma judgments and social political ideology are rooted in differences in sensitivity to consequences.
Why the Difference?
While the current findings suggest that disagreement about the correct course of action in moral dilemmas is rooted in political differences in sensitivity to consequences, it is still unclear why liberals and conservatives differ in the observed manner. One potential explanation could be derived from Greene et al.’s (2001) dual-process theory of moral dilemma judgment, which suggests that deontological judgments are rooted in automatic emotional reactions to the idea of causing harm, whereas utilitarian judgments result from deliberate cognitive analyses of costs and benefits. Thus, to the extent that conservatives are less inclined to engage in deliberate thinking compared to liberals (see Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003), conservatives may show a weaker sensitivity to consequences, as observed in the current studies.
5 The integrative data analysis also revealed a significant difference between groups in general preference for inaction versus action (see Table S5 in the Supplemental Online Materials). However, given that no such difference was not found in the continuous analyses examining associations between political ideology and general preference for inaction versus action, we refrain from drawing conclusions from this finding.
However, counter to this interpretation, research using the CNI model suggests that deliberate thinking influences moral dilemma judgments via general action tendencies rather than sensitivity to consequences. Specifically, Gawronski et al. (2017, Experiments 2a and 2b) found that, although cognitive load led to a weaker preference for utilitarian over deontological judgments, this effect was driven by greater general preference for inaction versus action under cognitive load, not by weaker sensitivity to consequences. These results question not only a core assumption of Greene et al.’s (2001) dual-process theory; they also pose a challenge to the idea that the obtained association between political ideology and sensitivity to consequences is driven by differences in deliberate thinking.
An alternative possibility is that political differences in sensitivity to consequences are rooted in proto-utilitarian inclinations. Kahane and colleagues (2018) have proposed a two-dimensional model of utilitarian psychology, consisting of acceptance of instrumental harm for the sake of the greater good (instrumental harm) and impartial concern for the welfare of others (impartial beneficence). To the extent that instrumental harm is positively associated with political conservatism and impartial beneficence is negatively associated with political conservatism—as proposed by Everett and Kahane (2020)—the current findings may be driven by weaker impartial concern for the welfare of others among conservatives.6 However, previous findings with the CNI model render this possibility unlikely. Körner et al. (2020) examined associations between the three CNI model parameters and the two dimensions of utilitarianism as captured by the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale (OUS; Kahane et al., 2018). Across four studies, neither instrumental harm nor impartial beneficence showed reliable associations with sensitivity to consequences. Instead, both dimensions showed significant negative associations with sensitivity to moral norms, suggesting that self-reported endorsement of utilitarian ideas (as captured by the two dimensions of the OUS) merely serves to justify a rejection of moral norms without increasing people’s actual sensitivity to consequences. Thus, given that political ideology was significantly associated with sensitivity to consequences and unrelated to sensitivity to moral norms, political differences in proto-utilitarian
6 Note that the proposed positive association between political conservatism and instrumental harm should lead to a positive association between conservative (vs. liberal) political ideology and sensitivity to consequences, counter to the negative association obtained in the current studies. inclinations seem rather unlikely to account for the current findings.
A potential answer to the question of why liberals and conservatives differ in their sensitivity to consequences is suggested by the finding that sensitivity to consequences was more strongly associated with social than economic political ideology (see Table S9 in the Supplemental Online Materials). Whereas social political ideology has been found to be more strongly linked to resistance to social change, economic political ideology has been found to be more strongly linked to acceptance of inequality (Duckitt, 2010; Jost, Federico, & Napier, 2009). Together with the current findings, these results suggest that political differences in sensitivity to consequences may be rooted in differences in resistance to social change. Consistent with this conclusion, Hannikainen, Machery, and Cushman (2018) found evidence for a societal shift towards utilitarian judgments in the resolution of moral dilemmas. To the degree that conservatives (relative to liberals) are more resistant to such societal shifts, the negative association between political conservativism and sensitivity to consequences may reflect resistance to an increased sensitivity to consequences at the societal level. Future research might evaluate this hypothesis more directly by examining whether the three parameters of the CNI model are less affected by societal changes among conservatives compared to liberals.
Some Caveats
Although we obtained consistent evidence for an association between political ideology and sensitivity to consequences, it is worth noting that there was only partial support for an association between political ideology and traditional dilemma scores. Consistent with past research (e.g., Hannikainen et al., 2017; Piazza & Sousa, 2014), conservatives showed a weaker preference for utilitarian over deontological judgment than liberals in Studies 1 and 3. However, there were no political differences in preference for utilitarian over deontological judgment in Study 2. A potential reason for these mixed findings is that traditional dilemma scores confound the influence of multiple distinct determinants of moral dilemma judgments (Conway & Gawronski, 2013; Crone & Laham, 2017), which creates noise in the measurement of each confounded factor. Disentangling the confounded factors provides cleaner measures of each factor, which can increase the statistical power to detect associations between a given factor and other variables. Consistent with this interpretation, our findings were consistent with past research when analyses were conducted using the combined data from all three studies (see Table S9 in the Supplemental Online Materials), suggesting that conservatives show a weaker preference for utilitarian over deontological judgment than liberals.
While the association between political ideology and sensitivity to consequences was consistent across studies, it is worth noting that the obtained correlations were relatively small overall. Across studies, conservative (vs. liberal) political ideology showed a correlation with sensitivity to consequences of around r = -.13, and the strength of this association was attenuated when controlling for demographic variables, falling to marginal significance in Studies 1 and 2 (see Footnote 4). The strength of this association may seem somewhat surprising given the strong associations between political ideology and other aspects of moral judgment (e.g., Graham et al., 2009). Thus, although political ideology may contribute to disagreement about the right course of action in real-world dilemmas, it is possible that other person-related variables contribute to such debates over and above political ideology (e.g., Körner et al., 2020; Kroneisen & Heck, 2020; Luke & Gawronski, in press). In support of this possibility, gender was consistently associated with sensitivity to moral norms across studies, and age showed relatively strong associations with sensitivity to consequences and sensitivity to moral norms in Study 3. Future research examining associations between moral dilemma judgments and other person-related characteristics might help to better understand the sources of conflicting views in moral debates about real-world issues.
Related to this point, another important consideration is that the size of associations between political ideology and moral dilemma judgment may be sensitive to content-related aspects of specific dilemmas. Although associations between political ideology and preference for utilitarian over deontological judgments have been replicated with various dilemmas that are different from the ones used in the current studies (e.g., Chan, 2019; Hannikainen et al., 2017; Piazza & Landy, 2013; Piazza & Sousa, 2014; Young et al., 2013), we aimed to address this concern in an integrative data analysis (Curran & Hussong, 2009) that examined the contribution of individual dilemmas to the obtained results by separately excluding each dilemma before the calculation of the three parameter scores (see Table S10 in the Supplemental Online Materials). Confirming the generality of the obtained results, the association between political ideology and sensitivity to consequences was robust across exclusions, with conservatives being significantly less sensitive to consequences than liberals in every single case (-.15 < rs < -.11).
Finally, while the CNI modeling approach taken in the current research offers nuanced insights into the association between political ideology and moral dilemma judgment, all of the analyses are correlational and therefore not indicative of causation. Based on the preceding discussion, it seems possible that political conservatism (vs. liberalism) decreases sensitivity to consequences via resistance to societal shifts toward utilitarian judgments. Future research may test this causal hypothesis by employing longitudinal designs to examine how political ideology predicts changes in sensitivity to consequences over time or experimental designs to examine how sensitivity to consequences is influenced by manipulations of perceived societal standards surrounding moral dilemma judgment.
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