In my dissertation research (with Benoît Monin), I demonstrate that people who moralize an issue use that issue as a lens through which they judge others and make social decisions, which makes it difficult for them to relate to and work with those who disagree with them. While individuals who disagree about non-moral issues can put aside their differences and work together, moral disagreements (even controlling for attitude extremity) create global negative perceptions, hostility and a desire for greater social distance. Even disagreements on novel issues, experimentally framed in moral or non-moral terms, can produce these effects. In one study, participants read about an organization that had decided not to pay for a franchisee’s new parking lot, which either had moral implications (because the parking lot emitted a harmful chemical) or was simply a poor business decision (because the parking lot’s bad smell was repelling customers and employees); then they read about a coworker (with no influence on the organization’s decision) who expressed approval for the decision. Even in this novel context, participants judged this coworker more harshly when the parking lot issue had moral implications than when it only had business implications.

The way moralizing affects behavior may depend on how people understand moral standards: specifically, whether they believe moral behavior ought to be a result of actors’ own individual moral compass, or whether they recognize the role of shared social and cultural norms in shaping morality. In ongoing work (with Kristin Laurin), I have explored how variation in beliefs about the locus of morality affects, in particular, feelings about punishment and punitive behavior. While punishment can be a constructive enforcement mechanism, it can also be angry and aggressive, and I argue that the potentially aggressive nature of punishment produces strong ambivalence in people who believe morality ought to come from within: these individuals are especially concerned about appearing aggressive themselves, but at the same time they hold norm violators personally responsible and thus feel the strongest disapproval and anger. People who endorse a personal view of morality should therefore show less punishment when they are able to restrain themselves, but more punishment when their anger takes over. Indeed, I show that endorsing a personal view of morality is associated with harsher judgments of both hypothetical norm violators (e.g., a hypothetical coworker who failed to own up to a mistake) and real-life norm violators (real participants acting selfishly in dictator games) and with higher punishment of real violators, but with lower intentions to punish hypothetical violators, who presumably elicit less vivid feelings of disapproval. This work sheds light on the contradictory norms surrounding punishment, and it suggests that individuals’ conceptions of the locus of moral motivation may be an overlooked factor in predicting punitive behavior, and perhaps other types of morally motivated behavior as well.

Previous research (e.g. Kreps & Monin, under review) suggests that people who make a moral statement are seen as more committed to their stance. In this project, we explore whether these perceptions of increased commitment make it more difficult for people who have made a moralized statement to reverse course, because third parties judge such targets as more hypocritical compared to those who have similarly changed their attitudes but whose initial statement was not morally framed.

Previous research suggests that people for whom a given domain is sacred not only want others to share their overall position in that domain but also to recognize its sacredness. In this project, we explore whether audiences who moralize a given issue react negatively to speakers who express a position on the same side of the issue that is not morally framed. Despite coming to the correct conclusion, such speakers may be perceived negatively simply for not having the correct basis for their views.