On the “Exporting” of Morality: Its Relation to Political Conservatism and Epistemic Motivation

Abstract

A new phenomenon, moral exporting (ME), is introduced to capture active attempts to promote certain views of morality to others. It was hypothesized that political conservatives would be more likely to exhibit ME, due in part to strong epistemic concerns for certainty that may become attached to the moral domain. Related items from the 1988 and 2006 General Social Surveys were analyzed, and new scales were developed to better assess ME and specific moral-related epistemic concerns (moral absolutism). In a second study, these scales were administered to a large college student sample along with measures of political ideology and need for closure (NFC). Results generally showed that political conservatism was strongly related to the new ME factor. Further analysis determined that both moral absolutism (MA) and NFC accounted for significant portions of this relationship, but that the specific epistemic construct (MA) was a more proximal mediator. Discussion centers on further distinguishing ME and MA from related constructs, as well as on future research and applications.

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“…That leads them to perceive their own moral beliefs to be the "right" ones (McGregor, 2006;McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001). Moral absolutism, understood as the degree to which people believe that their own definition of morality is objectively correct (Peterson, Smith, Tannenbaum, & Shaw, 2009), has been related to moral exporting, a behavior that arises to confirm certain ways of thinking about morality with the explicit purpose of bringing others into line with the self, rather than the self in line with others.…”

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