Violence with a conscience: Religiosity and moral certainty as predictors of support for violent warfare.

Abstract

Objective: Emerging research on the moral licensing effect implies that increasing a person's moral certainty may decrease concerns about the moral consequences of violent warfare. Therefore, if religion increases moral certainty, then it may also contribute to support for violent warfare. The present experiment tested the extent to which religion's contribution to moral certainty explains participants' support for the United States' war in the Middle East. Method: Ninety-three predominantly Catholic and Protestant participants from a university setting completed the present study. The study was completed across two separate days. On the first day of the experiment, individual differences in a variety of types of religiosity (e.g., prayer), and moral certainty were measured. On the second day of the experiment, the perception that the United States' war in the Middle East is a religious or geopolitical conflict was experimentally manipulated, and support for violent warfare was measured. Results: Regression analyses and an analysis of variance yielded support for the moral certainty hypothesis. As predicted, greater religiosity relates to greater moral certainty, and greater moral certainty strengthens the (positive) relation between religiosity and support for violent warfare. Furthermore, moral certainty is a stronger predictor of support for violent warfare in religious conflict than it is in geopolitical conflict. Conclusion: The results support the moral certainty hypothesis and suggest that stronger moral certainty (1) predicts greater support for violent warfare, (2) is an underlying moderator of the relation between religiosity and support for violent warfare, and (3) is particularly influential in religious conflict.

Connections between moral psychology and intimate partner violence: Can IPV be read through moral psychology?

“…Paradoxically, they felt as moral and as good as the comparative sample, or even more so. These results would be compatible with the idea suggested by Shaw et al (2011) that those who perpetrate acts of violence are not driven by clinical pathologies. Rather, they may be uninhibited by concerns for the moral consequences of their actions.…”

“…Diversity is everywhere, including in the moral domain, where a huge variety of beliefs and practices can create an appreciable amount of uncertainty and threat, which humans in general are motivated to manage and resolve and that may also be related to violent answers (Haidt, Rosenberg, & Hom, 2003). Therefore, it is not a surprise that moral absolutism strengthens the relationship between religiosity and support for violent warfare (Shaw, Quezada, & Zárate, 2011). Following these ideas, a recent study portrays men convicted of domestic violence as holding significantly higher levels of moral absolutism and self-deception than a comparative group of professional male psychologists.…”

Moral Absolutism, Self-Deception, and Moral Self-Concept in Men Who Commit Intimate Partner Violence

“…Specifically, moral absolutism seems to strengthen the relation between religiosity and support for violent warfare (Shaw et al, 2011). It seems that moral absolutism leads to a moral licensing effect in such a way that feelings of moral certainty satisfy a person's need to feel moral, rendering good acts unnecessary to feed this need and allowing these individuals to indulge in moral laxity.…”

“…People seem to adjust their moral behavior accordingly. They up-regulate it when they feel they are not moral enough and downregulate it when they feel that they are already moral people (Shaw et al, 2011).…”

Wie kommt die Moral in den Kopf?

“…Das Ausmaß an Religiosität kann indes nicht nur friedlich stimmen, sondern auch aggressiv: Eine Studie fand, dass größere Religiosität mit stärkerer moralischer Gewissheit einherging. Diese Gewissheit stärkte wiederum den Zusammenhang zwischen Religiosität und der Unterstützung für Kriege, vor allem von religiösen, weniger von geopolitischen Kriegen (Shaw et al 2011). Es klingt etwas paradox dazu, aber es sind vor allem die Mütter, die ihren Kindern religiöse Werte vermitteln (Dudley und Dudley 1986 (Brosnan et al 2005;Kaiser et al 2012;Proctor et al 2013;.…”