Concerns about morality can predict willingness to acquiesce
to institutional procedures that were minimally fair and even ones that were
unfair (Bauman, 2006). Interestingly, when individuals believe that an
authority has acted in contradiction to their moral beliefs, they are more
likely to oppose any authority. Mullens and Nadler (2008) found that
individuals were both significantly less likely to return a pen to the
experimenter, despite having been asked at the beginning of the experiment to
do so, and more likely to cheat on an experimental task, after reading about a
legal decision with which they morally disagreed.
In Mullen and Skitka (2009), participants read about various
criminal cases. Each of these cases had a few procedural violations that could
influence evaluations of the fairness of the decision. Some participants read
about a case where the defendant was acquitted for a crime that supported,
opposed, or was neutral to the participant’s moral convictions. Others read
about a case where the defendant was convicted of a crime that supported,
opposed, or was neutral to the participant’s moral convictions. If the
defendant’s crime was neutral to the participant’s moral convictions, they
tended to prefer guilty verdicts, believing these verdicts to be more fair. If
the defendant’s crime supported their moral convictions, they tended to find an
acquittal or a conviction to be equally fair. If the defendant’s crimes opposed
their moral convictions, they tended to find an acquittal to be unfair. In this
last case, the amount of anger reported by the participant mediated this
relationship. The more angry the participant was, the less fair they found the
verdict.
Interestingly, participants across all conditions were
equally likely to review the details of the court case. They, in other words,
did not read an unfavorable verdict, reread the case, pay more attention to
procedural violations, and then change their judgment. Instead, the moral
salience of the verdict, and associated emotion, directly influenced fairness
judgments.
While it’s clear that the participants are engaging in
biased processing, it’s not clear to what extent participants are elaborating.
There was no evidence of differences in elaboration between manipulations,
which is somewhat surprising, given that individuals could have been more
motivated to elaborate verdicts that were self-relevant (relevant to their
moral mandate, emotionally stimulating).
However, it’s possible that they were elaborating when
making the procedural and outcome fairness judgments (the two fairness
judgments measured), just not in a way that the experiment could detect. It
seems that all participants felt that the defendant was somewhat likely to be
guilty. It would be interesting if seeing an individual who shares your moral
convictions but probably broke the law initiated a cognitive process that lead
to dis-identification with the legal system (I don’t care whether they were
acquitted or guilty because I reject a system that does not up hold my moral
convictions) or whether it initiated a cognitive process that lead to protection
of the legal system (I understand that the legal system exists for a reason and
I wish it could be changed. Until it is changed, the verdict was fair if they
were acquitted because there were procedural errors, and the verdict was also
fair if they were convicted because the defendant could have been guilty). It
could also be that seeing someone who supports your moral convictions guilty of
committing a crime based on those convictions evokes more heuristic processing
(I’m feeling troubled and confused, so I’m not going to make a judgment and
consider whatever the verdict is at least somewhat fair).
I would be interested in whether that result changes with
increasing time pressure. I would be interested in whether self-reported anger
increases or decreases elaboration. Does the threat of someone who opposes your
moral convictions being acquitted increase the need for specific closure?
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