"If You Love Me Keep My Commandments": Religiosity Increases Preference for Rule-Based Moral Arguments

Two experiments demonstrated that religiosity affects the way people resolve moral dilemmas. Participants were presented a series of immoral actions and were asked to justify the wrongness of the action by appealing to either the violation of a rule (rule-based argument) or the negative consequences...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Piazza, Jared (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 2012
In: The international journal for the psychology of religion
Year: 2012, Volume: 22, Issue: 4, Pages: 285-302
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:Two experiments demonstrated that religiosity affects the way people resolve moral dilemmas. Participants were presented a series of immoral actions and were asked to justify the wrongness of the action by appealing to either the violation of a rule (rule-based argument) or the negative consequences resulting from the action (outcome-based argument). In Study 1, it was shown both among British and American samples that religious individuals preferred rule-based moral arguments to consequentialist moral arguments more than nonreligious individuals, and covariance with political conservatism did not account for this effect. Study 2 replicated these results with revisions to the materials and extended measures. In this study, dimensions of religiosity—particularly Christian Orthodoxy—predicted rule-based morality independent of a personal need for structure, need for cognition, and right-wing authoritarianism. These results imply that religious individuals who are committed to orthodox religious teaching display a deontological style of morality for reasons that extend beyond a need for structure, cognitive simplicity, or submission to authority.
ISSN:1532-7582
Contains:Enthalten in: The international journal for the psychology of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/10508619.2011.638598