When it Comes to Trusting Authority, Moral Conviction and Religiosity Part Ways

One of the consistent elements in political discussions is the influence of religious belief on attitudes toward government. And typically it’s assumed that a high degree of religiosity is synonymous with a high degree of moral conviction – they’re popularly thought to go hand-in-hand.  So, if someone’s attitude toward governmental authority is influenced by his or her religiosity, it should logically follow that this attitude is further buttressed by his or her moral conviction; the influence should be the same. 

But is that true?

A new study in the journal Psychological Science sought to find out how religiosity and moral conviction influence attitudes toward authority.  A survey was administered to a representative sample of 727 Americans, ages 19-90, to asses the degree of trust or mistrust people have in major decisions made by the Supreme Court (in this case, physician assisted suicide, a.k.a ‘PAS’).  The sample drew from a wide socioeconomic and educational background.

Measures evaluated via the survey included:

• Support or opposition to PAS
• Level of strength or weakness of support or opposition (to gauge attitude extremity)
• Overall level of moral conviction
• Trust in Supreme Court to make decisions regarding PAS
• Length of time it takes to give an opinion on level of trust in Supreme Court (to reveal the degree of visceral emotion linked to this opinion; more emotion = less time)
• Level of overall religiosity

Here’s what researchers found out:  First, the stronger a person’s moral conviction, the less they trust the Supreme Court to make a judgment about PAS.  Conversely, the higher the degree of a person’s religiosity, the MORE they trust the Supreme Court to make a decision on this sensitive issue. 

Just to be clear about that — the results for moral conviction were exactly the opposite of those for religiosity. 

Also, the stronger a person’s moral conviction, the faster they responded to the trust question, indicating a visceral reaction as opposed to a more considered one.  Likewise, the higher the degree of someone’s religiosity, the faster they responded to the trust question.  So in the case of both moral conviction and religiosity, responses were significantly visceral.

At least two major implications can be drawn out from this study. The first is that the typical assumption that religiosity and moral conviction are necessarily synonymous is false. Moral conviction in this study was strongly linked to distrust in legitimate authority, while religiosity was strongly linked to trust in legitimate authority.

The second implication is that morally convicted people don’t merely “react” to decisions with which they don’t agree. Instead, it’s clear that they don’t trust legitimate authorities to make the right decisions in the first place.  Their reaction is simply a projection of a predisposition already strongly held. 

The one crucial area this study didn’t tease out fully enough, in my opinion, is where religiosity and moral conviction overlap. Presumably, level of moral conviction would trump level of religiosity on attitudes toward authority (at least it certainly seems this way) – but it’s also possible that religiosity has a moderating effect on moral conviction’s influence in some cases.  It would have been useful to see this worked out more carefully in the study; nevertheless, the results are telling.

UPDATE:  It’s always great when an author of a study reviewed here comments on the post.  Dr. Linda Skitka, one of the authors of this study, left the comment below, which provides an important clarification.  Many thanks!

I’m one of the authors of this article. FYI: we did test whether religiosity moderated the effects of moral conviction, and it did not–in other words, the effects of moral conviction on trust in the Supreme Court did not change as a function of whether the perceiver was low or high in religiosity. We measured both general religiosity, as well as whether people’s feelings about PAS were based on religious convictions, and got the same pattern of results regardless of which way we operationalized “religiousness”. Interestingly (and counter-intuitively), about one-third of those whose attitude about PAS reflected a strong religious conviction did not report that their attitude about PAS was a strong moral conviction.

Wisneski, D., Lytle, B., & Skitka, L. (2009). Gut Reactions: Moral Conviction, Religiosity, and Trust in Authority Psychological Science, 20 (9), 1059-1063 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02406.x

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Many Blessed Infections

Of all the theories that have been put forward to explain how religions spread, I think this one, as reported in the British Psychological Society’s research blog, may be the most…sickening. In a nutshell, the article discusses a recent study that “tested the idea that religious diversity is a side-effect of the fragmentation of cultures that tends to occur in the face of increased threat from infectious disease.”  In other words, there’s evidence to suggest that the variety of infectious parasites in a given region directly influences the variety of religions in that region.  From the article:

Fincher and Thornhill used the World Christian Encyclopedia and the Global Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Network to compare the spread of infections and religions across 219 countries. Their results were clear: in regions with a greater variety of infectious parasites, the diversity of religions also tends to be greater. This association held strong even after exploring the impact of other potential factors, such as differences in democratisation and histories of colonisation.

The researchers say the association between religion and parasites occurs because reducing contact with outsiders can help protect against disease. In turn, when cultures fragment and groups avoid making contact with each other, more religions are likely to spring up.

“Although religion apparently is for establishing a social marker of group alliance and allegiance, at the most fundamental level, it may be for the avoidance and management of infectious disease,” Fincher and Thornhill said. The pair also believe that the diversity of languages and parasites tends to co-vary across the globe for similar reasons.

Bearing in mind that correlation is not causation, this is still pretty interesting. (Note, none of this is to be confused with the theory of religion as virus or virus of the mind, which are quite different, but also intriguing.)

In the same general genre, this Jared Diamond lecture on the evolution of religion is worthwhile.