In the Mind of the Perceiver: Psychological Implications of Moral Conviction

Moral conviction is a subjective assessment that one’s attitude about a specific issue or situation is associated with one’s core moral beliefs and fundamental sense of right or wrong. A growing body of research demonstrates that level of moral conviction reliably predicts changes in the way people think, feel, and act in situations, irrespective of whether that situation fits normative definitions of morality. Therefore, it is important to measure whether and how much individuals perceive a given situation to be moral rather than assert that a situation is moral based on philosophical criteria. This chapter compares and contrasts moral conviction and moral judgment research and argues that both approaches are necessary to develop a complete science of morality.