Tweaking the Moral Temperature: The Moralization and Demoralization of Social Issues

How do people come to perceive their attitudes as more or less tied to morality? Most research on how attitudes change between domains (preference, norms/conventions, and morality) has examined how attitudes become moralized. Because moral attitudes can have social costs, however, it may be equally important to explore the processes by which attitudes become less moralized or demoralized. The present research examined how people might moralize their attitude about male circumcision (an attitude generally perceived in the United States as a matter of norms or preference) and demoralize their attitude about female circumcision (an attitude generally perceived in the United States as a moral issue), in two convenience samples of American adults (Study 1, N = 757, Study 2 N = 637). Exposing participants to factual messages about the harm and negative effects on sexual functioning of male circumcision predicted stronger moralized opposition to the practice through stronger negative emotions, perceptions of harm, and perceptions of male circumcision as a violation of autonomy. In contrast, exposing participants to factual messages about the lack of harm or negative effects on sexual functioning of female circumcision predicted weaker moralized opposition to the practice through weaker negative emotions, perceptions of harm, and perceptions of female circumcision as an autonomy violation. Implications of these results for theories of morality and (de)moralization are discussed