Camilla Hatfield

2017-89109

Research Report

Gut Reactions:
Moral Conviction, Religiosity, and Trust in
Authority
Daniel C. Wisneski, Brad L. Lytle, and Linda J. Skitka

INTRODUCTION:

People’s belief system and trust towards an authority figure may differ from
person to person. This research paper will enable us to understand different aspects
of an individual's perspective on what they look for in an authority to gain their
trust and believability towards this figure. This is an important topic in today's
societal as the majority of the Filipino does not look at different viewpoint or
characteristic of an authority figure. Filipino people just simply agree to what
authority says due to its hierarchical position regardless of the moral doing of a
figure. Hence Wisneski, Lytle, and Skitka came up with research about different
ways moral conviction and religion connect to trust in an authority figure. This
research arose in 2006 due to a controversial issue about the U.S supreme court
deciding on whether to legalize physician-assisted suicide. In this case, Wisneski,
Lytle and Skitka suggest that when people have strong moral conviction about a
case, they are less likely to trust legal authorities to make the right decisions.
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2017-89109

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MORAL CONVICTION

According to Mullen & Stitka 2006 people who held strong moral
convictions are more likely to be independent of authority and may base their
conviction on their visceral emotional responses rather than a tentative
deliberation. Moreover, it is also believed that people whose convictions that
imperil will likely to believe duties and rights from greater moral purposes rather
than the rules and rights or authority.

Research from Stitka, Bauman & Sargia, 2005 indicates that people tend to have
difficulty coming up with procedures to resolve conflict when they have a strong
moral conviction about the issue at hand. Which results in people not trusting
procedural solutions to reach the correct solution. To acquire knowledge about this
issue Wisneski, Lytle, and Skitka tested whether people were more likely to
distrust highly legitimized authorities i.e. Supreme Court, when they have to decide
on issues with a strong moral stake.

RELIGIOSITY AND TRUST IN AUTHORITY:

Based on Melton, 1991 people’s feelings about physician-assisted ​suicide

are highly associated to religiosity. Primarily the religion of Judeo-Christian and
Islamic insist that taking human life is forbidden as it defies the divine. Majority
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2017-89109

of churches have the same position in disagreeing with the legalization of

physician-assisted suicide compared to nonreligious people in the U.S.
(Hamil-Luker & Smith, 1998). Given the fact that religiosity tend to have a strong
feeling about physician-assited suicide, stronger religiosity may be associated with
weaker trust in authority to decide on the matter of PAS.

IS TRUST IN AUTHORITY VISCERAL OR CONSIDERED?

Many psychologists are deeply tormented on whether moral judgments are

purely based on an individual's emotion or considered thought, whereas several
argue that people base their moral judgments on their gut feelings. These
arguments yield different prediction on how an individual make a decision whether
they trust or distrust an authority to make a moralized decision on issues. Hence,
stronger moral convictions about issues should be associated with a faster response
in reporting trust or distrust in authority.

METHOD:

Participants:

The study consisted of 727 nationally representative sample of adults, who

completed an online survey from a panel of respondents maintained by Knowledge
Networks.
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2017-89109

Characteristics of the Sample:

The sample was 53% female, ranges between the age of 19-90 years old, and
was 72% White, 12% Black and 11% Hispanic Sixteen percent of the sample had
less than a high school education while 13% of the sample graduated from high
school but did not have a college education and 28% had some college education
and 26% had a bachelor's degree or higher. Thirty-eight percent of the sample had
no home access to the internet even before joining the network panel.

Measures:

The questions were asked in the order presented below.

Support of or Opposition to PAS

The participant’s who supported opposition to physician-assisted suicide

was assessed with the fellowing question : “Do you support or oppose
physician-assisted suicide? Some people think that it is reasonable to let people
with terminal illnesses decide with their doctors when to end their lives, that is,
they support the legalization of physician- assisted suicide. Others think that
suicide is wrong even for people who have terminal illnesses, and they oppose
legalizing physician-assisted suicide. How do you feel about this issue?’’ Half of
the participant received a version of the question that placed the “some people
support” and the other half received the version of the “some people oppose”
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Attitude Extremity

‘‘How weak or strong is your [support of/opposition to] physician-assisted

suicide for those with terminal illnesses?’’ Participants responded on a 7-point
scale with the labels very weak, moderately weak, slightly weak,uncertain, slightly
strong, moderately strong, and very strong

Moral Conviction

The moral conviction was measured by asking the participant’s, to what

extent their feelings about PAS reflected their core moral val- ues and convictions,
and how deeply their feelings about PAS were connected to their fundamental
beliefs about right and wrong. Participants gave their answers on 5-point scales
with labels not at all, slightly, moderately, much, very much.

Issue-Specific Trust in the Supreme Court

The participant’s were measured in terms of agreement or disagreement with

the following statement: ‘‘I trust the Supreme Court to make the right decision
about wheth- er physician-assisted suicide should be allowed.’’ Participants was
given the response options very much agree, moderately agree, slightly agree,
uncertain, slightly disagree, disagree, and very much disagree. The scores were
then reversed scored thus making the participants with greater trust obtain a higher
score.
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2017-89109

Response Latency to Trust Item

The Participants response time to the trust item was measured in

milliseconds.

Religiosity

To measure the religiosity questions were based on Plante & Boccaceini,

1997 questionnaire known as Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith
Questionnaire: ‘‘My religious faith is extremely important to me,’’ ‘‘My religious
faith impacts many of my decisions,’’ and ‘‘I look to my faith for meaning and
purpose in my life.’’ Participants responded to these items on 7-point scales with
the labels of very much agree, moderately agree, slightly agree, neutral or
uncertain, slightly disagree,moderately disagree, and very much disagree. The
scores were then reverse scored making the highly religiosity obtain higher scores.

RESULTS:

Results indicates that stronger moral convictions about physician-assisted

suicide were associated with greater distrust in the Supreme Court to make a
decision about this issue, b= -.10, t(704) = - 2.51, p<.01. Results on religiosity on
the other hand showed that people higher in religiosity trusted the Supreme Court
to make this decision than those low in religiosity, b= -.11,t(704) = -2.97, p<.01.
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2017-89109

The test on whether trust or distrust judgments were more visceral or

considered, showed that moral judgments are more visceral than considered.
Specifically, stronger moral convictions about physician-assisted suicide were
associated with faster response latencies to the trust item, b= - .10, t(704) =
- 2.56, p<.01. Increased religiosity was also associated with faster response times
to the trust item, b= -.10, t(704) = -2.44, p<.01. Overall, both religiosity and moral
conviction on trust or distrust towards an authority appears to be more visceral and
emotional rather than careful and tentative consideration.

DISCUSSION

Results suggest that people are less likely to trust authority figures to make
decisions about issues they perceive as moral. However, in the case of Filipino
people, it contradicts the prediction. Regardless of the morality of the authority
figure they still trust one's own decisions, for instance, the president's decision on
extrajudicial killing where most people support this immoral action. Moreover, the
trust or distrust in authority is a visceral reaction rather than a tentative and
deliberative process. Which in this case is quite true for my observation on the
Filipino people. Based on my observation, the majority of the people who support
the president base their trust on his comedic remarks which they connect the most.
People don’t usually evaluate whether the president's remark is morally right or
wrong. In terms of Religiosity, it showed that more religious people tend to trust
the authority figure to decide for those with low religiosity
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Although, these findings that are established needs much further research
due to its generalizability. As mentioned earlier, the participants consisted of a
western-based subject which means results cannot be compared to Asian based
participants as they might have a different perspective compared to the western
culture.

REFERENCES:

Wisneski, Daniel C. Lytle Brad L. & Skitka Linda J. (2019), ​Gut Reactions:
Moral Conviction, Religiosity, and Trust in Authority

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=5&sid=25786408-e706-433a-9
45a-2844ba25792d%40pdc-v-sessmgr03