Matthews, N., Bayer, J., Sude, D. J. & Sowden, W. (2023) How moral adaptability relates to communication and friendship with morally dissimilar others. Communication Monographs. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2023.2231519
A great detail of research has been devoted to understanding how disagreement is managed in pluralistic societies, such as that of the United States, as a lack of social cohesion can both undermine a nation politically and lead to general feelings of distrust and discontent. In Matthews, Bayer, Sude, and Sowden (2023), we focus specifically on moral disagreement. Across two studies with multiple operationalizations, we studied a concept which we labeled moral adaptiveness. We defined moral adaptiveness in terms of two dimensions. The first was moral relativism. Moral relativism, in this context, is the belief that one’s stance on a moral issue is more a matter of feeling than fact, more a matter of taste than truth.
Regarding moral relativism, we offer, across studies, consistent evidence for a somewhat counterintuitive conclusion. People are more willing to talk about moral disagreements if they perceive these issues to be defined by feelings rather than facts. It is likely that people believe that conversations about moral disagreements can be awkward. These conversations may be perceived as even more awkward when the disagreement is framed in terms of logic and reality, rather than mere opinion. Disagreements about (perceived) matters of fact could carry more social risk. People may fear being wrong, which has negative implications for their self-concept and belief system. People may also take the perspective of the person who disagrees with them. If that person is persuadable, that person will have to go through the awkward process of revising their moral perspective. If that person is not persuadable about a matter of logic and facts, then talking to them may seem fruitless and frustrating. Potentially, also, these conversations are perceived to be less awkward by moral relativists because they can be merely intellectually or emotionally interested, rather than personally invested, in another’s perpsective.
It should also be noted that the association between relativism and willingness to communicate was strongest when people considered specific moral issues, rather than general ideas about the nature of morality. Even people who are generally high in moral relativism may, for a specific issue, believe that their opinion is grounded in truth and facts, rather than taste and feelings. To capture this distinction, we asked people, for the particular issue, the extent to which someone who disagreed with them was clearly mistaken and the extent to which there was a correct way to judge the moral acceptability of the behavior. People who said “neither of us is mistaken” and there is “no correct way to judge” were marked as taking a maximally relativistic stance. Across studies, the more people took a relativistic stance, the more willing they were to initiate a conversation about that moral issue. Further, in study 1, they anticipated a conversation in which they would both understand the other person’s perspective and be understood in turn.
In our second study we added a measure of the second dimension of moral adaptability: moral tolerance. Relatively intolerant people both lacked respect for and strove to convert people who disagreed with them. Relatively tolerant people respected others and were comfortable with letting people have their own views. Moral tolerance is distinct from relativism, in that it is independent of ideas about the nature of the moral disagreement (feelings vs. fact, taste vs. truth). Instead, it is focused on response to this disagreement, whatever its nature.
When we examined general willingness to communicate about moral disagreements, across issues rather than specific to a particular issue, moral tolerance, in notable contrast to moral relativism, was a clear, positive, predictor. Attitudes about how moral disagreement should be managed mattered more than beliefs about the nature of that disagreement.
A final, fascinating but complex, result arose from Study 2. Those who were both low in moral relativism and low in tolerance perceived greater variation in moral views among five of their friends. It seems that within a friendship network, rather than carefully screening out all moral disagreement, those who both believe that morality is objective and believe that moral disagreement must be resolved may feel compelled to have tough conversations prior to labeling people as friends. These individuals presumably screen out people who are too morally distinct. However, in the process of considering who is worthy of the “friend” label, they may gain a more nuanced perspective of friends’ moral views.
To better understand the implications of more (less) relativistic stances on moral issues and more (less) tolerant approaches to moral disagreement, future research could investigate the kind of conversations that people have about moral disagreement, once these conversations are initiated. One key question would be, do the conflict management strategies used by those high (low) in relativism and tolerance differ from one another? As these conversations are within pairs or within groups, a second key question would concern the conflict management strategies adopted when people differ in their levels of tolerance and relativism.
Daniel Sude, Ph.D. 