Moral grandstanding in public discourse: Status-seeking motives as a potential explanatory mechanism in predicting conflict.

ABSTRACT: Public discourse is often caustic and conflict-filled. This trend seems to be particularly evident when the content of such discourse is around moral issues (broadly defined) and when the discourse occurs on social media. Several explanatory mechanisms for such conflict have been explored in recent psychological and social-science literatures. The present work sought to examine a potentially novel explanatory mechanism defined in philosophical literature: Moral Grandstanding. According to philosophical accounts, Moral Grandstanding is the use of moral talk to seek social status. For the present work, we conducted six studies, using two undergraduate samples (Study 1, N = 361; Study 2, N = 356); a sample matched to U.S. norms for age, gender, race, income, Census region (Study 3, N = 1,063)

SUBMITTER: Grubbs JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6795490 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature