Individuals in a morally diverse community tend to believe that the community's norms are looser. In turn, norm violations are more accepted, and there is a reduced willingness to police transgressions, according to research by Merrick Osborne, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the ILR School.
"In morally diverse groups, there's actually less consensus about what is right or wrong, because everybody is prioritizing different things. These different 'moral priorities' make it harder for the group to agree on what is right or wrong, and thus group members become more accepting of somebody acting inappropriately." Osborne said.
"For instance, you could imagine joining a new friend group, and then somebody says something offensive. Instinctually, you look around and see if somebody else is going to say something. You wonder, 'Is the group okay with this?' And you can imagine some people in this friend group thinking what was said was appropriate, while others say it wasn't. So, there's a lack of consensus, making it harder for the group to come together and agree."
Osborne is the first author of "Moral Diversity Fosters Cultural Looseness and Reduces Norm Policing," forthcoming in Social Psychological and Personality Science. His co-author is Mohammad Atari, assistant professor at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The researchers conducted seven studies using different methods and designs, including analysis of two large-scale datasets and five laboratory studies. Across all seven studies, norm violations, including violent crime, were punished less intensely in contexts characterized by higher moral diversity.
"This finding does play into another recent piece of my research on retaliatory incivility," Osborne said. "These two papers start to highlight that the way we respond to incivility, including violence and various social ills, is contextually dependent.
"We're not making the case that people actually reward violent crime, but what I think this paper illuminates is how we evaluate incivility is actually nuanced. Rather, by virtue of the composition of the group - when people in a group have different moral priorities - it makes them more accepting of somebody acting inappropriately."
Read the full story on the ILR website.
Julie Greco is the director of communications for the ILR School.
