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

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); a YouGov sample matched to U.S. demographic norms (Study 4, N = 2,000); and a brief, one-month longitudinal study of Mechanical Turk workers in the U.S. (Study 5, Baseline N = 499, follow-up n = 296), and a large, one-week YouGov sample matched to U.S. demographic norms (Baseline N = 2,519, follow-up n = 1,776). Across studies, we found initial support for the validity of Moral Grandstanding as a construct. Specifically, moral grandstanding motivation was associated with status-seeking personality traits, as well as greater political and moral conflict in daily life.

公共话语往往辛辣尖刻且充斥着对立冲突。这一趋势在两类场景下尤为凸显：一是话语内容围绕宽泛定义下的道德议题时，二是话语产生于社交媒体平台之际。近年来的心理学与社会科学文献已针对这类冲突的多种解释机制展开了探索。本研究旨在考察哲学文献中提出的一种潜在全新解释机制：道德沽名（Moral Grandstanding）。根据哲学领域的相关阐释，道德沽名指的是借助道德言论来谋求社会地位的行为。本研究共开展六项实验，招募的被试样本包括：两份本科生样本（实验1：N=361；实验2：N=356）；一份符合美国人口年龄、性别、种族、收入、普查区域分布标准的样本（实验3：N=1063）；一份匹配美国人口统计标准的YouGov样本（实验4：N=2000）；一项针对美国Mechanical Turk平台用户的短期月度追踪研究（实验5：基线样本N=499，追踪样本n=296）；以及一项规模更大的一周期YouGov追踪样本（基线样本N=2519，追踪样本n=1776）。跨六项实验的结果显示，本研究为道德沽名这一构念的效度提供了初步支撑。具体而言，道德沽名动机与追求地位的人格特质呈显著相关，同时也与日常生活中更频繁的政治与道德对立冲突存在关联。