I'm a psychologist specializing in the study of how nonphilosophers think about the nature of morality, and in particular the question of moral realism and antirealism. Most of my work focuses on the methodological challenges of prompting people without philosophical training to interpret stimuli (such as survey questions) as researchers intend.
What I've found from conducting meta-research on how this research is conducted is that most people are probably not interpreting questions the way researchers intend. I suspect something similar is going on here. I wrote a comment in a restack that I'll reproduce here:
"There are clear and absolute standards for what is right and wrong Or Whether something is right or wrong often depends on the situation."
Pew normally asks good questions but this question is terrible. Does Pew take feedback from people on question phrasing?
Whether there are “clear” moral standards is, ironically, unclear. What does that even mean? Does it mean that it is easy to discern what is morally right or wrong? Or does it mean that for any given moral rule or principle, that there aren’t many exceptions to it? These don’t mean the same thing.
It may be very easy to judge that it would be wrong to steal in some cases but not others. Or it may be very difficult to judge that a given moral rule has few or no exceptions.
It’s not even clear the possibilities presented in this question are mutually exclusive.
The same holds for “absolute.” What does that mean? Again, does it mean the rule doesn’t have exceptions? If so, why is “clear” there? Is that redundant? If it means something other than this, then why is it there? Can you think a standard is clear but not absolute, or absolute but not clear?
Furthermore, why wouldn’t whether something is right or wrong not simply depend on the situation, but also depend on the something in question? I bet if you ask people about genocide, they won’t say it depends on the situation, but if you ask about “hitting someone in the face” they will say it depends on the situation at much higher rates.
Much of this is going to turn on the level of specificity in the “something” you refer to. Violence? High situational variation. Torture? Much less.
Sloppy questions like this are likely to cause interpretative variation: variation in responses that is not due to different responses to the same question, but different interpretations of that question. Interpretative variation threatens the meaningfulness of measures by rendering variation in responses effectively meaningless: respondents are essentially responding to different questions.
Edited to add: as a more general point, it's also simply straightforwardly unclear how respondents will interpret terms like "clear" and "absolute." Just what are these supposed to mean, exactly?
The classic edge case questions are, of course, "Do you lie to the Nazis about the Jews hiding in your house?" and "May you steal food when you are hungry?".
But the average situation is more like, "do I cheat on my bf and lie" or "do I steal pens from work" - less grey.
Yep, complex stuff. For example my understanding is "thou should not murder" is better translation than "thou should not kill" with murder being defined as unlawful killing. What is lawful and unlawful killing is a massive topic, although there is a very broad consensus that self defense of self or others, against combatants in war, and mercy killing are different than murder
I also wondered whether people would read this question correctly at all. In my experience, people don’t always read questions of “right” and “wrong” as moral questions. Sometimes they read them as “best” vs. “worst,” “most correct” vs. “least correct,” or “most loyal,” vs. “disloyal.”
I think that’s especially true of people at the younger end of the age spectrum, watching literacy rates drop related to loss of reading comprehension.
I’m so glad you wrote about this… this is a specific topic that I want to write a book about.
Even for those that say "The Bible Says It. I Believe It. That Settles It." what they mean is "The social group I identify with negotiates with the text to produce an interpretation of what the bible says about this, and that's what I believe."
Well, no, the Bible does literally teach things like any other document, and Christians frequently interpret it correctly. They also sometimes interpret it incorrectly. There’s no gotcha here.
I feel the same way, and for me, education and and exposure to other ways of thinking is what shifted my perspective on this. Because of that, I'm a little surprised that there's no clear correlation between education level and black and white moral thinking, according to this survey!
I don't see the conflict. Real moral standards ARE situational. Being alive means responding and adapting to what's happening. Only a machine or an inanimate object can be non-situational.
Within the Catholic context there are grave sins "black and white" and there is culpability which is situational. If you are a Catholic who listened in cathecism you could very easily answer the question both ways depending on whether you are considering the act or the culpability. I don't know think people are overthinking but I don't know if the question is sufficiently subtle unpack what people actually believe on the topic.
I think surveys capture vibes and emphasis, but functional belief.
Yes, but I don’t see how Americans answering the question thoughtlessly means we should pose the question thoughtlessly. As an ethics nerd, the question is fundamentally preposterous, and it doesn’t even get the definitions or terms correct. There could be an “absolute” (whatever that means, as the correct word for what it’s getting at is “objective.”) standard for right and wrong while ethics is still situational. It confuses metaethical grounding with normative principles, and uses the incorrect terminology.
I have a book about nurses in World War II. There is a story about a hospital ship that got bombed and a nurse was trapped in a burning cabin. She had her head out of the port hole and was screaming in pain, but no one could save her because the door was warped shut. Finally a cabin boy grabbed a wrench and hit her on the head killing her. That was murder. Or was it mercy?
Should I respect the traffic light? Absolutely. Should I drive under the speed limit? It depends on the speed of traffic. Probably little divided opinion based on religion, political affiliation, or age on some things, one absolute, the other situational. Must I return my library book on time? Yes if I'm done with it, I'll pay the fine if I need it a little longer to finish my term paper.
Surveys tend to ask people what they think should a circumstance arise. A better measure is what people did when that circumstance that has not yet happened does happen. Even on the flash points, there is a commonality of interests that people have. Catholics oppose divorce until their marriage fails. Jews have dietary restrictions with many different levels of adherence.
One of our Torah portions this summer dealt with this phenomenon better than Pew did. The weekly portion discussed some obligatory laws, called Mishpat, for which adherence is expected. Then a few times during the reading it changed the vocabulary to a term called Hayashar, or doing the right thing. It acknowledged that the right thing for a circumstance sometimes varied from the specified law. And that's in our most sacred scroll, not an opinion survey.
I think Bush, below, hit the nail on the head. Pew's question is fatally flawed. As soon as I read the key alternatives I veered off into how people would deal with the imprecision. Frankly, I suspect a large majority would say, if asked, both that some moral decisions are clearcut and some are situational, and beyond that, good manners sometimes conflict with morals. After googling "situational ethics", I was saddened to learn Joseph Fletcher was a medical ethicist at UVa while I was there, though I do not remember knowing that at the time.
It just struck me as odd how few people answered this as "I don't know." I looked it up and "I don't know" wasn't an option on the form, it was either of the two answers. So expressing uncertainty was not an option.
This is the base from which all other viewpoints derive.
You're right to point out that it's difficult to capture these ways of thinking in a survey. That said, those with situational ethics will often find themselves adrift.
Ask whether historic American slave holders were wrong to own slaves and I bet you’ll see a massive pivot in answers regarding absolutes and situational ethics. If I’m right, there’s more going on here than a simple religious framework
One of the questions that is repeatedly asked during the interview process for an elite team within my field is, "Which is more important loyalty or integrity?"
This isn’t all that surprising, but what the survey can’t uncover is how much cognitive dissonance exists among those who express disbelief in absolutes.
I would venture that very few of them would argue that rape, or racism, or slavery, or sucker-punching them in the face may or may not be wrong, depending upon the circumstances.
See here:
College and the “Culture War”: Assessing Higher Education’s Influence on Moral Attitudes
Miloš Broćić a,✉, Andrew Miles a
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Copyright and License information
PMCID: PMC8493328 PMID: 34629474
Abstract
Moral differences contribute to social and political conflicts. Against this backdrop, colleges and universities have been criticized for promoting liberal moral attitudes. However, direct evidence for these claims is sparse, and suggestive evidence from studies of political attitudes is inconclusive. Using four waves of data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, we examine the effects of higher education on attitudes related to three dimensions of morality that have been identified as central to conflict: moral relativism, concern for others, and concern for social order. Our results indicate that higher education liberalizes moral concerns for most students, but it also departs from the standard liberal profile by promoting moral absolutism rather than relativism. These effects are strongest for individuals majoring in the humanities, arts, or social sciences, and for students pursuing graduate studies. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results for work on political conflict and moral socialization.
I’m not surprised that only those choosing the Evangelicals category are majority endorsers of an absolute standard for morality. I’m also not surprised that selecting a political philosophy is more predictive.
Consider how more of those describing themselves as mainline Protestants also reported voting Republican rather than Democrat in the last election. There’s a fair number of Catholics in America who think Pope Leo is doing more meddling than preaching, as the saying goes.
There’s always an interesting tension between faith & doubt in religions with too much of either being dangerous to the institution. Too much of the former means stagnation for a religious institution as society & culture evolve around it; too much of the latter renders it superfluous in assisting in assessing those changes for society’s needs.
I'm a psychologist specializing in the study of how nonphilosophers think about the nature of morality, and in particular the question of moral realism and antirealism. Most of my work focuses on the methodological challenges of prompting people without philosophical training to interpret stimuli (such as survey questions) as researchers intend.
What I've found from conducting meta-research on how this research is conducted is that most people are probably not interpreting questions the way researchers intend. I suspect something similar is going on here. I wrote a comment in a restack that I'll reproduce here:
"There are clear and absolute standards for what is right and wrong Or Whether something is right or wrong often depends on the situation."
Pew normally asks good questions but this question is terrible. Does Pew take feedback from people on question phrasing?
Whether there are “clear” moral standards is, ironically, unclear. What does that even mean? Does it mean that it is easy to discern what is morally right or wrong? Or does it mean that for any given moral rule or principle, that there aren’t many exceptions to it? These don’t mean the same thing.
It may be very easy to judge that it would be wrong to steal in some cases but not others. Or it may be very difficult to judge that a given moral rule has few or no exceptions.
It’s not even clear the possibilities presented in this question are mutually exclusive.
The same holds for “absolute.” What does that mean? Again, does it mean the rule doesn’t have exceptions? If so, why is “clear” there? Is that redundant? If it means something other than this, then why is it there? Can you think a standard is clear but not absolute, or absolute but not clear?
Furthermore, why wouldn’t whether something is right or wrong not simply depend on the situation, but also depend on the something in question? I bet if you ask people about genocide, they won’t say it depends on the situation, but if you ask about “hitting someone in the face” they will say it depends on the situation at much higher rates.
Much of this is going to turn on the level of specificity in the “something” you refer to. Violence? High situational variation. Torture? Much less.
Sloppy questions like this are likely to cause interpretative variation: variation in responses that is not due to different responses to the same question, but different interpretations of that question. Interpretative variation threatens the meaningfulness of measures by rendering variation in responses effectively meaningless: respondents are essentially responding to different questions.
Edited to add: as a more general point, it's also simply straightforwardly unclear how respondents will interpret terms like "clear" and "absolute." Just what are these supposed to mean, exactly?
The classic edge case questions are, of course, "Do you lie to the Nazis about the Jews hiding in your house?" and "May you steal food when you are hungry?".
But the average situation is more like, "do I cheat on my bf and lie" or "do I steal pens from work" - less grey.
Thanks for pointing this out. Although I'm not in this academic field, your critique reflects my instant reaction to the question.
I believe in clear moral standards that are applied situationally.
Yep, complex stuff. For example my understanding is "thou should not murder" is better translation than "thou should not kill" with murder being defined as unlawful killing. What is lawful and unlawful killing is a massive topic, although there is a very broad consensus that self defense of self or others, against combatants in war, and mercy killing are different than murder
.
I also wondered whether people would read this question correctly at all. In my experience, people don’t always read questions of “right” and “wrong” as moral questions. Sometimes they read them as “best” vs. “worst,” “most correct” vs. “least correct,” or “most loyal,” vs. “disloyal.”
I think that’s especially true of people at the younger end of the age spectrum, watching literacy rates drop related to loss of reading comprehension.
I’m so glad you wrote about this… this is a specific topic that I want to write a book about.
Fantastic analysis!
Even for those that say "The Bible Says It. I Believe It. That Settles It." what they mean is "The social group I identify with negotiates with the text to produce an interpretation of what the bible says about this, and that's what I believe."
You beat me to the Dan McClellan catchphrase!
Yep, guess we have been watching/reading some of the same stuff.
Well, no, the Bible does literally teach things like any other document, and Christians frequently interpret it correctly. They also sometimes interpret it incorrectly. There’s no gotcha here.
I feel the same way, and for me, education and and exposure to other ways of thinking is what shifted my perspective on this. Because of that, I'm a little surprised that there's no clear correlation between education level and black and white moral thinking, according to this survey!
I don't see the conflict. Real moral standards ARE situational. Being alive means responding and adapting to what's happening. Only a machine or an inanimate object can be non-situational.
I often get responses like this about survey questions.
I will make this suggestion: you are reading the question with way more care and thought than the average American.
Within the Catholic context there are grave sins "black and white" and there is culpability which is situational. If you are a Catholic who listened in cathecism you could very easily answer the question both ways depending on whether you are considering the act or the culpability. I don't know think people are overthinking but I don't know if the question is sufficiently subtle unpack what people actually believe on the topic.
I think surveys capture vibes and emphasis, but functional belief.
Yes, but I don’t see how Americans answering the question thoughtlessly means we should pose the question thoughtlessly. As an ethics nerd, the question is fundamentally preposterous, and it doesn’t even get the definitions or terms correct. There could be an “absolute” (whatever that means, as the correct word for what it’s getting at is “objective.”) standard for right and wrong while ethics is still situational. It confuses metaethical grounding with normative principles, and uses the incorrect terminology.
I’m baffled as to why this is seen as an either/or question.
Yes, definitely there are clear moral rules.
The way they are applied is nuanced and situational.
For instance, “the ends don’t justify the means” is one of the clear moral absolutes I believe in.
But people can AND HAVE filled entire books exploring how this plays out in difficult cases.
I have a book about nurses in World War II. There is a story about a hospital ship that got bombed and a nurse was trapped in a burning cabin. She had her head out of the port hole and was screaming in pain, but no one could save her because the door was warped shut. Finally a cabin boy grabbed a wrench and hit her on the head killing her. That was murder. Or was it mercy?
Should I respect the traffic light? Absolutely. Should I drive under the speed limit? It depends on the speed of traffic. Probably little divided opinion based on religion, political affiliation, or age on some things, one absolute, the other situational. Must I return my library book on time? Yes if I'm done with it, I'll pay the fine if I need it a little longer to finish my term paper.
Surveys tend to ask people what they think should a circumstance arise. A better measure is what people did when that circumstance that has not yet happened does happen. Even on the flash points, there is a commonality of interests that people have. Catholics oppose divorce until their marriage fails. Jews have dietary restrictions with many different levels of adherence.
One of our Torah portions this summer dealt with this phenomenon better than Pew did. The weekly portion discussed some obligatory laws, called Mishpat, for which adherence is expected. Then a few times during the reading it changed the vocabulary to a term called Hayashar, or doing the right thing. It acknowledged that the right thing for a circumstance sometimes varied from the specified law. And that's in our most sacred scroll, not an opinion survey.
I think Bush, below, hit the nail on the head. Pew's question is fatally flawed. As soon as I read the key alternatives I veered off into how people would deal with the imprecision. Frankly, I suspect a large majority would say, if asked, both that some moral decisions are clearcut and some are situational, and beyond that, good manners sometimes conflict with morals. After googling "situational ethics", I was saddened to learn Joseph Fletcher was a medical ethicist at UVa while I was there, though I do not remember knowing that at the time.
It just struck me as odd how few people answered this as "I don't know." I looked it up and "I don't know" wasn't an option on the form, it was either of the two answers. So expressing uncertainty was not an option.
This is the base from which all other viewpoints derive.
You're right to point out that it's difficult to capture these ways of thinking in a survey. That said, those with situational ethics will often find themselves adrift.
Ask whether historic American slave holders were wrong to own slaves and I bet you’ll see a massive pivot in answers regarding absolutes and situational ethics. If I’m right, there’s more going on here than a simple religious framework
Very interesting research! Thank you for your work sir.
One of the questions that is repeatedly asked during the interview process for an elite team within my field is, "Which is more important loyalty or integrity?"
Very well read.
Great work on discerning both the meaning of the data, and the likelihood of respondents shifting answers.
Doesn't almost everyone believe in a degree of justification by situation? If that were not true the term "justifiable homicide" would not exist.
This isn’t all that surprising, but what the survey can’t uncover is how much cognitive dissonance exists among those who express disbelief in absolutes.
I would venture that very few of them would argue that rape, or racism, or slavery, or sucker-punching them in the face may or may not be wrong, depending upon the circumstances.
See here:
College and the “Culture War”: Assessing Higher Education’s Influence on Moral Attitudes
Miloš Broćić a,✉, Andrew Miles a
Author information
Article notes
Copyright and License information
PMCID: PMC8493328 PMID: 34629474
Abstract
Moral differences contribute to social and political conflicts. Against this backdrop, colleges and universities have been criticized for promoting liberal moral attitudes. However, direct evidence for these claims is sparse, and suggestive evidence from studies of political attitudes is inconclusive. Using four waves of data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, we examine the effects of higher education on attitudes related to three dimensions of morality that have been identified as central to conflict: moral relativism, concern for others, and concern for social order. Our results indicate that higher education liberalizes moral concerns for most students, but it also departs from the standard liberal profile by promoting moral absolutism rather than relativism. These effects are strongest for individuals majoring in the humanities, arts, or social sciences, and for students pursuing graduate studies. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results for work on political conflict and moral socialization.
I’m not surprised that only those choosing the Evangelicals category are majority endorsers of an absolute standard for morality. I’m also not surprised that selecting a political philosophy is more predictive.
Consider how more of those describing themselves as mainline Protestants also reported voting Republican rather than Democrat in the last election. There’s a fair number of Catholics in America who think Pope Leo is doing more meddling than preaching, as the saying goes.
There’s always an interesting tension between faith & doubt in religions with too much of either being dangerous to the institution. Too much of the former means stagnation for a religious institution as society & culture evolve around it; too much of the latter renders it superfluous in assisting in assessing those changes for society’s needs.