Moral Schemas, Cultural Conflict, and Socio-Political Action

• In Event: 344 - Regular Session. Peace and Conflict

Abstract

Sacred moral values underlie group differences and motivate social movements, especially in times of cultural conflict. However, established models rarely consider values’ diffusion and influence on political activity, in part due to a lack of engagement with the role of culture and social identities in shaping moral values, collective beliefs, and social movements. As such, current literature lacks proper tools for understanding social unrest and stability. This paper develops an interdisciplinary project to address this gap by investigating the interplay of social and mental mechanisms for the formation and modification of moral values within a cross-cultural perspective. We discuss a cross-cultural empirical strategy combining social scientific survey methodology with neuroscientific brain imaging techniques to reveal the role of values in social mobilization. We propose a two-phase methodology that collects large-scale survey data from the U.S. and Turkey to identify important value dimensions for each culture (Phase 1), and then obtains neurological and behavioral data while people respond (partnered with people who share or violate those values) to cultural conflict scenarios threatening these important values in a functional Magnetic Resonance Scanner (Phase 2). Our interdisciplinary empirical approach will (a) reveal how moral values anchored in group identities trigger socio-political action (e.g., violent, non-violent) in cultural conflict situations, (b) explicate the subtle mental processes that contribute to socio-political action ranging from passive support to active mobilization by specifying involved brain activity, and (c) assess inter and intra-cultural variability in the content of moral values in the face of social influence.

Authors

• Rengin Bahar Firat, University of Lyon

• Steven Hitlin, University of Iowa