The Social Dynamics of Moral Polarization

• In Event: 433 - Section on Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Public Policy and Conflict

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to leverage a sociological analysis of morality to resolve a long-standing puzzle in international politics: the persistent use of international economic sanctions in foreign policy despite their ineffectiveness. To investigate this puzzle, I conducted a qualitative discourse analysis of U.S. public and Congressional debates surrounding the use of economic sanctions toward China for its human rights violations from 1989 to 2000. Based on these results, I argue that support for ineffective sanctions is no longer puzzling if we pay attention to the moral context that surrounds these policy decisions. Sanctions advocacy thrives in a setting of moral polarization, a setting in which a decision is framed as an either-or decision between right and wrong. In settings of moral polarization, policymakers will dismiss arguments about ineffectiveness due to the use of absolutist reasoning and the dismissal of claims by people who lack moral credibility. These findings not only confirm psychological studies that show the tendency toward absolutist reasoning when faced with a moral trade-off, it extends these studies by introducing social dynamics that further reinforce absolutist reasoning when the decision is real, public, and governmental. In public environments of moral polarization, actors are accountable not only to their own personal moral convictions, they are accountable to the public definition of what is moral, to a collective sense of morality, and to the recognized moral experts.

Author

• Stephanie Chan, Biola University