Moral disagreement in everyday life: An inductive framework for capturing 'moral order'

Area of Science:

• Sociology of Morality
• Social Psychology
• Computational Social Science

Background:

• Traditional sociology of morality often focuses on abstract principles.
• Situated interaction and contextual factors are crucial for understanding moral evaluations.
• A
• thick
• understanding of morality requires analyzing specific social contexts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose an inductive, bottom-up framework for analyzing moral disputes.
• To investigate how situational settings, contextual cues, and social roles influence moral judgments.
• To explore the variation in moral consensus based on situational factors.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of over one million personal narratives from the online forum "Am I The Asshole?" (AITA).
• Empirical investigation of situationally framed aspects of moral disputes.
• Qualitative and quantitative analysis of moral evaluations in diverse social contexts.

Main Results:

• Moral disagreements vary significantly across different settings.
• Situational norms correlate with lower disagreement on moral culpability.
• Contextual cues predictably lead to divergent moral evaluations.
• Power disparities influence blame assignment, with those in power more commonly blamed.

Conclusions:

• A bottom-up, situationally focused framework enhances the study of morality.
• Contextual factors significantly impact the valence and consensus of moral evaluations.
• Findings have implications for empirical research in the sociology of morality.