Groups and morality

Across social and personality psychology, there is renewed interest in morality. Consistent with these fields’ general emphasis on subjective psychological processes, recent work tends to view any thought, feeling, or behavior that includes a notion of right and wrong as moral (for a review, see Haidt & Kesebir, 2010). This makes moral psychology an unusually diverse topic. Therefore, this chapter reviews a wide swath of relevant work, on topics ranging from personality, self-perception, and self-esteem; to social cooperation, trust, and interdependence; to stereotypes, prejudice, and group identity. Perhaps because social psychology defines moral thought, feeling, and behavior as that which individuals subjectively consider right or wrong, the focus has been on individuals in general (for reviews, see Haidt & Kesebir, 2010; Monin & Jordan, 2009; Pagliaro, 2012). Thus, the morality of particular individuals has been relatively neglected by social psychologists. The first section discusses the roots of the individual approach to morality in social psychology. It also reviews distinct approaches to moral personality and honor, which focus on individuals’ particular moral self-views. The second section reviews four of the central ways in which groups are important to morality. The third section reviews the ways in which perceived morality is important to examinations of stereotypes and prejudice toward out-groups. The fourth section reviews theory and research on morality regarding in-groups. As will be seen, morality is at the heart of in-group identity, positive group esteem, and social action. As a result of its importance to views of ingroup and out-group, it should not be surprising that morality plays a central role in the quality of relations between groups. This issue is reviewed in the fifth section. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)