Ethics and Integrity: Moral Attitude

Attitudes are both positive and negative evaluations that predict behavioural dispositions. People usually develop strong beliefs about their attitudes. Such strong beliefs are more predictive about the behaviours.

Moral Attitudes

All attitudes which have their base in moral conviction are called Moral Attitudes. Moral convictions refer to meta-cognition that a particular attitude is a reflection of perceiver’s fundamental beliefs about right and wrong.

Not all attitudes are related to morality. For example, attitude towards United States’ war against terrorism may be positive in most parts of the world, but the same was negative in some countries, particularly Middle East. This is because such attitudes are based on the moral convictions of what is right or wrong. Similarly, attitude towards alcoholic drinks, intoxicants, meat etc. may be positive or negative depending upon the moral convictions. The moral convictions are formed with deep influence of family, society, religion, education etc.

Moral Attitudes are Strong Attitudes

Although moral compulsions lead to strong attitudes, but not all strong attitudes are based on moral convictions. Moreover moral attitudes reflect a number of characteristics which distinguish them from attitudes which emanate from preferences or conventional beliefs. While former are subjective and reflect matters of choice, the latter are normative and are usually defined by the group of relevant authorities. Also, all attitudes which are rooted in conventions are not applicable universally.

Moral compulsions are different from other attitudes based on preferences or conventions in many ways. Giving moral convictions to an attitude leads to following predictions:

• Increased preference of social and physical distance from others who are attitudinally different.
• Lower levels of goodwill and cooperativeness in attitudinally homogenous groups.
• Greater inability to generate procedural solutions to resolve disagreements about the primary issue.
• Increased distrust of legitimate authorities like Supreme Court, etc. to correct the issue.
• Rejection of non-preferred decisions and policy outcomes irrespective of their legitimacy or authority.