Manipulating Public Opinion with Moral Justification

Bibliographic Data

ID9748259
AuthorsKathleen M Mcgraw (corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume560
Issue1
Pages129-142
Publication date1998-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7162 • E-ISSN: 1552-3349
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0002716298560001010
OpenAlexW2030557229
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited31

Justifications that invoke moral claims are highly effective in shaping public opinion. But moral justifications (“I am obeying the dictates of my conscience”; “This policy is in the community's best interests”) are difficult to verify as to their truthfulness, raising the possibility that they can be used deceptively. In this article, the psychological and political literatures are reviewed to illustrate why it is so difficult to detect deceptive moral justifications. The difficulty arises because (1) people are not very good at detecting deception in general; (2) the mediated nature of political communication eliminates the nonverbal cues that are most predictive of deception; (3) social judgment biases lead people to focus on the individual and inhibit suspicion; (4) the norms of political culture constrain politicians from accusing each other of lying, so that the public is not prompted by other sources to regard moral claims with suspicion

Conscience · Deception · Epistemology · Focus (optics · Lying · Moral disengagement · Political science · Politics · Public opinion · Raising (metalworking · Sociology · Deception detection and forensic psychology · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Philosophy · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology

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