When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals may not Recognize

Researchers in moral psychology and social justice have agreed that morality is about matters of harm, rights, and justice. On this definition of morality, conservative opposition to social justice programs appears to be immoral, and has been explained as a product of various non-moral processes such as system justification or social dominance orientation. In this article we argue that, from an anthropological perspective, the moral domain is usually much broader, encompassing many more aspects of social life and valuing institutions as much or more than individuals. We present theoretical and empirical reasons for believing that there are five psychological systems that provide the foundations for the world’s many moralities. The five foundations are psychological preparations for detecting and reacting emotionally to issues related to harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Political liberals have moral intuitions primarily based upon the first two foundations, and therefore misunderstand the moral motivations of political conservatives, who generally rely upon all five foundations.

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The Good and Bad of Social Change: Ambivalence Toward Activist Groups

Inherent to any substantive social change is the disruption of the status quo. To the extent that individuals are motivated to preserve the current social system (e.g., Jost & Banaji, British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1–27, 1994), even social change in pursuit of positive goals might evoke ambivalent reactions. Although activist groups might elicit positivity because they are assumed to have positive qualities and they seek positive goals, they might evoke negativity because their actions disrupt the current social system. These experiments examined two different forms of disruption of the status quo. In Experiment 1, a group gaining power elicited greater ambivalence than a group losing power, regardless of the valence of the group’s goal. Importantly, the conditions that evoked ambivalence did not inhibit behavioral support. Experiment 2 found that a new group elicited more ambivalence than an established group when pursuing a positive goal. Consistent with theories emphasizing maintenance of the status quo, these findings demonstrate that attitudes toward activist groups do not derive solely from self-interest.

Reconsidering Peer Influences on Delinquency: Do Less Proximate Contacts Matter?

Much research on adolescent delinquency pivots on the notion of peer influence. The peer effect that is typically employed emphasizes the transmission of behaviors and attitudes between adolescents who are directly linked. In this paper, we argue that to rely solely on those direct social ties to capture peer influence oversimplifies the realities of adolescent society. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to show that indirect peer relations can exercise independent influences on adolescent delinquency. Adolescents actively draw on the examples of friends of friends, and even more distal peers, as they develop their repertoires of action and identity. We argue, however, that this behavior actually reflects adolescents’ ongoing struggle to impress their closest friends and to preserve their social circle. Indeed, the extent to which adolescents are willing to model the behavior of indirect contacts seems to decline as that behavior becomes more dissimilar from that of their close friends. Our findings dovetail with an account of the adolescent as a rational actor who struggles for social acceptance in a complex peer environment which offers conflicting behavioral models.

Dual Arrest and Other Unintended Consequences of Mandatory Arrest in New York City: A Brief Report

In jurisdictions across the United States, the mandated arrest of individuals perpetrating domestic violence crimes termed “mandatory arrest” or “pro-arrest” policies has become a key policy solution to the issue of domestic violence. The purposes of the policies are to standardize the police response to, and increase the number of, arrests stemming from domestic violence incidents by removing or reducing police discretion to arrest. In 1994, the New York state legislature passed the Family Protection and Domestic Violence Intervention Act, which contained provisions enacting a mandatory arrest statute. Using information from 183 callers to a telephone helpline for victims of domestic violence, we describe four unintended consequences of the policy: “unwanted,” “dual,” “retaliatory,” and “no” arrest. Bi- and multivariate analyses are used to identify victim and perpetrator sociodemographic, situational, and legal factors associated with each arrest type. Results are discussed in the context of the effects of mandatory arrest policies and minimizing problems associated with it in the future.

Methodological aspects of the Dutch National Threat Assessment

This paper discusses issues related to measuring organized crime as they have become manifest in the Dutch contribution to the EU Organised Crime Threat Assessment (OCTA). It intends to convey to a wider academic community certain issues of definition, methodology and accountability, understanding the NTA process in terms of the communication of risks in a context of competitive defining institutions.

Child Justice in Canada and the Four Ps: Protection,Prosecution, Prevention,and Participation

This article provides an analysis of the flaws in the Canadian legal system with respect to child rights, in the light of the three Ps set forth by former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler (2004–2006): Protection, Prosecution, and Prevention. Contrary to the general trend of research on “youth” crime which focuses on the visible criminal activities of children and for which they are readily ascribed the status of “young offenders,” I examine whether the legal system is just as swift in giving child victims adequate Protection and Prosecution against their assailants. Six specific child victimization contexts have been identified, which are all characterized by invisibility: in the home, in care, in school and public spaces as well as by corporations and the criminal justice system. I explore why these victimizations are invisible and what legal protection is offered to affected children. Finally, I analyse the extent to which a fourth P, that of Participation, can strengthen the three Ps of Protection, Prosecution and Prevention in fighting crimes committed against children. The contents of this article reflect the author’s opinions only.

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Toward a political economy of post-Fordist punishment

This article suggests some new lines of research in the field of the political economy of punishment and some possible new directions for a critical approach to contemporary social control strategies. The starting point is the transition from a Fordist economy to what can be defined as a post-Fordist system of production. I outline some tendencies in the actual capitalist dynamic (concerning the labour market, the production process, the relations between the workforce and capitalist power and between work and social citizenship), suggesting that a renewed political economy of social control has to deal with them. Two tendencies are assumed to be structural. On the one hand, the tendency of the capitalist system to make the production (and extraction) of surplus-value more and more independent of the effective working time (a tendency toward the reduction of human labour in the productive process). On the other hand, the tendency towards the massive introduction of new technologies: a tendency whose main consequences seem to be the intellectualisation of human labour and the decline of the classic distinction between manual and intellectual labour. I assume that these tendencies give rise to a new productive subject (the multitude), whose characters exceed the actual organisation of work and deepen the contradictions intrinsic to post-Fordist societies. Hence, an analysis of some new social control strategies follows, where I consider actuarialism as a technology for the control of these contradictions

How High-Yield Farming Saves Nature

High-yield farming—more agricultural output per acre of farmland—has been a boon to mankind and to nature. If today’s agricultural efficiency was the same as in the 1950s, the world would need three times the cropland to produce today’s food supply. That would mean that 15-16 million mi² of forest would have been destroyed—all the global forest area available today. Rising population and increased affluence will require a tripling of agricultural efficiency in the next 50 years if we are to protect wildlife at the same time. More investment in agricultural research and education will be required, but this is what produced the previous green revolution.

Brothers’ Keepers?

Relying on rarely analyzed public opinion data from the 1930s and early 1940s, we take issue with the notion popular in contemporary liberal circles that the New Deal era represented a period of expansive commitment to the security and well-being of the poor and politically disenfranchised. At least where the public is concerned—as opposed to the progressive policy makers in the Roosevelt administration—the jobless were regarded with suspicion, immigrants should be forced to “go home,” women belong in the kitchen not on the shop floor. The harsher the economic conditions (by state), the more conservative were the public attitudes. Hence New Deal legislative victories accrued despite rather than because of public support.

Public Opinion and Collective Obligations

This article attempts to identify the general principles that underlie public reasoning about collective obligations and that help explain when political parties can create new obligations or defend existing ones. I use these principles to President Clinton’s unsuccessful attempt to create government health-care plan and attempts by President Bush to privatize Social Security. The success of a party in selling – or defeating – an obligation depends upon what people believe about the competence and capacity of government and the value of autonomy – choices made by each citizen; whether people perceive the obligation as providing floors or establishing ceilings by limiting choice or otherwise restricting opportunities for the better-off; and whether the program is more like insurance or more like welfare. A party’s ability to maintain credibility with voters also depends upon whether party leaders can suppress issues that threaten intra-party elite pacts. When attempts to suppress “taboo” issues like “stem cells” or “black crime” fail, the party loses credibility with its voters and attempts to defend or sell obligations fail.