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

Abstract

The study of morality outside of sociology can be improved, we demonstrate, with greater attention paid to aspects of situated interaction beyond abstract moral principles. We propose an inductive framework that focuses on the bottom-up, situationally framed aspects underlying moral disputes, including types of situational setting, contextual cues, and roles and relationships of involved parties. In clear-cut cases like murder, consensus on right or wrong emerges easily, influenced by either intentions or consequences. However, in complex moral disputes, situational conditions can significantly influence the valence and the degree of consensus of collective evaluation of morality. Drawing on over a million personal narratives from the online forum “Am I The Asshole?” (AITA), we present empirical analyses that build toward a “thick” understanding of moral evaluation (Abend, 2011). Our analyses find great variation in moral disagreements across settings, with those possessing strong situational norms reporting low disagreement about moral culpability; contextual cues lead to predictably divergent moral evaluations; and power disparities between involved parties resulting in blame more commonly assigned to those in power. We discuss the implications of the bottom-up framework for empirical research in sociology of morality.