Morality and Social Psychology

Summary

Even though much sociological work on morality centers on micro-level processes, few contributions provide comprehensive syntheses of morality and sociological social psychology. Even fewer offer a systematic account of how established traditions within sociological social psychology illuminate moral processes—despite the fact that the link is often present, whether explicitly or implicitly recognized. For instance, symbolic interactionism emphasizes how morality emerges through everyday interactions, as people construct, negotiate, and sustain shared moral meanings. The dramaturgical perspective adds two key insights: individuals manage impressions to present themselves as moral actors before audiences, and moral norms are socially contingent and locally defined, such that violations to local norms are experienced as profoundly wrong, especially among those deeply socialized. Values, as key aspects of the self yet patterned by social location, shape moral boundaries and influence behavior and interaction. Affect control theory provides a systematic framework for understanding moral judgment by capturing the moral valence of cultural meanings and modeling how events generate moral evaluations through impression formation. Identity theory explains morality as embedded in self-meanings, with individuals motivated to act consistently with their moral identities and to verify those identities. The social exchange framework illustrates how morality is implicated in exchanges as reciprocity, obligation, fairness, and trust regulate exchanges and sustain social order. Justice frameworks contribute by clarifying how people evaluate fairness and respond to perceived injustice. Establishing links between these theoretical perspectives and morality can help scholars more readily identify, and explicitly articulate, their shared concerns. Beyond these established approaches, emerging research on race, class, and gender; culture and cognition; the moralization of politics; and methodological innovations in natural language processing, networks, AI, and neurosociology promises to further advance understanding of morality from a social psychological standpoint.