Moral Judgment, Authoritarianism, and Ethnocentrism

Although much has been written about the moral basis of authoritarianism, empirical research on the relationship between moral judgment level and authoritarian and ethnocentric attitudes has been sparse. In this study, I hypothesized that higher levels of moral judgment are related to anti-authoritarian and anti-ethnocentric attitudes, whereas lower moral levels predict the presence of authoritarian and ethnocentric opinions. Dutch university students (n = 126) and high school students (n = 88) completed the Sociomoral Reflection Objective Measure (SROM) and scales for authoritarianism and ethnocentrism. Results in the two samples converge: Moral judgment level indeed appears to be related to authoritarianism in the expected direction and—to a lesser extent—to ethnocentrism as well.