Dogmatism & Moral Conviction in Individuals: Injustice for All

Dogmatism has been studied for over fifty years and has been linked to intolerance, ego-centrism, and an unwillingness or inability to understand opposing viewpoints. Moral conviction derives from a separate literature base, but like dogmatism, has been linked to intolerance. An on-line survey measured dogmatism, moral conviction and whether participants would vote yes or no for legal gay marriage in Kansas and yes or no for the mandated teaching of creationism in Kansas public schools. It was hypothesized that dogmatism, moral conviction, and consideration of the opposition viewpoint would discriminate voting on both issues. Support for both hypotheses was found. For both issues participants scoring higher in measures of dogmatism and moral conviction also gave less consideration to the opposition view in deciding how to vote. This research also established correlations between moral conviction and dogmatism. People who are particularly dogmatic and also consider a given issue moral in nature seem to be less likely to consider other viewpoints even in decisions that would impact those others, which contributes to injustice.