Manipulating Public Opinion with Moral Justification

Justifications that invoke moral claims are highly effective in shaping public opinion. But moral justifications (“I am obeying the dictates of my conscience†; “This policy is in the community's best interests†) are difficult to verify as to their truthfulness, raising the possibility that they can be used deceptively. In this article, the psychological and political literatures are reviewed to illustrate why it is so difficult to detect deceptive moral justifications. The difficulty arises because (1) people are not very good at detecting deception in general; (2) the mediated nature of political communication eliminates the nonverbal cues that are most predictive of deception; (3) social judgment biases lead people to focus on the individual and inhibit suspicion; (4) the norms of political culture constrain politicians from accusing each other of lying, so that the public is not prompted by other sources to regard moral claims with suspicion.