Students’ Attitudes Toward College Drinking: A Moral Intuitionist Approach

ABSTRACT

This study uses Moral Foundations Theory to examine the association between moral intuitions and college students’ attitudes toward drinking. The data consist of 1,447 college students sampled in 2017 at a large public university. Results show that students’ attitudes toward drinking are associated with their moral intuitions. Specifically, students whose moral intuitions emphasize purity are less favorable toward drinking, while students whose moral intuitions emphasize group loyalty are more favorable. Results also show that these moral intuitions are mediated by religiosity and (to a lesser extent) involvement in Greek life, respectively. The study suggests the importance of extending the conception of morality beyond individual-oriented concerns with harm and fairness to include group-oriented concerns with purity and loyalty.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my wife and colleague, Stacy Silver for providing helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

¹ While Moral Foundations Theory has recently been incorporated into studies of morality conducted by cultural sociologists (Hitlin and Vaisey 2013; Miles and Vaisey 2015; Vaisey 2009), the theory has received relatively little attention from researchers interested in crime and deviance (Canton 2015). While it is difficult to say exactly why this is, part of the reason may be that when criminologists have studied morality in the past they have tended to do so under the guidance of Hirschi’s social control theory (Hirschi 1969), which conceptualizes belief in conventional morality as one of four dimensions of an individual’s social bond to society (the other dimensions are attachment to others, commitment to conventional goals, and involvement in conventional activities). For Hirschi, “belief” is a general indicator of the overall strength of the individual’s belief in the legitimacy of social norms and is therefore a predictor of the individual’s overall tendency to engage in crime and deviance, that is, criminality. A more recent strand of research building on Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) theory of self-control focuses on the conditions under which morality – conceptualized as the disapproval of offending – predicts criminality, and argues that self-control has a stronger effect for individuals whose disapproval of offending is weak (Svensson, Pauwles, and Weerman 2010; Wikstrom and Treiber 2007).

In contrast, Moral Foundations Theory conceptualizes morality in terms of five evolutionarily prepared, culturally conditioned “modules” or moral foundations that govern approach and avoidance within their respective domains (i.e., Harm/Care, Fairness/Cheating, Ingoup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, Purity/Sanctity), so that an individual may be, for example, highly sensitive to purity violations but only weakly sensitive to displays of disrespect toward authority. In addition, while social control theories are grounded in a choice model in which individuals weigh the benefits to be gained from deviance against the expected costs, Moral Foundations Theory is grounded in the notion that moral responses tend to occur automatically (via intuition) and therefore do not require a conscious cost/benefits analysis. In short, Moral Foundations Theory offers a more nuanced theory of moral influence than does social control theory and does so without conceptualizing individuals as deliberative decision makers.

² According to Scott and Lyman (1968: 46), an account is “a linguistic device employed whenever an action is subjected to valuative inquiry. Such devices are a crucial element in the social order since they prevent conflicts from arising by verbally bridging the gap between action and expectation. Moreover, accounts are ‘situated’ according to the statuses of the interactants, and are standardized within cultures so that certain accounts are terminologically stabilized and routinely expected when activity falls outside the domain of expectations.” A technique of neutralization is a type of account used to defuse guilt or shame arising from behavior deemed unacceptable to oneself (guilt) or the group to which one belongs (shame) (Sykes and Matza 1957).

³ Evidence of students’ use of alcohol as an excuse is documented by Vander Ven and Beck (2009: 639–641) in the following quotes from students: (1) “At this point it was about 1 A.M., and my girlfriend, who is not actually my girlfriend, came over. The problem is, I believe she likes me and I don’t feel the same, but, since I was wasted, I made out with her, and touched her sexually anyway and feel terrible about it. (Male, 20)”; (2) “Because we were all so drunk we thought it was a good idea to play strip beer pong. (Female, 20)”; (3) “Needless to say, some things went on in the bedroom and part of it was because of the alcohol. (Female, 21)”; (4) “I had a girlfriend and her sister and her came over and they were pretty much sober, but I was completely gone and I was trying to make out with my girlfriend’s sister when she was standing there. (Male, 22).”

⁴ Haidt and colleagues argue that the binding and individualizing moral foundations emerged as evolutionary adaptations to survival challenges in which the need to safeguard the wellbeing of individuals had to be balanced against the need for individuals to make sacrifices on behalf of groups.

⁵ Recognizing that some readers may prefer the alternative pathway (religiosity -> Purity/Sanctity foundation -> attitudes toward college drinking) – reasoning that religion tends to bolster concerns with purity – this alternative pathway also is examined and compared empirically to the one hypothesized here and that is most consistent with Moral Foundations Theory.

⁶ Because of its reliance on a validated closed-ended questionnaire (Graham et al. 2011), the moral foundations approach is well-suited for studying “fast thinking” moral-intuitive processes. As Vaisey (2009:1688) argues, “Because choosing from a fixed list of responses is akin to solving a practical problem (“Which one do I like?”), fixed-response survey questions may draw disproportionately on [fast thinking] practical consciousness, which has to make (as opposed to discuss) many such decisions each day.”

⁷ As described above, the alternative pathway (religiosity-> Purity/Sanctity foundation -> attitudes toward college drinking) also was examined. Results showed that the association between religiosity and attitudes toward college drinking was not reduced when the Purity/Sanctity foundation was added to the equation (β = −.099 became β = −.094) and that the Sobel test of the mediating effect was not statistically significant. This result is consistent with the view (from Moral Foundations Theory) that moral intuitions are fundamental psychological attributes that influence the adoption of more complex beliefs and behaviors (Graham et al. 2011; Haidt 2012; Silver and Silver 2017) rather than the reverse.

⁸ Model 3 of Table 4 also shows that the inverse association between female sex and attitudes toward college drinking becomes stronger when the frequency of fraternity party attendance is added to the equation in Model 3. This can be understood by looking at the bivariate correlations (Appendix B). Specifically, the inverse bivariate relationship between female sex and attitudes toward college drinking (r = −.10, p < .001) is dampened by the fact that females attend more fraternity parties (r = .168, p < .001), which is associated with positive attitudes toward college drinking (r = .207, p < .001). Therefore, when fraternity party attendance is controlled the inverse relationship between female sex and attitudes toward the drinking scene becomes more pronounced.

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Eric Silver

Eric Silver is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Penn State University. His current research focuses on deviance, morality, and punitiveness. His previous research focuses on violence and mental disorder, communities and crime, and actuarial risk assessment. His publications appear in Criminology, Social Problems, American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, and Deviant Behavior, and other outlets.