Moral Tipping Points: How Trait Moral Salience Moderates Judgments of Narrative Characters Along the Moral Continuum

Abstract. We examined how morality subcultures moderate judgments of a narrative character’s behavior along the moral continuum. Using the moral continuum procedure (MCP) across two studies ( Matthews, 2019 ), we identify the point along the moral continuum where trait moral salience (i.e., one’s sensitivity to different moral foundations) begins to influence moral judgments. Findings indicate that trait moral salience does not influence judgments of less immoral behaviors (i.e., behaviors that fall along the beginning the continuum). However, trait moral salience does impact judgments of more immoral behaviors (i.e., behaviors that fall on the latter half of the continuum), in a pattern consistent with past research. Our data imply that a moral tipping point along the continuum exists, where moral judgments shift from moral consensus (i.e., a general uniformity in moral judgments) to moral disagreement (i.e., divergence in judgement caused by individual differences in trait moral salience). We posit that dynamic coordination theory’s conceptualization of common knowledge helps explain the observed tipping point. Thus, the current project contributes toward extant media theorizing ( Tamborini et al., 2012 ) by specifying how morality subcultures function along a moral continuum.