ABSTRACT
Attitudes rooted in moral conviction (or “moral mandates”) represent a unique class of strong attitudes. Moral conviction refers to a meta-cognition that a given attitude is a refl ection of the perceiver’s fundamental beliefs about right and wrong (Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005 ). Moral mandates are likely to be examples of strong attitudes (e.g., more extreme, certain, important, vested), but not all strong attitudes are moral mandates. Someone’s position on same-sex marriage, for example, might be based on preferences and self-interest, such as a belief that it would be good for his fl oral business (more marriages, more fl owers sold!). Someone else, however, may oppose same-sex marriage because her church doctrine and faith community defi nes marriage as a union between one man and one woman. If her church were to change its doctrine, she would likely revise her opinion as well. In other words, her attitude about the issue is based on normative convention rather than a personal sense of right and wrong. A third person, however, might see the issue of same-sex marriage in moral terms. This person believes that allowing same-sex couples to marry (or restricting their ability to marry) is simply and self-evidently, even monstrously, wrong. All three of these people might have a strong attitude about same-sex marriage, but only the last person feels morally mandated.
