“They should have followed the rules”: Trade-offs Between Fairness and Authority Values Predict Judgments of Social Justice Protests

In 2017, Colin Kaepernick drew global attention by kneeling during the national anthem before a football game. The protest divided the country into two groups: those who supported Kaepernick’s stand against inequality and those who believed it was disrespectful. The current study investigates whether differences in moral values (i.e., fairness vs. respect for authority) predict an individual’s opinion of the protestors and whether priming one of those values influences opinions on social justice protests more broadly. Our data support the moral trade-off hypothesis by demonstrating that when values are in conflict, the degree to which individuals value fairness versus authority predicts their opinions of the protesters. These differences in fairness versus authority also extended to judgments of other kinds of social justice protests. These findings support the moral foundations theory as a useful tool for investigating the influence of moral values on perceptions of social issues and subsequent behavior.