Moral Framing in Conflicts

During conflicts, people often use moral frames to convince the other side. Extant research on moral framing has focused on whether it can change people’s minds on an issue, but this assumes that there is a consensus that people can agree upon. However, on fundamentally difficult issues, people have to compromise, and little research has looked at whether the use of moral frames affect the relational outcome between recipients and senders. I propose that moral frames lead to worse relational outcomes between the parties because recipients perceive senders to be morally convicted and unwilling to compromise, leading them to act more uncooperatively toward them.