Perceived mental illness is associated with judgments of less agency, yet more moral wrongness

Abstract

For a set of 10 conditions (e.g. homosexuality, obesity, drug addiction), we explored associations between moral judgments, agency evaluations, and perceptions that a condition is a mental illness. In a preregistered study ( n = 1,249 U.S. adults), we found that perceptions of lower agency were associated with decreased moral wrongness judgments, as well as increased perceptions of mental illness, yet perceived moral wrongness was the most robust predictor of perceived mental illness. In other words, although perceived mental illness was associated with evaluations that tend to be morally exonerating (such as less control and greater difficulty changing), we observed positive associations between wrongness judgments and perceived mental illness. We also found that—at least within our set of conditions—political conservatives tended to evaluate conditions as more controllable, more morally wrong, and more of a mental illness, yet on the whole, ideology was not a reliable predictor of perceived mental illness. Instead, liberals and conservatives with similar wrongness evaluations tended to similarly ascribe mental illness. These findings raise questions about potential causal relationships between mental illness perceptions and moral evaluations and the possibility that perceived moral wrongness might sometimes contribute to perceptions that a condition ought to be considered a mental illness.