How does a leader's justification of his/her organization's policy affect support for the policy? this study compared a moral, pragmatic, and ambiguous justification for three policy proposals: a politician's plan to fund a retirement planning agency, a state governor's plan to repave state highways, and a president's plan to outlaw child labor in a developing country. for example, for the retirement agency proposal, the moral justification was the importance of retirees "to live with dignity and comfort," the pragmatic was "to not drain public funds," and the ambiguous was "to have sufficient funds." three hundred seventy‑four volunteer subjects were assigned at random to read all three proposals: subjects read the three proposals with a moral justification, subjects read each with a pragmatic justification, and subjects with an ambiguous justification. several questions measuring support for each policy proposal were answered by the subject to create a support score for each proposal, and their scores for the three proposals w