Patricia Myint and GoEun Yu

LIBERTY AND CONSERVATIVES RELY ON

DIFFERENT SETS OF MORAL FOUNDATIONS

Discover the relationship to voting behaviorApply the theory to moral diff erences across the

political spectrum within the US Liberals vs. Conservatives

INTRODUCTION

Moral Foundations Hypothesis

Political liberals construct their moral systems primarily upon two psychological foundations—Harm/care and Fairness/reciprocity—whereas political conservatives construct moral systems more evenly upon five psychological foundations—the same ones as liberals, plus Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity.

1,613 adults 47% female 53% male Median age: 29

Registered at Project Implicit websiteRandomly Assigned

Political self-identification (7 pt. scale: strongly liberal to strongly conservative)

Gender, age, household income, and educational level Implicit Association Test – political identification

STUDY 1

Pre-Study:

Rate how relevant various concerns were to them when making moral judgments 15 moral relevance items 6 pt. scale labeled never relevant and always relevant. 16th item serves a check

METHODS

RESULTS/DISCUSSION

Different Models tested• Covariates

• Age• Gender• Education level• Income

• Multigroup Version • United States• United Kingdom• Canada

• No difference

• Individualizing foundations – liberals• Binding foundations – conservatives • Liberals – more likely to consider individualizing concerns

more morally relevant than binding concerns• Differences were neither binary or absolute

2,212 volunteers 62% female 38% male Median age: 32 Only citizens/residents of the US

Three part study: Moral relevance items

Answered as oneself, liberal, or conservative Moral judgment items

6 pt. scale: strongly disagree to strongly agree Answered as oneself, liberal, or conservative

Political Identity Measured with IAT Two concept categories (liberal/conservative) Two identity attributes (self/other) Stimuli: well-known political figures and words corresponding to “self”

or “other”.

STUDY 2

Retained assessment from study 1 and added more concrete items Trigger moral intuitions that play an important role in moral

judgmentFour targets of judgment

One normative ideal One statement about government policy One hypothetical scenario One positive virtue

Randomly assigned to receive four of the six self-reported measures

METHODS

DISCUSSION

Conservatives agreed with individualizing foundation judgments less than liberals.

Hypothesis Supported!• Liberals made a big

distinction between the individualizing and binding foundations

• Conservatives weighted the two more or less equally

STUDY 3 : MORAL TRADE-OFFS

Unwillingness to violate the foundations for moneyMore personal and visceral“sacred values” vs. profane value

“Liberals would be less likely to see trade-off s related

to the binding foundations as violations of sacred

values and, therefore, would be more willing to perform

these actions for some amount of money”

• Paricipants– 8,193 adults, 40% female– 13% Libertarians

Try to imagine actually doing the following things,

and indicate how much money someone would

have to pay you (anonymously and secretly) to be

willing to do each thing. For each action, assume

that nothing bad would happen to you afterwards.

Also assume that you cannot use the money to

make up for your action. If you prefer to think

about Euros or any other currency, please do. The

exact amounts are not very important.

Harm:

• Kick a dog in the head, hard• Shoot and kill an animal that is a member of an en-

dangered species• Make cruel remarks to an overweight person about

his or her appearance

Purity:• Sign a piece of paper that says “I hereby sell my soul,

after my death, to whoever has this piece of paper”• Cook and eat your dog, after it dies of natural causes• Get plastic surgery that adds a 2-inch tail on to the end

of your spine

Utilitarian

Deontological

Liberitarian?

STUDY 4 : MORAL TEXTS

Word use, “frames”Sermons

Unitarian Universalist Southern Baptist

STUDY 4 : MORAL TEXTS

69 liberal, 34 conservative sermonsLIWC dictionarySupplemental programFour independent raters

fair, fairly, fairness, fair*, fairmind*, fairplay, equal*, justice, justness, justifi*, reciproc*, impartial*, egalitar*, rights, equity, evenness, equivalent, unbias*, tolerant, equable, balance*, homologous, unprejudice*, reasonable, constant, honest*, unfair*, unequal*, bias*, unjust*, injust*, bigot*, discriminat*, disproportion*, inequitable, prejud*, dishonest, unscrupulous, dissociate, preference, favoritism, segregat*, exclusion, exclud*

?

DISCUSSION

Binding foundations – sources of immoralityLimitation

Sampling : self-selection Measurements were picked out Self-reported ratings Unidimentional Correlation