Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek University of Virginia

Background Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997). The “big three” of morality (autonomy, community, and divinity), and the “big three” explanations of suffering. In A. Brandt & P. Rozin (Eds.), Morality and health ( pp ). New York: Routledge Most previous work done with undergraduate WEIRD populations Binding foundations previously focus of sources of immorality Fiske, A. P. (1992). Four elementary forms of sociality: Framework for a unified theory of social relations. Psychological Review, 99, Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and the structure of values. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 25, pp. 1-65). New York: Academic Press. Moral Foundations Theory Shweder’s three ethics o Ethic of autonomy o Ethic of community o Ethic of divinity Fiske’s models of social relationships o Equality matching o Authority ranking Schwartz’s 10 value-types o Social justice o Protect environment o National security o Obedient o Clean

The Moral Foundations Harm/care Fairness/reciprocityIngroup/loyalty Authority/respectPurity/sanctity

Study 1: Moral Relevance Study 2: Moral Judgments Study 3: Moral Trade-Offs Study 4: Moral Texts Harm/careFairness/reciprocityIngroup/loyalty Authority/respectPurity/sanctity 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”

Study 1: Moral Relevance How relevant are various concerns when making moral judgments? Prediction: Liberals: rate individualizing foundations as more relevant than conservatives Conservatives: rate binding foundations as more relevant than liberals

Study 1: Moral Relevance Method Political self-identification: strongly liberal....moderate....strongly conservative “ When you decide whether something is right or wrong, to what extent are the following considerations relevant to your thinking?” -high relevance ratings on “Whether or not someone believed in astrology” canceled participant

Study 1: Moral Relevance Results

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” Study 1: Moral Relevance Study 2: Moral Judgments Study 3: Moral Trade-Offs Study 4: Moral Texts Harm/careFairness/reciprocityIngroup/loyalty Authority/respectPurity/sanctity ✓

Study 2: Moral Judgments Moral judgments based on implicit and explicit political identity Prediction: Liberals: agree with judgments favoring individualizing foundations more than conservatives Conservatives: agree with judgments favoring binding foundations more than liberals

Study 2: Moral Judgments Method Political self-identification: strongly liberal....moderate....strongly conservative “When you decide whether something is right or wrong, to what extent are the following considerations relevant to your thinking?” -high relevance ratings on “Whether or not someone believed in astrology” canceled participant

Study 2: Moral Judgments Method “To what extent do you agree with the following moral judgments?”

Study 2: Moral Judgments Results

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” Study 1: Moral Relevance Study 2: Moral Judgments Study 3: Moral Trade-Offs Study 4: Moral Texts Harm/careFairness/reciprocityIngroup/loyalty Authority/respectPurity/sanctity ✓ ✓

Study 3: Moral Trade-Offs For what price would you violate your moral values? Prediction: Liberals would be more willing than conservatives to trade off binding foundations

Study 3: Moral Trade-Offs Method Political self-identification: strongly liberal....moderate....strongly conservative “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 thank about Euros or any other currency, please do. The exact amounts are not very important.” $0 (for free), $10, $100, $10,000, $100,000, $1,000,000, never

Study 3: Moral Trade-Offs Method “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.”

Study 3: Moral Trade-Offs Results

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” Study 1: Moral Relevance Study 2: Moral Judgments Study 3: Moral Trade-Offs Study 4: Moral Texts Harm/careFairness/reciprocityIngroup/loyalty Authority/respectPurity/sanctity ✓ ✓ ✓

Study 4: Moral Texts Do particular moral foundations characterize sermons delivered to liberal communities and conservative communities? Prediction: Liberals (Unitarian Universalist): greater emphasis on individualizing foundations Conservatives (Southern Baptist): greater emphasis on binding foundations

Study 4: Moral Texts Method 1.Identify liberal and conservative Christian denominations (liberal: Unitarian Universalist ; conservative: Southern Baptist) 2.Locate databases of sermons (text form) 3.Create Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program dictionary: - core concepts: harm and care, fairness and reciprocity, ingroup and loyalty, authority and respect, purity and sanctity - associations, synonyms, and antonyms (supporting and violating) 4.Count word frequencies in sermons 5.Evaluate context -1 for support --1 for negation -0 for unclear or irrelevant

Study 4: Moral Texts Results

Study 4: Moral Texts Results

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” Study 1: Moral Relevance Study 2: Moral Judgments Study 3: Moral Trade-Offs Study 4: Moral Texts Harm/careFairness/reciprocityIngroup/loyalty Authority/respectPurity/sanctity ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Conclusion & Further Directions All 4 studies supported the Moral Foundations Hypotheses Liberal morality concerned primarily with care/harm and fairness/reciprocity Conservative morality concerned with all foundations evenly Limitations o Samples not representative o Selection bias Further directions o Kinds of fairness o Kinds of purity