Appraisal of the Fairness Moral Foundation Predicts the Language Use Involving Moral Issues on Twitter Among Japanese.

Akiko Matsuo,Kazutoshi Sasahara,Baofa Du

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.599024

Akiko Matsuo, Kazutoshi Sasahara + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.599024

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Abstract

Moral appraisals are found to be associated with a person’s individual differences (e.g., political ideology), and the effects of individual differences on language use have been studied within the framework of the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). However, the relationship between one’s moral concern and the use of language involving morality on social media is not self-evident. The present exploratory study investigated that relationship using the MFT. Participants’ tweets and self-reported responses to the questionnaire were collected to measure the degree of their appraisals according to the five foundations of the MFT. The Japanese version of the Moral Foundations Dictionary (J-MFD) was used to quantify the number of words in tweets relevant to the MFT’s five moral foundations. The results showed that endorsement of the Fairness and Authority foundations predicted the word frequency in the J-MFD across all five foundations. The findings suggest that the trade-off relationship between the Fairness and Authority foundations plays a key role in online language communication. The implications and future directions to scrutinize that foundation are discussed.

Highlights

IntroductionIn their Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), Graham et al (2013) proposed that people utilize the five foundations—(1) Care (not harming), (2) Fairness (not cheating), (3) Ingroup (not betraying), (4) Authority (not subverting), and (5) Purity (not contaminating)—to make moral judgments
In their Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), Graham et al (2013) proposed that people utilize the five foundations—(1) Care, (2) Fairness, (3) Ingroup, (4) Authority, and (5) Purity—to make moral judgments
A series of multiple regression analyses were performed to investigate how the frequency ratio of appearances of Japanese version of the Moral Foundations Dictionary (J-Moral Foundations Dictionary (MFD)) words associated with each moral foundation was predicted by one’s moral concern represented by the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) scores

Summary

Introduction

In their Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), Graham et al (2013) proposed that people utilize the five foundations—(1) Care (not harming), (2) Fairness (not cheating), (3) Ingroup (not betraying), (4) Authority (not subverting), and (5) Purity (not contaminating)—to make moral judgments. The Care and Fairness foundations are referred to as the individualizing moral foundations, which focus on individual rights and autonomy, whereas the Ingroup, Authority, and Purity foundations are called the binding moral foundations, which focus on collective good and group coherence and hierarchy. The five foundations function as the standard for discriminating right from wrong in social situations. People in a group often deal with morality-related situations by exchanging words about interpretations of those situations. In reinforcing the sharedness of the moral standard, language plays a key role in transmitting the set of moral norms shared in the group

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