Combining Moral Foundations and Justice Sensitivity Perspectives to Understand Political Orientation

Morality has been a hot topic in the psychological literature, and moral judgment, appraising process that enables individuals to differentiate good from evil and right from wrong according to moral principles, is a critical component of human morality. This review aims to introduce the application of multinomial models in moral judgment research. Several theories have been proposed to explain how moral judgment is made. Dual-process theory of moral judgment proposed that moral judgment is shaped by two moral principles (i.e., utilitarianism and deontology). The principle of utilitarianism emphasizes that the morality of an action is determined by its consequence whereas the principle of deontology states that the morality of an action depends on its consistency with moral norms. To measure people’s moral inclinations in moral judgment, researchers developed moral dilemma paradigm that pit the utilitarian principle against the deontological principle. Based on this moral dilemma paradigm, moral psychologists have revealed gender difference (i.e., men are more utilitarian) and individual differences (e.g., psychopathy individuals are more utilitarian) in moral judgment. However, the traditional moral dilemma paradigms, which did not distinguish the consequences and moral norms in moral dilemmas, can’t precisely measure an individual’s inclinations to utilitarian and deontological nor preclude potential confounders (e.g., people’s preference to act or not in moral dilemmas). To overcome these shortcomings of the traditional moral dilemma paradigms, researchers have recently developed a multinomial model (i.e., the CNI model) that allows researchers to quantify sensitivity to consequences ( C ), sensitivity to moral norms ( N ), and a general preference for inaction versus action irrespective of consequences and norms ( I ) in responses to moral dilemmas. This review aims to discuss the disadvantages of traditional moral dilemma paradigm and the advantages of the CNI model, and to summarize how CNI model-based findings contribute to our understanding of moral judgment. Specifically, recent work based on the CNI model of moral judgment has elaborated on how cognitive load and incidental happiness affect specific psychological processes of moral judgment, which challenges the dual-process theory of moral judgment. Moreover, the cognitive mechanisms underlying the individual differences (i.e., gender and psychopathy) in moral judgment have been clarified. We also point out future directions for moral judgment research. First, due to a small number of observation data in the model (i.e., data from only 24 moral dilemmas), the CNI model may not fit the data well at an individual-level and thus not be suitable for correlational designs. Future studies need to develop a larger set of moral dilemmas to increase the observations for the model and allow model fitting at an individual level. Second, it has been recognized that Chinese people showed stronger deontological inclination than British people, thus it would be interesting to uncover the underlying neurocognitive mechanism of culture differences in moral judgment. Third, several neuromodulators, such as oxytocin and serotonin, have been shown to affect moral judgment, future research is thus needed to clarify the influence of neuromodulators on specific cognitive processes underlying moral preferences. In conclusion, this review highlights the advantages of multinomial modeling and summarizes how the CNI model-based findings deepen our understanding of moral judgment, and the individual differences (i.e., gender and psychopathy) in moral judgment, which yields insights into human morality.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have advocated numerous social distancing measures, and compliance with these has likely saved millions of lives globally. In an online sample drawn from the U.S. and Canada (N = 209), participants completed measures of political orientation, moral foundations, and COVID-19 social distancing attitudes and behaviours. A more left-wing political orientation, and greater endorsement of the individualizing moral foundations were significantly related to more positive social distancing attitudes, and greater self-reported compliance with relevant restrictions. A more right-wing political orientation, and greater endorsement of the binding and economic liberty foundations were associated with less positive attitudes and reduced compliance. In a series of mediation analyses, the relationships between political orientation and various social distancing measures were significantly mediated by variations in participants’ moral foundations, particularly their endorsement of economic liberty and the individualizing foundations. Further data indicated that the perceived persuasiveness of messages based on each moral foundation advocating for continued social distancing was significantly related to both participants’ moral values and their political orientation. Findings are discussed in terms of understanding politicized differences around social distancing as partly reflecting differential valuation of the moral foundations, and in creating effective public health messaging regarding compliance.

Though meat-consumption is known to be a key factor in environmental damage, veganism and vegetarianism are still perceived to be left-wing-phenomena, ironically not penetrating to those who hold ideologies of conservation. Logical contradictions and historical counter-examples cast doubt on a substantive connection between political orientation and meat-eating. Instead, common psychological factors may predispose people toward both: left vs. right-wing political orientation and self-restrictive vs. omnivore eating preferences. Moral foundations have been shown to explain why even seemingly contradictory issue stances are brought forward in the context of the same ideological or political orientation. Here, we expand on these findings by showing the moral foundations to connect political orientation and vegan and vegetarian eating preferences as well as specific strategies of meat-eating justification in a large German sample. Specifically, the binding foundations authority and purity as well as avoidance tendencies are shown to differentially interact with meat-eating across the political spectrum with stronger effects for left-wing adherents and centrists than for the right-wing. Mediation analyses reveal that substantive parts of the association between political orientation and self-restriction in eating are attributable to differences in the moral makeup of left- and right-wing adherents. Connecting our results to prior work on the explanatory power of moral foundations for the political polarization of environmentalism, we discuss how our results may inform inter-ideologically appealing communications of reducing meat consumption, which is a worthwhile and necessary goal for mitigating climate change.

Tax evasion is a major issue for authorities worldwide. Understanding the factors that influence individuals' intrinsic motivation to pay taxes, known as their tax morale, is important for improving tax compliance. This study investigated gender differences in judging tax evasion in the context of cryptocurrency trading. Specifically, a survey study explored whether different moral foundations, financial literacies, and political orientations among females vs. males might explain potential gender differences in judging tax evasion. In an online survey, 243 U.S. adults read a vignette about a friend evading taxes in a cryptocurrency trading context. In a correlational analysis, we found that females judged tax evasion harsher, as being more morally wrong than males. Of the psychographic factors, only individualizing moral foundation values (i.e., fairness and harm avoidance) explained the harsher moral judgment by females. That is, individualizing moral foundation values were at a higher level among females, which further predicted females' harsher judgment of tax evasion. While females also had, on average, lower financial literacy and knowledge of cryptocurrencies than males, these did not predict their harsher judgment of tax evasion. The findings contribute to research on gender differences in moral judgments and highlight that a given transgression, or a specific crime, may violate different moral values in men and women. The results demonstrate to policy makers that it is important to take into account gender differences, in campaigns promoting tax morale and compliance.

Originally developed to explain cultural variation in moral judgments, moral foundations theory (MFT) has become widely adopted as a theory of political ideology. MFT posits that political attitudes are rooted in instinctual evaluations generated by innate psychological modules evolved to solve social dilemmas. If this is correct, moral foundations must be relatively stable dispositional traits, changes in moral foundations should systematically predict consequent changes in political orientations, and, at least in part, moral foundations must be heritable. We test these hypotheses and find substantial variability in individual‐level moral foundations across time, and little evidence that these changes account for changes in political attitudes. We also find little evidence that moral foundations are heritable. These findings raise questions about the future of MFT as a theory of ideology.

This study utilized a combination of questionnaires and computational modeling to investigate age-related differences in moral judgments and the underlying cognitive mechanisms among the Chinese population. Study 1 employed the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale to investigate impartial beneficence and instrumental harm across different age groups. Results indicated that older adults scored significantly higher than younger adults on both dimensions even after controlling for level of education and gender. Study 2 utilized the CNI (consequences, norms, inaction) model to gain a more nuanced understanding of age differences in moral judgments. Findings indicated that older adults exhibited less sensitivity to moral norms when forming moral judgments. This implies that older individuals psychologically lean toward utilitarianism and are less influenced by prevailing norms in their moral decision-making.

Organizations are making massive investments in artificial intelligence (AI), and recent demonstrations and achievements highlight the immense potential for AI to improve organizational and human welfare. But realizing the potential of AI necessitates a better understanding of the various ethical issues involved with deciding to use AI, developing and maintaining it, and allowing it to make decisions that have moral consequences. People want organizations using AI and the AI systems themselves to behave “ethically”. But “behaving ethically” means different things to different people. How should organizations using AI—and the AI itself—handle ethical dilemmas where humans cannot agree on the right course of action? Though a variety of ethical frameworks have been suggested, these approaches do not adequately answer how people make ethical evaluations of AI systems or how to incorporate the fundamental disagreements that people have regarding what is and is not ethical behavior. Drawing on moral foundations theory, we theorize that a person will perceive an organization’s use of AI and AI decisions as ethical to the extent that those decisions resonate with the person’s moral foundations. Since people hold diverse moral foundations, this highlights the crucial need to address individual moral differences in the development, application, and evaluation of AI systems. Our approach addresses several unresolved issues existing in the current state of the ethical AI literature. It suggests potential solutions to handling conflict in moral judgment and highlights future directions to augment ethical AI frameworks by incorporating individual differences in moral judgment.

The Moral Foundations Vignettes (MFVs) – a recently developed set of brief scenarios depicting violations of various moral foundations – enables investigators to directly examine differences in moral judgments about different topics. In the present study, we adapt the MFV instrument for use in the Portuguese language. To this end, the following steps were performed: 1) Translation of the MFV instrument from English to Portuguese language in Brazil; 2) Synthesis of translated versions; 3) Evaluation of the synthesis by expert judges; 4) Evaluation of the MFV instrument by university students from Sao Paulo City; 5) Back translation; and lastly, 6) Validation study, which used a sample of 494 (385f) university students from Sao Paulo city and a set of 68 vignettes, subdivided into seven factors. Exploratory analyses show that the relationships between the moral foundations and political ideology are similar to those found in previous studies, but the severity of moral judgment on individualizing foundations tended to be significantly higher in the Sao Paulo sample, compared to a sample from the USA. Overall, the present study provides a Portuguese version of the MFV that performs similarly to the original English version, enabling a broader examination of how the moral foundations operate.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Suggestions for a New Integration in the Psychology of Morality

Conscientious consumers: a relationship between moral foundations, political orientation and sustainable consumption

Moral foundations theory (Graham et al., 2009) suggests that moral norms can be classified into five foundations: Care, Justice, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. While these five moral foundations have been found for people’s moral judgments, it is not clear whether they would also hold for actual moral behavior. We investigated in two experiments whether foundation-related moral behavior and deception was affected by moral judgment and moral identity in a cross-cultural context comparing adults from the UK and Saudi Arabia. In the first study, no cross-cultural differences were found between the two samples concerning moral judgment and behaviour in the care and justice foundations. Furthermore, no cultural differences were found between the two samples concerning moral behaviour in the five foundations. In the second study, deception was not correlated significantly with the five foundations and moral sensitivity across both cultural samples. However, culture moderated the relationship between deception and moral judgment in harm and authority moral foundations. Findings show that moral identity mediated the relationship between moral judgment and costly moral behaviour. However, deception was not affected by moral sensitivity or moral judgment at all. The different pattern of results could be attributed to the conceptualization of moral duties.

Background:This study investigates the role of political orientation and religiosity in Italy for moral foundations endorsement, in light of Haidt and Graham’sMoral Foundations Theory. This theory hypothesizes that moral systems are based on five dimensions (i.e.,Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity) that, in turn, can be grouped into two broader dimensions (BindingandIndividualizing).Objective:We aim to explore and extend the moral foundation assumptions to the Italian context predicting greater endorsement of binding values among Italian Right-wingers as compared with Left-wingers. Given that the relations between politics and Catholic Church have always been intertwined in modern Italy, we also extend this line of inquiry by examining the role of religiosity.Method:Two hundred and forty-eight Italian participants filled out a self-report measure including theMoral Foundations Questionnaires.Results: Individuals attach considerable relevance to individualizing moral foundations rather than to binding moral foundations; conservatives and regular religious attenders attach more relevance to binding moral foundations as compared with individuals with a Left-wing political orientation and less religious people.Conclusions:Our results show that the Italians’ political orientation emerges as a significant element in the differential adoption of moral foundations. Furthermore, considering the historical and fundamental role of the Catholic religion in the Italian society and political life, our results confirm that binding values are particularly valued in groups such as practicing Catholic, where institutions, families, and authorities are valued.

The morality of a media character’s behavior and its influence on viewers’ parasocial relationships (PSRs) are analyzed based on different theoretical perspectives on media entertainment and psychological theories. Affective disposition theory is used to explain the relationship between moral judgments and character liking. Viewers’ connections with media characters are analyzed in the context of longer-term PSRs. Accordingly, morality is treated as a multidimensional construct that consists of care, fairness, authority, loyalty, and purity. These five moral domains are applied to viewers’ moral foundations and to the behaviors of media characters. Additionally, viewers’ moral expectations and their influence on viewers’ PSRs are considered based on the expectancy violations theory. In an experimental study, the morality of a character’s behavior was manipulated (moral vs. ambiguous vs. immoral), and the effect on viewers’ PSRs based on their moral foundations and moral expectations in the five moral domains was analyzed. The results show that while moral behavior generally strengthens viewers’ PSRs, different effects emerge when viewers’ moral foundations and expectations are considered. The different patterns that emerged between the five moral domains underline the importance of a multidimensional approach to morality in this mediated setting.

Relationship between reasoning, autistic and alexithymic traits in moral judgments

Investigating the effectiveness of introducing virtual reality to elementary school students' moral education