Abstract
Moral foundations theory (MFT) suggests that individuals on the political left draw upon moral intuitions relating primarily to care and fairness, whereas conservatives are more motivated than liberals by authority, ingroup, and purity concerns. The theory of conservatism as motivated social cognition (CMSC) suggests that conservatives are more attuned than liberals to threat and to negative stimuli. Because evidence for both accounts rests on studies of mass publics, however, it remains unclear whether political elites of the left and right exhibit these inclinations. Thus, this analysis uses the 2015-16 United States presidential primary season as an occasion to explore partisan differences in candidates’ moral rhetoric. The analysis focuses on verbal responses to questions posed during party primary debates, a setting that is largely unscripted and thus potentially subject to intuitive influences. The Moral Foundations Dictionary is employed to analyze how frequently candidates used words representing various moral foundations, distinguishing between positive and negative references to each. Consistent with CMSC, the Republican candidates were more likely to use negative-valence moral terminology, describing violations of moral foundations. The direction of some partisan differences contradicts the expectations of MFT. Donald Trump, a novice candidate, was an exception to the typical Republican pattern, making markedly lower overall use of moral-foundations vocabulary.
Highlights
In an era of marked concern over ideological and partisan polarization in the United States and otherWestern democracies, an increasing volume of research in political psychology investigates whether the differences between the political left and right reflect deep-seated predispositions, emotion-laden impulses, or might even have roots in innate characteristics
Probing below the level of issue opinions, political scientists and psychologists have argued that relatively intuitive or near-automatic responses often emerge in individuals as they react to various political contexts or stimuli
The results show differences between Trump and his fellow Republican candidates, with Trump most notable for his low overall use of words associated with moral foundations
Summary
An increasing volume of research in political psychology investigates whether the differences between the political left and right reflect deep-seated predispositions, emotion-laden impulses, or might even have roots in innate characteristics. Probing below the level of issue opinions, political scientists and psychologists have argued that relatively intuitive or near-automatic responses often emerge in individuals as they react to various political contexts or stimuli These scholars maintain, there are clear and systematic differences in the ways that conservatives and liberals tend to respond to certain situations, reflecting a fundamental left/right distinction in political cognition (Jost et al 2003; Amodio et al 2007; Graham et al 2009; Carraro et al 2011; Hibbing et al 2014). Care and Fairness are individuating values that tend to prioritize the claims and nurturance needs of individuals (or social subgroups), sometimes against the claims of the more powerful (Haidt 2012).3 In this view, differential emphases on the five moral foundations underlie many ideological differences between the left and right. (Fulgoni et al 2016, p. 3735) found that “intriguingly, while liberals were concerned with both the vice and virtue aspects in their moral foundations, conservatives seemed to focus only on the vice aspect, denouncing the lack of loyalty and respect for authority.” the empirical analysis below distinguishes between positively and negatively valenced moral-foundations rhetoric while examining liberal/conservative differences
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