Moral Foundations Theory Research Articles

Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Very Similar Sets of Foundations When Comparing Moral Violations

Applications of moral foundations theory in political science have revealed differences in the degree to which liberals and conservatives explicitly endorse five core moral foundations of care, fairness, authority, loyalty, and sanctity. We argue that differences between liberals and conservatives in their explicit ratings of abstract and generalized moral principles do not imply that citizens with different political orientations have fundamentally different moral intuitions. We introduce a new approach for measuring the importance of the five moral foundations by asking U.K. and U.S. survey respondents to compare pairs of vignettes describing violations relevant to each foundation. We analyze responses to these comparisons using a hierarchical Bradley–Terry model which allows us to evaluate the relative importance of each foundation to individuals with different political perspectives. Our results suggest that, despite prominent claims to the contrary, voters on the left and the right of politics share broadly similar moral intuitions.

The Ebb and Flow of Morality: The Role of Purity in the Public Perceptions of Fukushima's Processed Water Release

AbstractThe Japanese government's decision to discharge treated water into the ocean has drawn citizens' attention, and the evaluation of this issue remains controversial. The themes underlying social issues are connected to the moral foundation of Haidt's moral foundations theory. Accordingly, these foundations appeal to individuals' subjective approval of their moral foundations. The treated water issue is related to the purity foundation; thus, the present study aimed to investigate the role of the purity foundation on the support for the treated water issue by collecting data from 1,291 Japanese participants immediately after the first discharge of treated water. To measure the purity‐related concept, the Purity Orientation–Pollution Avoidance Scale (POPA) was employed. The results of our multiple regression analysis showed a negative association for the Mental Purity subscale and a positive association for the Respect for Religion subscale of POPA. The different aspects of Japanese purity highlighted by POPA are discussed. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved in people's attitudes toward social issues.

Shining the "Light" on Moral Foundations: Light Versus Dark Personality Relates More Strongly to Moral Foundations.

Endorsement of the moral foundations specified by Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) can sometimes fail to relate negatively to certain dispositions indicative of bad moral character. This evidence has fueled some concerns over whether the moral foundations in MFT are "moral." To increase understanding of how moral foundations relate to moral character, we proposed the "asymmetry hypothesis." This hypothesis states that "good" character is a more powerful predictor of each moral foundation than "bad" character. Put differently, there is an asymmetry in the strength (not merely direction) with which the moral foundations relate to encompassing indicators of good versus bad character. This is important because it suggests that links between the moral foundations and moral character will be somewhat concealed by focusing on bad character and/or not considering encompassing indicators of good character. A sample of college participants (N = 514) rated their endorsement of moral foundations and completed two sets of measures that represented encompassing indicators of both good and bad character. The data supported the asymmetry hypothesis: Each encompassing good-character assessment was a stronger predictor of each moral foundation than its corresponding encompassing bad-character assessment. Furthermore, variance unique to any good-character assessment had about moderate relations with each moral foundation, but variance unique to any bad-character assessment had no more than small relations with each moral foundation. The study provides a more nuanced understanding of how moral character relates to moral foundations and highlights utility in considering moral character as multidimensional.

Green and Good? Examining Intended and Unintended Effects of Morally Framed Climate Messages

ABSTRACT Based on Moral Foundations Theory, message framing, and the Sacred Values Protection Model, this pre-registered experiment tested the effects of five different moral frames in climate change messages among N = 715 U.S. adults. Contrary to prior research, we did not find evidence that matching a message’s moral frame to individuals’ endorsements of moral foundations enhances intended positive outcomes, including perceived message effectiveness (PME) and policy support. However, a moral frame mismatch did reduce PME. Also contrary to scholarly warnings about potential negative effects of moralized communication, we did not find evidence for unintended consequences of moral frame matching for outgroup perceptions. Political ideology did moderate the effect of moral framing on desired social proximity (i.e. willingness to interact with moral outgroup members) and perceived message effectiveness. Our findings raise questions about the benefits of using moral frames that invoke only one moral foundation in climate change communication.

Moral trade-offs reveal foundational representations that predict unique variance in political attitudes.

Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) explains variation in moral judgements on the basis of multiple innate, intuitive foundations and has been subject to criticism over recent years. Prior research has tended to rely on explicit self-report in the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). In contrast, we seek to capture intuitive choices between foundations in a novel task - the Moral Foundations Conflict Task (MFCT). Across four studies, responses on this task reflect foundations measured by the MFQ (study 1), are not altered under cognitive load or reduced cognitive control (studies 2a and 2b); and explain unique variance in political orientation and related constructs (study 3). Furthermore, using responses and response times generated on the MFCT, we present a computationally explicit model of foundation-related intuitive judgements and show that these patterns are consistent with the theoretical claims of MFT. These findings show that the MFCT outperforms the MFQ and can contribute to the understanding of moral value conflicts, furthering debate on the nature of moral values.

Moral reframing in contemporary U.S. presidential debates

ABSTRACT Moral reframing is an effective technique at altering the political views of conservatives and liberals. Moral reframing happens when a political position that a voter is opposed to is framed to match that voter’s moral values. The present study, which is based on Moral Foundations Theory, investigates the moral reframing efforts of candidates during U.S. presidential debates to understand how candidates can reach out to those who are not their core supporters. A computational content analysis using the extended Moral Foundations Dictionary examined the debate transcripts and found that Republicans were five times more likely than Democrats to reframe, though both parties were equally negative in sentiment. Also discussed is how reframing varies by candidate, issue, and incumbent vs. challenger status.

A Political Radicalization Framework Based on Moral Foundations Theory

Moral foundations theory proposes that individuals with conflicting political views base their behavior on different principles chosen from a small group of universal moral foundations. This study proposes using a set of widely accepted moral foundations (fairness, in-group loyalty, authority, and purity) as proxies to determine the degree of radicalization of online communities. A fifth principle, care, is generally surpassed by others that are higher in the radicalized groups’ moral hierarchy. Moreover, the presented data-driven methodological framework proposes an alternative way to measure whether a community complies with a certain moral principle or foundation: not evaluating its speech, but its behavior through the interactions of its individuals, establishing a bridge between the structural features of the interaction network and the intensity of communities’ radicalization regarding the considered moral foundations. Two foundations were assessed using the network’s structural characteristics: in-group loyalty measured by group-level modularity, and authority evaluated using group domination, for detecting potential hierarchical substructures within the network. By analyzing a set of Pareto-optimal groups regarding a multidimensional moral relevance scale, the most radicalized communities were identified among those considered extreme in some of their attitudes or views. An application of the proposed framework is illustrated using real-world datasets. The radicalized communities’ behavior exhibited increasing isolation, and their authorities and leaders showed growing domination over their audience. Differences were also detected between users’ behavior and speech, showing that individuals tended to share more “extreme” in-group content than they publish: extreme views get more likes on social media.

Unearthing the Foundations: Testing the Universality of Moral Foundations Theory in Three Non-Industrialised Populations [Conference Presentation Abstract

Unearthing the Foundations: Testing the Universality of Moral Foundations Theory in Three Non-Industrialised Populations [Conference Presentation Abstract

When consumer decisions are moral decisions: Moral Foundations Theory and its implications for consumer psychology

AbstractAlthough researchers have considered the role of morality in consumer psychology over the years, such investigations often fail to (a) recognize the different values that consumers might hold, and (b) provide proper context for why different moral considerations emerge. Moral Foundations Theory (MFT; Graham et al., Advances in experimental social psychology, 2013, Academic Press; Haidt & Joseph, Daedalus, 2004, 133, 55) provides just such a conceptual framework for understanding the diversity of moral thought that exists across cultures and demographic groups. MFT describes morality not as a monolithic entity, but as a pluralistic set of intuitive values that were shaped by evolutionary pressures and edited by distinct cultures. We review the central claims of MFT and describe how the theory can offer new insights when applied to consumer psychology, providing examples from existing research on persuasion, emotion, and prosocial behavior.

What moral identity and competing selves can add to moral foundations theory: Comment on Ramos, Johnson, VanEpps & Graham (2024)

AbstractIn a provocative and insightful analysis, Ramos et al. (Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2024) propose the introduction of Moral Foundations Theory (hereafter MFT)—as a useful framework to (1) explain moral consumer decision‐making more granularly and (2) set forth unique, testable future hypotheses in the field of marketing and consumer psychology. I discuss and build on their analysis to expand (1) but also narrow (2). I couch their conceptualization in the context of a multiple‐identity framework (Consumer Psychology Review, 2021, 4, 100) and move slightly away from their useful but perhaps more taxonomic approach. I try to buttress their work by situating MFT in the context of how the process of moral identity (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2002, 83, 1423) competes with other identities (cf. Journal of Marketing Research, 2020, 57, 375; Current Opinion in Psychology 2016, 10, 94) to help determine when and how the building blocks of moral foundations may become critical drivers of consumption in the areas of persuasion, emotions, and prosocial charitable consumer behavior.

EXPRESS: CEO Moral Foundations and Firms’ Environmental, Social, and Governance Performance

We examine the impact of CEOs’ moral foundations (MFs) – innate source of moral intuitions – on firms' environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Using a linguistic technique on unscripted texts spoken by 1,860 CEOs of S&P 1500 firms over five years, we found that CEOs with higher binding MFs (i.e., focus on expectations of key stakeholder groups) are associated with lower ESG performance. In contrast, we found that CEOs with higher individualizing MFs (i.e., focus on well-being of individuals in general) are associated with higher ESG performance. Our study contributes to the upper echelons theory by providing evidence that CEO morality matters for ESG outcomes. We add to MFs theory by showing that a bi-dimensional lens on CEO’s morality (i.e., binding vs individualizing) reveals nuances on ESG outcomes.

Understanding the Political Frames of the Opioid Crisis: A Content Analysis of U.S. Senators’ Tweets

ABSTRACT The opioid epidemic in the United States is a public health emergency that has triggered calls to action for policy reforms. However, variations exist between political parties and policymakers on how this issue is communicated to the public. With the substantial growth in the use of social media by policymakers as a tool for disseminating policy-related information affecting their constituents, examining their communication strategies on public health emergency issues is imperative. To better understand how U.S. Senate members use Twitter (now known as X) to communicate opioid-related issues, we conducted a quantitative content analysis of their opioid-related tweets (N = 697) from January 1 to August 25 2022. Findings reveal a significant political divide regarding how senators characterize the opioid crisis, influencing user engagement on Twitter. Guided by the moral foundation theory, the results suggest that Democratic senators were more likely to employ care/harm or fairness/cheating moral foundations, relative to Republican senators, who used more loyalty/betrayal or authority/subversion. Additionally, Democratic senators framed the opioid crisis as a health or policy issue, relative to Republican senators’ immigration/border frame. For inclusion of information sources, Democratic senators included significantly more health sources compared to Republican senators’ use of media or law enforcement sources. Issue frame and source type significantly influenced user engagement in the form of likes and retweets. These findings provide both practical and theoretical implications.

How Dramas Featuring Morally Ambiguous Protagonists Increase a Sense of Life Expansion: The Role of Moral Judgment

ABSTRACT Building on moral foundations theory, this article explores which combinations of moral ambiguity domains (care–harm, care–unfairness, fairness–harm, and fairness–unfairness) exhibited by morally ambiguous protagonists (MAPs) in movies evoke a stronger sense of moral conflict in viewers. It further explores viewers’ moral judgment process when they perceive moral conflicts in protagonists who demonstrate moral ambiguity. Study 1, using a measurement-of-mediation design, confirms a moral judgment process; perceived moral conflict encourages viewers to infer that the protagonists suffer a disturbed moral conscience when they find justification in MAPs’ motives for their behaviors. Such inferences lead to the approbation of their behaviors and then result in eudaimonic experiences and a sense of self-expansion. With a moderation-of-process design, Study 2 provides further evidence that behavioral approbation has a mediating role in viewers’ appreciation processes.

Validation of the moral foundations questionnaire-2 in the Turkish context: exploring its relationship with moral behavior

Despite the considerable attention it has received, Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) remains open to criticisms regarding failure to conceptualize the moral domain. MFT was revised in response to these criticisms, along with its measurement tool, the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ-2). However, the validity of this revised theoretical structure and its explanatory power relative to existing alternatives, such as Morality as Cooperation Theory (MAC), has not yet been independently tested. Here we first validated MFT’s revised six-factor structure using the MFQ-2 in a large quasi-representative sample (N = 1099) from a predominantly Muslim country (i.e., Türkiye) and then explored the relationship of these six factors with incentivized measures of moral behavior as well as different psychological variables. Our tests revealed excellent fit values for the six-factor structure proposed by the MFQ-2, which explained more of the variance in criterion variables compared to the MAC Questionnaire (MAC-Q). However, MAC-Q performed better in predicting actual moral behavior (e.g., generosity and cooperation) compared with MFQ-2. Taken together, these findings indicate that, at least for the time being, MFQ-2 and the structure of the moral foundations proposed by MFT can be used to conceptualize the moral domain, but its relatively weak relationship to actual moral behavior limits its insights.

Measuring Moral Dimensions in Social Media with Mformer

The ever-growing textual records of contemporary social issues, often discussed online with moral rhetoric, present both an opportunity and a challenge for studying how moral concerns are debated in real life. Moral foundations theory is a taxonomy of intuitions widely used in data-driven analyses of online content, but current computational tools to detect moral foundations suffer from the incompleteness and fragility of their lexicons and from poor generalization across data domains. In this paper, we fine-tune a large language model to measure moral foundations in text based on datasets covering news media and long- and short-form online discussions. The resulting model, called Mformer, outperforms existing approaches on the same domains by 4–12% in AUC and further generalizes well to four commonly used moral text datasets, improving by up to 17% in AUC. We present case studies using Mformer to analyze everyday moral dilemmas on Reddit and controversies on Twitter, showing that moral foundations can meaningfully describe people’s stance on social issues and such variations are topic-dependent. Pretrained model and datasets are released publicly. We posit that Mformer will help the research community quantify moral dimensions for a range of tasks and data domains, and eventually contribute to the understanding of moral situations faced by humans and machines.

Moral foundations in autistic people and people with systemizing minds

BackgroundDo autistic people share the same moral foundations as typical people? Here we built on two prominent theories in psychology, moral foundations theory and the empathizing–systemizing (E–S) theory, to observe the nature of morality in autistic people and systemizers.MethodsIn dataset 1, we measured five foundations of moral judgements (Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity) measured by the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) in autistic (n = 307) and typical people (n = 415) along with their scores on the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and Systemizing Quotient (SQ). In dataset 2, we measured these same five foundations along with E–S cognitive types (previously referred to as “brain types”) in a large sample of typical people (N = 7595).ResultsAutistic people scored the same on Care (i.e., concern for others) as typical people (h1). Their affective empathy (but not their cognitive empathy) scores were positively correlated with Care. Autistic people were more likely to endorse Fairness (i.e., giving people what they are owed, and treating them with justice) over Care (h2). Their systemizing scores were positively correlated with Fairness. Autistic people or those with a systemizing cognitive profile had lower scores on binding foundations: Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity (h3). Systemizing in typical people was positively correlated with Liberty (i.e., hypervigilance against oppression), which is a sixth moral foundation (h4). Although the majority of people in all five E–S cognitive types self-identified as liberal, with a skew towards empathizing (h5), the percentage of libertarians was highest in systemizing cognitive types (h6). E–S cognitive types accounted for 2 to 3 times more variance for Care than did sex.LimitationsOur study is limited by its reliance on self-report measures and a focus on moral judgements rather than behavior or decision-making. Further, only dataset 2 measured political identification, therefore we were unable to assess politics in autistic people.ConclusionsWe conclude that some moral foundations in autistic people are similar to those in typical people (despite the difficulties in social interaction that are part of autism), and some are subtly different. These subtle differences vary depending on empathizing and systemizing cognitive types.

How do NPOs’ topics and moral foundations in gun-related issues influence public engagement on Twitter?

PurposeDrawing on the moral foundations theory (MFT), we examine what nonprofit organizations (NPOs) discuss and how NPOs engage in gun-related issues on Twitter. Specifically, we explore latent topics and embedded moral values (i.e. care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity) in NPOs’ tweets and investigate the effects of the latent topics and moral values on invoking public engagement.Design/methodology/approachData were retrieved by the Twint Python and the rtweet R packages. Finally, 5,041 tweets posted by 679 NPOs were analyzed via unsupervised topic modeling and the extended moral foundations dictionary (eMFD). Negative binomial regression analysis was employed for statistical analysis.FindingsNPOs’ engagement in gun-related issues mainly focuses on laws and policies, calling for action and collaborations, and school safety. All five moral foundations are more salient in the cluster of laws and policies. When NPOs discuss the above-mentioned three topics, the public is less likely to like or retweet NPOs’ messages. In contrast, NPOs’ messages with the sanctity foundation are most likely to receive likes and retweets from the public. The fairness foundation interacts with Cluster 3 of school safety on the number of likes.Originality/valueThis study enhances the understanding of gun-related social media discussions by identifying the crucial involvement of NPOs as major stakeholders. In addition, our study enriches the existing literature on NPOs’ social media communication by including moral values and their moral-emotional effects on public engagement. Finally, our study validates the eMFD dictionary and broadens its applicability to gun-related topics.

Perceived grievance and individualising moralities: exploring the psychological structure of left-wing authoritarianism

ABSTRACT Research shows a sharp increase in political polarization over the last two decades. While right-wing authoritarianism has received considerable academic attention, the psychological mechanisms of left-wing authoritarianism remain under-explored. This study used structural equation modeling to empirically test the factors that influence left-wing authoritarianism and its relationship with features of identity politics and psychological distress. Moral foundations theory was used to assess the moral concerns underlying left-wing authoritarianism. Participants from English-speaking countries (52.4% female, aged 18 to 85 years old) were recruited from various political groups on social media. The final sample (N = 299) voluntarily completed an online survey measuring left-wing authoritarianism, psychological distress, moral concerns, need for cognitive closure, and emotional reactivity. The final model explained 53% of the variance in left-wing authoritarianism and demonstrated that psychological distress indirectly affects left-wing authoritarianism through perceived grievance. However, perceived grievance had the strongest direct impact, providing support for the premise that perceived grievance, a feature of identity politics, constitutes a strong positive predictor of left-wing authoritarianism. Additionally, non-hypothesized mediating effects were observed from perceived grievance to the individualizing foundations and left-wing authoritarianism.

Do Moral Foundation Theory and Dyadic Morality Theory Disagree over the Nature of Emotion?

Do Moral Foundation Theory and Dyadic Morality Theory Disagree over the Nature of Emotion?

MOTIV: Visual Exploration of Moral Framing in Social Media

AbstractWe present a visual computing framework for analysing moral rhetoric on social media around controversial topics. Using Moral Foundation Theory, we propose a methodology for deconstructing and visualizing the when, where and who behind each of these moral dimensions as expressed in microblog data. We characterize the design of this framework, developed in collaboration with experts from language processing, communications and causal inference. Our approach integrates microblog data with multiple sources of geospatial and temporal data, and leverages unsupervised machine learning (generalized additive models) to support collaborative hypothesis discovery and testing. We implement this approach in a system named MOTIV. We illustrate this approach on two problems, one related to Stay‐at‐home policies during the COVID‐19 pandemic, and the other related to the Black Lives Matter movement. Through detailed case studies and discussions with collaborators, we identify several insights discovered regarding the different drivers of moral sentiment in social media. Our results indicate that this visual approach supports rapid, collaborative hypothesis testing, and can help give insights into the underlying moral values behind controversial political issues.Supplemental Material: https://osf.io/ygkzn/?view_only=6310c0886938415391d977b8aae8b749