Moral Foundations Theory Research Articles

Moral Reactions to Sexual Relationships that Violate Age Norms

ABSTRACT We examined whether Moral Foundations Theory helps explain Americans’ reactions to violations of age-related sexual norms. Attitudes toward sexual relationships between two adolescents, an adolescent and a young adult, and two adults of highly discrepant ages were obtained from a nationally representative sample of 1,117 adults in the United States. The sex of the older person was manipulated in the age-discrepant scenarios. We found that respondents for whom purity was an important value were generally more likely to be bothered by these sexual activities. The reaction to sexual relationships between adolescent girls and young men was an exception. For this type of relationship, the negative reaction was related to the fairness foundation, suggesting that respondents thought the relationship involved exploitation. Reactions to violations of age norms were unrelated to whether respondents had a strong harm foundation, suggesting that their reactions were not motivated by concern that such relationships are harmful to participants. Finally, we found that male respondents were less likely to react negatively to age violations than female respondents, particularly when the sexual relationship involved an adolescent boy and a young woman.

Moral Common Sense: Examining the False Consensus Effect of Morality in Japan

Researchers have continually studied the classical false consensus effect (FCE) and documented its robustness across specific contexts. Under the influence of the FCE, people create an illusory perception of others around them and maintain this perception, believing that own opinion serves as “common sense.” Because shared morality plays an important role in group contexts, people’s (illusory) perceptions about how much their morality is shared should be clarified. Therefore, the present study investigated the presence of the FCE in the domain of morality based on the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). The pilot study required participants to rank the five moral foundations according to their perceived level of importance and estimate others’ perceived importance of the same five foundations. The Purity foundation of the MFT was not sufficient to identify Japanese values on religion and cleanliness. Thus, the main study supplemented the pilot study with the Purity Orientation–Pollution Avoidance Scale (POPA). The importance given to the moral foundations among participants in the main study was measured using both the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) and the POPA. The results from both studies showed that the FCE occurs in the moral domain among Japanese individuals. Furthermore, the use of the POPA in addition to the MFQ can benefit future research on morality in cultures that are not Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic such as Japan. The present research will contribute significantly to further understanding the role of morality in group contexts.

Moral Intuitions About Stigmatizing Practices and Feeding Stigmatizing Practices: How Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory Relates to Infectious Disease Stigma.

Despite extensive stigma mitigation efforts, infectious disease stigma remains common. So far, little attention has been paid to the moral psychology of stigmatizing practices (i.e. beliefs, attitudes, actions) rather than the experience of being stigmatized. Addressing the moral psychology behind stigmatizing practices seems necessary to explain the persistence of infectious disease stigma and to develop effective mitigation strategies. Our article proposes building on Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations theory, which states that moral judgements follow from intuitions rather than conscious reasoning. Conceptual analysis was conducted to show how Haidt's five moral foundations can be connected to (i) moral judgements about stigmatizing practices and (ii) stigmatizing practices themselves. We found that care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal and sanctity/degradation intuitions can inform moral judgements about stigmatizing practices. Loyalty/betrayal and sanctity/degradation intuitions can sometimes also feed stigmatizing practices. Authority/subversion intuitions can inform moral judgements and stigmatizing practices towards people who disrespect authoritative rules meant to protect public health. Moral dumbfounding and posthoc reasoning might explain the persistence of stigmatizing practices. In conclusion, this study demonstrates the relevance of Haidt's approach to infectious disease stigma research and mitigation strategies. We hope that this study motivates researchers to further test and assess this approach.

Morally motivated public service: An empirical examination of the moral theory of public service motivation

We empirically examine the moral theory of Public Service Motivation (PSM) with data from a large online Dutch household panel. Inspired by Moral Foundation Theory, we develop and test several hypotheses on the role of moral foundations in shaping PSM, as well as the behavioral implications regarding participation in social organizations. The individualizing foundations of Care and Fairness (jointly referred to as INDV) are found to positively relate to all four dimensions of PSM—Compassion (COM), Self-Sacrifice (SS), Attraction to Public Service (APS), and Commitment to Public Values (CPV). Moreover, PSM mediates the positive relationship between INDV and participation in humanitarian and environmental organizations. Sanctity is positively correlated with SS and APS, mediating the often-observed relationship between PSM and religious activities. Loyalty is significantly and positively associated with SS, with the correlations with other PSM dimensions being gender-specific. Authority is significantly and negatively related to COM, SS, and APS. Overall, we provide empirical evidence on the influential role of moral foundations in engendering PSM and its behavioral consequences.

Moral rhetoric in discrete choice models: a Natural Language Processing approach

This paper proposes a new method to combine choice- and text data to infer moral motivations from people’s actions. To do this, we rely on moral rhetoric, in other words, extracting moral values from verbal expressions with Natural Language Processing techniques. We use moral rhetoric based on a well-established moral, psychological theory called Moral Foundations Theory. We use moral rhetoric as input in Discrete Choice Models to gain insights into moral behaviour based on people’s words and actions. We test our method in a case study of voting and party defection in the European Parliament. Our results indicate that moral rhetoric have significant explanatory power in modelling voting behaviour. We interpret the results in the light of political science literature and propose ways for future investigations.

A Randomized Experiment on the Effects of Moral Appeals on U.S. Parents’ Intentions to Vaccinate Their 5e11-Year-Old Children Against COVID-19

Background: Democrats and Republicans in the United States were divided on their COVID-related risk perceptions and their adoption of preventive measures (e.g., getting vaccinated). Based on moral foundations theory and the matching hypothesis, this study hypothesized that parents with a Democratic affiliation would be persuaded by messages featuring a harm/care or a fairness moral appeal, whereas parents with a Republican affiliation would be persuaded by messages featuring an authority or ingroup loyalty appeal.

Toward an Ethical Framework for Smart Cities and the Internet of Things

As smart cities increasingly become real, an ethical framework for them becomes increasingly necessary. Surprisingly, current approaches largely disregard such a framework and concentrate primarily on challenges pertaining to the data lifecycle. However, a smart city involves much more than data gathering: it involves the interactions of residents, businesses, and government agencies with respect to public and private resources subject to potentially subtle regulations and other norms. This article introduces a sociotechnical view of smart cities and shows how it may be profitably mapped to the moral foundation theory to provide a comprehensive ethical framework.

Moving from is to ought: the relation between primals and moral foundations

ABSTRACT Primal world beliefs theoretically operate outside of conscious awareness, influencing perception, appraisals of stimuli, and behaviours. Moral foundations theory proposes that intuitions are the primary determinants of moral decisions. Existing research suggests an important role for religiosity in influencing morality. In this online study of 271 Christians, we hypothesised the primals would predict moral foundations above and beyond the variance accounted for by religiosity. Our results indicate that a belief that the world is alive is the primary primal correlate of moral foundations; a belief that the world is enticing was also related to the moral foundations of care and loyalty. Our results also confirmed the important roles of intrinsic religiosity and fundamentalism found in previous studies. This study demonstrates the importance of primal beliefs in predicting moral foundations, even after accounting for the effects of religiosity. We discuss the implications for decreasing polarization and for future research.

Evil joy is hard to share: Negative affect attenuates interpersonal capitalizing on immoral deeds.

Capitalization is an interpersonal process in which individuals (capitalizers) communicate their accomplishments to others (responders). When these attempts to capitalize are met with enthusiastic responses, individuals reap greater personal and social benefits from the accomplishment. This research integrated the interpersonal model of capitalization with moral foundations theory to examine whether accomplishments achieved through immoral (vs. moral) means disrupt the interpersonal processes of capitalization. We hypothesized that an accomplishment achieved through immoral (vs. moral) means would suppress the positive affective response often reaped from capitalizing on good news. We conducted two, mixed-methods experiments in which individuals interacted with a stranger (Study 1) or with their romantic partner (Study 2). We found that responders exhibited greater self-reported negative emotions, avoidance motivation, and arousal when reacting to capitalizers' immoral (vs. moral) accomplishments. In turn, greater negative affect predicted less enthusiastic verbal responses to capitalization attempts. In Study 2 we found that immoral accomplishments increased avoidance motivation, which contrary to our expectations, increased expressions of happiness. These studies reveal that the moral means by which accomplishments are achieved can disrupt the interpersonal process of capitalization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The relation between Honesty-Humility and moral concerns as expressed in language

Does the basic trait Honesty-Humility predict the type of moral concerns people express in language? We explore whether Honesty-Humility relates to the expression of five moral concerns in language—namely, care/harm, justice/fairness, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation—as conceptualized by the Moral Foundations Theory. Using Natural Language Processing, we screened 17,217 (un)ethical justifications—i.e., reasons for behaving (un)ethically—for the presence of the five moral concerns (N = 901). We found that Honesty-Humility related positively to justice/fairness concerns, but it did not relate to care/harm, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation concerns. Our findings thus suggest that justice/fairness concerns might serve as one of the mechanisms relating Honesty-Humility to anti- and prosocial behavior.

Leveraging moral foundations for corporate social advocacy combating anti-Asian racism: A computational approach

ABSTRACT CSA on racial justice issues has become more popular in recent years. With the rising number of hate crimes against Asian Americans, including the Atlanta spa shooting incident, companies must consider how to position themselves in racial conversations to fulfill their civic responsibilities and create positive social impacts. This study employed the Moral Foundation Theory (MFT) to assess companies’ CSA communication regarding #StopAsianHate and its role in promoting public engagement on Twitter. The study analyzed 1,253 tweets posted by 469 business accounts engaging in the conversation about Stop Asian Hate on Twitter to identify prevalent CSA themes, various moral values used in CSA messages, and the relationship between the use of various moral values and public engagement (i.e. likes and retweets) on Twitter. This study adds to CSA scholarship by stressing a moral stance and providing suggestions for companies to leverage moral discourse in anti-Asian racism activism on social media.

The development and validation of a measure of moral intuition salience for children and adolescents: The Moral Intuitions and Development Scale

AbstractIn this article, we create and validate a measure of moral intuition salience developmentally appropriate for use among children and adolescents. This measure allows researchers to apply moral foundations theory and the model of intuitive morality and exemplars to child and adolescent moral development and media use, an important addition to the literature, as to date, this theory and its measurement have generally only been used among college-aged and adult participants. Following five pilot tests (total N = 713) that demonstrated face, concurrent, and predictive validity of our measure among young adults, we present validation data from 8- to 17-year-olds (N = 577), demonstrating the developmental nature of these moral intuitions and linking them with media use. This measure can be used to understand how children’s moral intuition salience relates to their media and content choices, as well as how media relates to the moral intuitions most salient to the child.

Morality and the Glass Ceiling: How Elite Rhetoric Reflects Gendered Strategies and Perspectives

AbstractMoral rhetoric presents a strategic dilemma for female politicians, who must navigate stereotypes while appealing to copartisan voters. In this article, we investigate how gender shapes elite moral rhetoric given the influence of partisanship, ideology, gender stereotypes, and moral psychology. Drawing on moral foundations theory, we examine how female and male representatives differ in their emphasis on the five foundations of care, fairness, authority, loyalty, and purity. Using the Moral Foundations Dictionary, we analyze a corpus of 2.23 million tweets by U.S. Congress members between 2013 and 2021. We find that female representatives are more likely to emphasize care and less likely to emphasize authority and loyalty than their male peers. However, when subsetting by party, we find that gender effects are most pronounced among Democrats and largely negligible among Republicans. These findings offer insight into the rhetorical dynamics of political leadership at the intersection of gender and partisan identities.

Status politics is the origin of morality policy.

After drawing a distinction between "class" and "status," an early but short-lived sociological literature on status politics is reviewed. That approach has lost favor, but moral foundations theory (MFT) offers a new opportunity to link morality policy to status politics. While any of the five moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity) can provoke conflict over status, most often sanctity is the cause of status politics because it engages the emotion of disgust. Disgust drives the behavioral immune system, which prevents us from being infected by contaminants in tainted food or by "outsiders" who are perceived to follow unconventional practices. This research note concludes by referencing 20 empirical studies in which feelings of disgust targeted certain groups or practices in society (i.e., immigrants, criminals, abortion). Thus, status politics is the origin of morality policy.

Durkheimian utilitarianism and legal moralism

The paper concerns the classical problem of legal moralism, i.e. whether enforcement of morality by the state is justified, even if nobody is harmed. In the article, I analyze Durkheimian utilitarianism, Jonathan Haidt’s normative theory of public policies and the law, based on his psychological moral foundations theory. First, I describe Durkheimian utilitarianism and argue how it can be understood as a theory of legal moralism. Then, I subject it to criticism, using five challenges developed by Petersen (2019): the challenge from relativism, the empirical challenge, the no difference challenge, the levelling-down challenge, and the weighing challenge. It leads to the conclusion that Durkheimian utilitarianism, even if it deals with some of the challenges, still suffers from problems that do not allow it to be a fully developed theory of legal moralism.

Objectivity and Moral Judgment in U.S. News Narratives: A Natural Language Processing Analysis of ‘Culture War’ Coverage

ABSTRACT Using Natural Language Processing tools, the current study explores the evolution of objectivity practice in terms of attitude injection. Adopting the indicator of moral loading under the Moral Foundation Theory framework, it examined the moral judgments embedded in 20,679 culture war news articles published in five major U.S. newspapers from 1980 to 2021. Our findings revealed a distinct mixed journalistic liberal pattern and an apparent paradox in objectivity practice: the less moral judgments, the more liberal tendencies, which could be caused by journalists’ watchdog role and the increase of liberal components in U.S. democracy. We then argue that the performance of traditional objectivity has remained robust, especially when accounting for the degree to which moral judgments can be attributed to source quotations. The study contributes to the literature by bridging moral psychology and the enactment of journalistic norms, applying MFT to evaluate degrees of objectivity in news.

Moral Foundations for the Feelings of Shame and Pride Regarding the Native Country

The feelings of shame and pride regarding the native country are important in the context of the problem of civic identity; therefore, they are of growing interest on the part of sociologists and psychologists. Given the moral nature of these emotions, their analysis based on one of the most authoritative approaches in the psychology of morality, moral foundations theory, seems relevant and justified. The purpose of this study was to analyze the moral foundations for the feelings of shame and pride regarding the native country. The online survey involved 752 subjects (49.9% men) aged 16-73 (mean age M = 42, SD = 10.87). A new version of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ-2) was used to assess the moral foundations. The feelings of shame and pride regarding the native country were assessed using a questionnaire tested in previous sociological and psychological studies. Data processing was carried out using exploratory factor analysis, linear regression analysis and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results of the regression analysis on the factors of shame and pride regarding the native country showed that the moral foundations play an important role in these feelings among the inhabitants of Russia. However, a specific set of predictors is determined by what exactly is the subject of pride or shame. In general, the moral foundations of loyalty and authority are of the greatest importance for pride, while liberty and equity are most important for shame regarding the native country. Using the latent profile analysis, we identified typical profiles of moral foundations associated with age. A small group (14% of the sample) of relatively young respondents with an individualistic profile of moral foundations demonstrated a significant predominance of shame over pride regarding their native country. The other two groups with a traditionalist and a moderate profiles of moral foundations were characterized by a balance (or approximate equality) of pride and shame regarding their native country. The results of the study contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of the moral factors of patriotic education based on the formation of a feeling of pride in the country.

Specificity Versus Generality: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Association Between Trait Disgust Sensitivity and Moral Judgment

Disgust seems to play an important role in moral judgment. However, it is unclear whether the role of disgust in moral judgment is limited to certain kinds of moral domains (versus many) and/or certain types of disgust (versus many). To clarify these questions, we conducted a multilevel meta-analysis ( k = 512; N = 72,443) on relations between trait disgust sensitivity and moral judgment (disgust-immorality association). Main analyses revealed a significant overall mean disgust-immorality association ( r = .23). Additionally, moderator analyses revealed significant specificity in disgust type and moral domain (grounded in Moral Foundations Theory): effects were stronger for (a) sexual disgust compared to pathogen disgust, (b) sanctity moral judgments compared to other domains of moral judgments, and (c) sexual-sanctity associations compared to other disgust type-moral domain pairings.

Moral Foundations, Ideological Divide, and Public Engagement with U.S. Government Agencies’ COVID-19 Vaccine Communication on Social Media

ABSTRACT Guided by moral foundation theory, this study examined how moral framing interacted with local constituents’ ideological leaning to affect public engagement outcomes of government agencies’ COVID-19 vaccine communication on Facebook. We analyzed a dataset of over 5,000 U.S. government agencies’ Facebook posts on COVID-19 vaccines in 2021 (N = 70,671), assessed their use of moral language using a newly developed computational method, and examined how political divide manifests itself at the collective level. Findings from both fixed and random effects models suggest that: 1) the use of moral language is positively associated with public engagement outcomes on government agencies’ social media accounts; 2) five types of moral foundations have distinct effects on three types of public engagement (affective, cognitive, and retransmission); 3) moral foundations and local politics interact to affect public engagement, in that followers of government agencies in liberal states/counties prefer messages emphasizing the care/harm and fairness/cheating dimensions while those in conservative states/counties prefer the loyalty/betrayal dimension. The study demonstrates how a strategic employment of moral language can contribute to public engagement of government agencies’ mass communication campaigns.

Moral Foundations Predict COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: Evidence from a National Survey of Black Americans

ABSTRACT In this study we examine the role of moral values in predicting COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans. Guided by moral foundations theory, we assess the associations between six moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, purity, liberty) and attitudes and intentions toward COVID-19 vaccination. Results of a national survey of Black Americans (N = 1,497) indicate that the care and loyalty moral foundations consistently predicted less vaccine hesitancy with overall more favorable attitudes and intentions toward COVID-19 vaccination, whereas the purity and liberty moral foundations were consistently associated with greater vaccine hesitancy. Relationships between the foundations and vaccine hesitancy were mediated by perceived vaccine effectiveness and safety. Implications of the findings for COVID-19 vaccine communication are discussed.