Incorporating the Measurement of Moral Foundations Theory into Analyzing Stances on Controversial Topics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rezvaneh Rezapour ◽  
Ly Dinh ◽  
Jana Diesner
Keyword(s):  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory

Validation of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire with three Chinese ethnic groups

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Du
Keyword(s):  
Gender Difference ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Influential Factor ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory

Moral foundations theory is claimed to be universally applicable and is classified into 5 foundations of morality: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, respect/subversion, and purity/degradation. This theory has not been tested in the Eastern cultural context. Therefore, in this study I addressed this lack in the context of China, where there are people of a number of different ethnicities. I adopted the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, which was completed by 761 Chinese of Han, Uygur, and Tibetan ethnicity. The results show that there was no gender difference in morality foundation scores, but the differences among ethnic groups were significant: Tibetans scored lower than did Han and Uygur in care and fairness, and Uygur scored higher than Han and Tibetans did in loyalty, respect, and purity. The interactions between gender and ethnic group were significant for care, fairness, and respect. These findings suggest that moral foundations theory is applicable to China, that the Moral Foundations Questionnaire can also be partially applied to Chinese, and that ethnicity is an influential factor when people make moral judgments.

Political Orientations and Morality Judgments in the Turkish Context: Considering the Roles of the Needs for Cognition and Recognition

2020 ◽  
pp. 003329411989990
Author(s):  
Burcu Tekeş ◽  
E. Olcay Imamoğlu ◽  
Fatih Özdemir ◽  
Bengi Öner-Özkan
Keyword(s):  
Need For Cognition ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Group Loyalty ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Collectivistic Culture

The aims of this study were to test: (a) the association of political orientations with morality orientations, specified by moral foundations theory, on a sample of young adults from Turkey, representing a collectivistic culture; and (b) the statistically mediating roles of needs for cognition and recognition in the links between political orientation and morality endorsements. According to the results (a) right-wing orientation and need for recognition were associated with all the three binding foundations (i.e., in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity); (b) right-wing orientation was associated with binding foundations also indirectly via the role of need for recognition; (c) regarding individualizing foundations, left-wing orientation and need for cognition were associated with fairness/reciprocity, whereas only gender was associated with harm/care; and (d) left-wing orientation was associated with fairness dimension also indirectly via the role of need for cognition. The cultural relevance of moral foundations theory as well as the roles of needs for cognition and recognition are discussed.

Permitted to Build? Moral Foundations in Newspaper Framing of Mosque-Construction Controversies

2017 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 782-810 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Bowe
Keyword(s):  
Binary Logistic Regression ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Local Regulation ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
American Media ◽  
Permitting Process

Recent proposals by American Muslims to build mosques have been met with technical and ideological opposition during the permitting process. This article examines the framing of these debates in newspaper stories between 2010 and 2013 to better understand the socially constructed position Muslims hold in American media and public spheres. Connecting framing and Moral Foundations Theory, this analysis identifies five frames: Local Regulation, Political Debate, Muslim Neighbors, Islamic Threat, and Legal Authority. These frames emphasized binding moral foundations related to in-group protection and deference to authority. A binary logistic regression found that moral evaluations were associated with mosque support, but not mosque opposition.

scholarly journals Shifting Liberal and Conservative Attitudes Using Moral Foundations Theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (12) ◽  
pp. 1559-1573 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin V. Day ◽  
Susan T. Fiske ◽  
Emily L. Downing ◽  
Thomas E. Trail
Keyword(s):  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory

scholarly journals Moral Foundations of Welfare Attitudes: The Role of Moral Intuition and Reasoning in Pursuing Social Justice

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-83
Author(s):  
Andrej Findor
Keyword(s):  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Related Research ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Research Programmes ◽  
Welfare Attitudes ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

Abstract The article interconnects the research on welfare attitudes and welfare chauvinism with moral psychology in order to develop an interdisciplinary analytical approach designed for studying attitudes to welfare policies and potentially overcoming the divisions prevalent in many European democracies. It introduces Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) - an empirical approach to analysing intuitions, reasoning, and emotions constituting moral judgment - and outlines its understanding of competing versions of fairness and distributive justice. The potential contributions of MFT are exemplified on a case study situated in contemporary Slovakia which deals with two conflicting conceptions of fairness, as equity and as equality, embodied in the diverging attitudes towards an amendment to the Act on the Assistance in Material Need (2013). The article argues that MFT and related research programmes are irreplaceable components in an interdisciplinary study of the plurality of welfare policy attitudes. It also highlights the transformative potential of MFT and related research programmes in devising interventions aimed at changing (political) attitudes to welfare and reducing their polarisation.

scholarly journals Act versus Impact: Conservatives and liberals exhibit different structural emphases in moral judgment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivar Hannikainen
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Cognitive Styles ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Trolley Problem ◽  
Expected Outcomes

Conservatives and liberals disagree sharply on matters of morality and public policy. We propose a novel account of the psychological basis of these differences. Specifically, we find that conservatives tend to emphasize the intrinsic value of actions during moral judgment, in part by mentally simulating themselves performing those actions, while liberals instead emphasize the value of the expected outcomes of the action. We then demonstrate that a structural emphasis on actions is linked to the condemnation of victimless crimes, a distinctive feature of conservative morality. Next, we find that the conservative and liberal structural approaches to moral judgment are associated with their corresponding patterns of reliance on distinct moral foundations. In addition, the structural approach uniquely predicts that conservatives will be more opposed to harm in circumstances like the well-known trolley problem, a result which we replicate. Finally, we show that the structural approaches of conservatives and liberals are partly linked to underlying cognitive styles (intuitive versus deliberative). Collectively, these findings forge a link between two important yet previously independent lines of research in political psychology: cognitive style and moral foundations theory.

scholarly journals Does Moral Foundations Theory Reveal that Teens Aren’t Entirely Split on P.C. Culture in Higher Education?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joaquín M Lara Midkiff
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Attitude Assessment ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Psychometric Tool ◽  
The Relationship

The rise of Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) as a psychometric tool aimed at formalizing the study of political and moral psychology has led to many empirical studies and surveys over the last fifteen years. This present study documents the relationship between self-reported political identities, Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ)-determined political ideology, and a novel attitude assessment concerning political correctness (PC) in academia among randomly sampled high schoolers at a demographically representative and statistically unremarkable high school in the American Pacific Northwest. Contrary to the emerging consensus in this recent field of MFT psychology, evidence here suggests that teenagers of varying political allegiances may be in general agreement when it concerns a political issue that has predominated headlines in the United States: PC culture (and censorship broadly) found in American universities. Though largely a vindication of antecedent MFT surveys, does this unanticipated alignment indicate a possible acquiescence in the zeitgeist of an up-and-coming generation?

scholarly journals The Effects of Politician’s Moral Violations on Voters' Moral Emotions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annemarie S. Walter ◽  
David P. Redlawsk
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Moral Emotions ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Party Identity ◽  
Moral Transgressions ◽  
Partisan Identification

AbstractExisting empirical research on voters’ responses to individual politicians’ moral transgressions pays limited attention to moral emotions, although moral emotions are an integral part of voters’ moral judgment. This study looks at U.S. voters’ discrete moral emotional responses to politician’s moral violations and examines how these discrete moral emotional responses are dependent on voters’ own moral principles and the extent to which they identify with a political party. We report on a 5 × 3 between-subjects experiment where 2026 U.S. respondents reacted to politicians’ violations of one of five moral foundations defined by Moral Foundations Theory. We randomly vary which moral foundation is violated and the partisanship of the politician. While voters’ own moral principles somewhat condition moral emotional responses, we find that voters’ moral emotional responses mostly depend on partisan identification. When voters share party identity with a politician committing a moral violation, they respond with less anger, contempt, disgust and shame than when they do not share party identity. The effect is greater among strong partisans. However, we find limited evidence that specific moral emotions are activated by violations of particular moral foundations, thereby challenging Moral Foundations Theory.

scholarly journals Revising the Moral Foundations Questionnaire

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig A. Harper ◽  
Darren Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Concurrent Validity ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Component Structure ◽  
Analysis Study ◽  
Multifactorial Model ◽  
Moral Context ◽  
Components Analysis

The moral foundations theory (MFT) is an influential multifactorial model that posits how decision-making in the moral context originates from a set of six intuitive moral foundations: care, fairness, authority, loyalty, purity, and liberty. The established measure of these foundations – the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) – has been used extensively in a range of empirical projects. However, recent analyses of its factor structure and the internal consistency of the each of the foundation clusters have called its validity into question. In this paper, data from a large sample of British voters was used to re-examine the component structure of the MFQ. As opposed to a six-component structure, only three meaningful clusters emerged in an exploratory principal components analysis (Study 1; N = 428): traditionalism, compassion, and liberty. This structure was broadly confirmed in an independent sample (Study 2; N = 322). Concurrent validity was established via correlations with measures of ‘social change’ and ‘systemic inequality’ insecurities (Study 1) and voting behavior and preferences (Study 2). Significant differences on each of the three components of the revised MFQ (MFQ-r) were observed between the voters of different political parties (Study 1) and sides of the Brexit issue (Study 2). Implications for moral foundations theory and its measurement are discussed.

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