Moral foundations theory in autism spectrum disorder: A qualitative investigation

Autism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (8) ◽  
pp. 2202-2212
Author(s):  
Erin E Dempsey ◽  
Chris Moore ◽  
Annie E Richard ◽  
Isabel M Smith
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
Moral Judgements ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Autistic Adults ◽  
Moral Transgressions

Morality is important for how humans treat each other and non-human animals. Differences in moral reasoning have been found between autistic and neurotypical individuals. Research in this area has relied on accounts of moral psychology that suggest increasingly mature moral principles that develop from taking the perspectives of others. Yet, even autistic individuals, who sometimes differ in their ability to take others’ perspectives, make moral judgements that are similar to neurotypical individuals. Moral foundations theory suggests that moral psychology is not hierarchical but differs depending on culture. Moral foundations theory has not yet been investigated among autistic individuals. This qualitative study used interviews and qualitative analysis as a first attempt at understanding how moral foundations theory fits with autistic moral thinking. We found that all five moral foundations of moral foundations theory were represented in the interviews, yet certain foundations appeared more prominent than others. The autistic adults interviewed in our study discussed issues of care and fairness more than of loyalty, authority or purity when prompted to discuss moral transgressions. Future research should use quantitative methods to compare groups of autistic and neurotypical individuals to clarify similarities and differences in moral thinking between the groups. Lay abstract Morality is important for how humans treat each other and non-human animals. Differences in moral thinking have been found between autistic and neurotypical individuals. This research has relied on ways of thinking about moral psychology that suggest that mature morals develop as individuals learn to take the perspectives of others. Yet, even autistic individuals, who sometimes differ in their ability to take others’ perspectives, make moral judgements that are similar to neurotypical individuals. Moral foundations theory suggests that moral psychology is not hierarchical but differs depending on culture. This theory could therefore help make sense of similarities and differences in autistic and neurotypical moral thinking. Moral foundations theory has not yet been investigated among autistic individuals. In this study, we interviewed autistic adults as a first attempt at understanding how moral foundations theory fits with autistic moral thinking. We found that all five moral foundations of moral foundations theory were represented in the interviews, yet certain foundations appeared more prominent than others. The autistic adults interviewed in our study discussed issues of care and fairness more than of loyalty, authority or purity when prompted to discuss moral transgressions. Future research should use quantitative methods to compare groups of autistic and neurotypical individuals to clarify similarities and differences in moral thinking between the groups.

scholarly journals Moral Foundations Theory Among Autistic and Neurotypical Children

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Elizabeth Dempsey ◽  
Chris Moore ◽  
Shannon A. Johnson ◽  
Sherry H. Stewart ◽  
Isabel M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Longitudinal Methods ◽  
Autistic People ◽  
Moral Transgressions

Morality can help guide behavior and facilitate relationships. Although moral judgments by autistic people are similar to neurotypical individuals, many researchers argue that subtle differences signify deficits in autistic individuals. Moral foundation theory describes moral judgments in terms of differences rather than deficits. The current research, aimed at assessing autistic individuals’ moral inclinations using Haidt’s framework, was co-designed with autistic community members. Our aim was to describe autistic moral thinking from a strengths-based perspective while acknowledging differences that may pose interpersonal challenges among autistic youth. We assessed 25 autistic and 23 neurotypical children’s moral judgments using the Moral Foundations Questionnaire for Kids. We used semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis with a subset of participants to describe children’s moral reasoning. Analyses suggested that autistic and neurotypical children make similar judgments about moral transgressions across all five moral foundations. General linear mixed modeling showed that the greatest predictor of recommending punishment was how bad children deemed moral transgressions to be. We also found a trend that autistic children were more likely to recommend punishment for harmless norms violations than were neurotypical children. Future research could use longitudinal methods to understand the development of moral judgments among autistic and neurotypical children.

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 What is the relationship between morals and politics?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Scott Curry
Keyword(s):  
Future Research ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Substantial Body ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

What’s the relationship between morals and politics? According to Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), people rely on multiple evolved intuitive “foundations” when making moral decisions, including: Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. A substantial body of previous research has found that, when making moral decisions, political liberals place more emphasis on Care and Fairness, whereas political conservatives place more emphasis on Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. However: the way that this research has conceptualised moral and politics has been criticised; there have been some anomalous and contradictory empirical findings; and it remains unclear whether the relationship between morals and politics is causal as opposed to merely correlational. Here I review the literature and make suggestions for future research.

The moral foundations of crime control in American presidential platforms, 1968–2016

2020 ◽  
pp. 146247452096697
Author(s):  
Elizabeth K Brown ◽  
Jasmine R Silver
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Moral Orientations ◽  
First Time ◽  
Over Time

The present research for the first time uses Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) as an analytical framework for evaluating the moral foundations of prescriptive presidential party platform statements on crime control from 1968 through 2016. We use summative content analysis to consider the politics of crime control at a broad, foundational level. Our analysis brings data to bear on previously observed trends in the politics of crime control (e.g., Democrats became increasingly conservative on crime in the 1990s) and deepens our understanding by illuminating and contextualizing the latent ideologies and implicit moral orientations to crime of both parties over time. Our findings speak to the prominence of certain moral foundations, authority and care in particular, in partisan frameworks on crime control and indicate trends in reliance on individualizing foundations ( fairness and care) and binding foundations ( authority, loyalty, purity). We consider the implications of these findings for future research on the politics of crime control.

scholarly journals Sex differences in moral judgements across 67 countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1937) ◽  
pp. 20201201
Author(s):  
Mohammad Atari ◽  
Mark H. C. Lai ◽  
Morteza Dehghani
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Moral Judgements ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
And Gender

Most of the empirical research on sex differences and cultural variations in morality has relied on within-culture analyses or small-scale cross-cultural data. To further broaden the scientific understanding of sex differences in morality, the current research relies on two international samples to provide the first large-scale examination of sex differences in moral judgements nested within cultures. Using a sample from 67 countries (Study 1; n = 336 691), we found culturally variable sex differences in moral judgements, as conceptualized by Moral Foundations Theory. Women consistently scored higher than men on Care, Fairness, and Purity. By contrast, sex differences in Loyalty and Authority were negligible and highly variable across cultures. Country-level sex differences in moral judgements were also examined in relation to cultural, socioeconomic, and gender-equality indicators revealing that sex differences in moral judgements are larger in individualist, Western, and gender-equal societies. In Study 2 (19 countries; n = 11 969), these results were largely replicated using Bayesian multi-level modelling in a distinct sample. The findings were robust when incorporating cultural non-independence of countries into the models. Specifically, women consistently showed higher concerns for Care, Fairness, and Purity in their moral judgements than did men. Sex differences in moral judgements were larger in individualist and gender-equal societies with more flexible social norms. We discuss the implications of these findings for the ongoing debate about the origin of sex differences and cultural variations in moral judgements as well as theoretical and pragmatic implications for moral and evolutionary psychology.

Age and Moral Foundations: A Meta-Analytic Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Castilla-Estévez ◽  
Desirée Blázquez-Rincón
Keyword(s):  
Linear Relationship ◽  
Predictive Model ◽  
Correlation Coefficients ◽  
Analytic Approach ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Significant Percentage ◽  
Total Variability ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Several meta-analytic analyses are carried out to analyzed the relationship between age and different moral constructs based on the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) framework. Pearson’s correlation estimates between age and any of the moral construcs were available for a total of 239 independent samples out of 122 studies. Correlation coefficients were meta-analyzed, heterogeneity was examined by searching for moderators when there were more than 30 estimates available, and a predictive model to estimate the expected correlation was proposed when several moderators showed a significant effect. The correlation between age and all the moral constructs analyzed exhibited pooled estimates of null or not relevant magnitude, ranging from –.02 to .08. The moderator analyses led to a predictive model in which participant’s mean age and ideology explained 40.80% of the total variability among the correlation between age and the Loyalty/Betrayal foundation, whereas participant’s mean age explained a significant percentage of variability (8.85 – 25.12%) for the correlations between age and the rest of moral foundations and the Individualizing group. Results show a quite stable moral matrix over the lifespan, but future research is needed for examine a possible non-linear relationship between age and moral foundations.

scholarly journals Moral and Affective Film Set (MAAFS): A Normed Moral Video Database

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin Hannah McCurrie ◽  
Damien Crone ◽  
Felicity J Bigelow ◽  
Simon Laham
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Mood Induction ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Discrete Emotion ◽  
Stimulus Set ◽  
Moral Content ◽  
The Rich

Moral psychology has relied nearly exclusively on text stimuli in the development and testing of theories. However, text stimuli lack the rich variety of morally-relevant social and contextual cues available in everyday interactions. A consequence of this pervasive ecological invalidity may be that moral psychological theories are mischaracterized by an overreliance on cue-impoverished moral stimuli. We address this limitation by developing a cue-rich Moral and Affective Film Set (MAAFS). We crowd-sourced videos of moral behaviours, using previously validated text stimuli and definitions of moral foundations as a guide for content. Crowd-sourced clips were rated by 322 American and 253 Australian participants on a range of moral and affective dimensions, including wrongness, moral foundation relevance, punishment, arousal, discrete emotion-relevance, clarity, previous exposure, and how weird/uncommon the moral acts were. Sixty nine moral videos formed the final stimulus set. Ratings confirmed that the videos are reliably rated as morally wrong, feature a variety of moral concerns and that the moral content is clear. The validation process revealed features that make the MAAFS useful for future research: (1) the MAAFS includes a range of videos that depict everyday transgressions, (2) certain videos evoke negative emotions at an intensity comparable to mood induction films, (3) the videos are largely novel: participants had never seen more than 90% of the videos. We anticipate the MAAFS will be a particularly valuable tool for researchers in moral psychology who seek to explore the structure of morality in scenarios that approximate real-life. However, the MAAFS may be valuable for other fields of psychology, for example, affective scientists may use these videos as a mood induction procedure. The complete stimulus set, links to videos, and normative statistics can be accessed at osf.io/8w3en.

scholarly journals Developing brief versions of the Moral Foundations Vignettes using a Genetic Algorithm-based approach

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien Crone ◽  
Simon Laham ◽  
Joshua Ju-suk Rhee
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Algorithm ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Goodness Of Fit ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Close Correspondence ◽  
Minimal Loss ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Item Scale ◽  
Adequate Reliability

The time-efficient assessment of moral values using systematically validated measures is a high priority in moral psychology research. However, few such options exist for researchers working with Moral Foundations Theory, one of the most popular theories in moral psychology. Across two samples totaling 1,336 participants (756 Australian undergraduates and 580 American Mechanical Turk workers), we used a Genetic Algorithm-based (GA) approach to construct and validate abbreviated versions of the Moral Foundations Vignettes (MFV), a 90-item scale comprising vignettes of concrete violations of each of the six moral foundations. We constructed 36- and 18-item versions of the MFV, demonstrating close correspondence with the complete MFV, and adequate reliability, predictive validity, and factor-analytic goodness of fit for both abbreviated versions. Overall, the abbreviated scales achieve substantially reduced length with minimal loss of information, providing a useful resource for moral psychology researchers.

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.

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