Moral Foundations Theory
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Moral foundations theory is a
social psychological Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the ...
theory intended to explain the origins of and variation in human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, modular foundations. It was first proposed by the psychologists
Jonathan Haidt Jonathan David Haidt (; born October 19, 1963) is an American social psychologist and author. He is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School of Business. His main areas of study are the psychology of ...
, Craig Joseph, and Jesse Graham, building on the work of cultural anthropologist
Richard Shweder Richard Allan Shweder (born 1945) is an American cultural anthropologist and a figure in cultural psychology. He is currently Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Human Development in the Department of Comparative Human Development a ...
. It has been subsequently developed by a diverse group of collaborators and popularized in Haidt's book ''
The Righteous Mind ''The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion'' is a 2012 social psychology book by Jonathan Haidt, in which the author describes human morality as it relates to politics and religion. In the first section, Haidt de ...
''. The theory proposes six foundations: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression. Its authors remain open to the addition, subtraction, or modification of the set of foundations. Although the initial development of moral foundations theory focused on cultural differences, subsequent work with the theory has largely focused on political ideology. Various scholars have offered moral foundations theory as an explanation of differences among political
progressives Progressivism holds that it is possible to improve human societies through political action. As a political movement, progressivism seeks to advance the human condition through social reform based on purported advancements in science, techno ...
( liberals in the American sense),
conservatives Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
, and
right-libertarians Right-libertarianism,Rothbard, Murray (1 March 1971)"The Left and Right Within Libertarianism" ''WIN: Peace and Freedom Through Nonviolent Action''. 7 (4): 6–10. Retrieved 14 January 2020.Goodway, David (2006). '' Anarchist Seeds Beneath the ...
(
libertarians Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's enc ...
in the American sense), and have suggested that it can explain variation in opinion on politically charged issues such as same sex marriage and abortion. The two main sources are ''The Pragmatic Validity of Moral Pluralism'' and ''Mapping the Moral Domain''. In the first Haidt and Graham describe their work as looking, as anthropologists, at the evolution of morality and finding the common ground between each variation. In the second they describe and defend their method, known as the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. Through studies that jointly consisted of over 11,000 people, from a variety of ages and political beliefs, they found results that supported their prediction.


Origins

Moral foundations theory was first proposed in 2004 by Haidt and Joseph. The theory emerged as a reaction against the developmental rationalist theory of morality associated with
Lawrence Kohlberg Lawrence Kohlberg (; October 25, 1927 – January 19, 1987) was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development. He served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Gra ...
and
Jean Piaget Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called " genetic epistemolog ...
. Building on Piaget's work, Kohlberg argued that children's moral reasoning changed over time, and proposed an explanation through his six stages of moral development. Kohlberg's work emphasized justice as the key concept in moral reasoning, seen as a primarily cognitive activity, and became the dominant approach to moral psychology, heavily influencing subsequent work. Haidt writes that he found Kohlberg's theories unsatisfying from the time he first encountered them in graduate school because they "seemed too cerebral" and lacked a focus on issues of
emotion Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...
. In contrast to the dominant theories of morality in psychology, the anthropologist Richard Shweder developed a set of theories emphasizing the cultural variability of moral judgments, but argued that different cultural forms of morality drew on "three distinct but coherent clusters of moral concerns", which he labeled as the ethics of autonomy, community, and divinity. Shweder's approach inspired Haidt to begin researching moral differences across cultures, including fieldwork in Brazil and Philadelphia. This work led Haidt to begin developing his social intuitionist approach to morality. This approach, which stood in sharp contrast to Kohlberg's rationalist work, suggested that "moral judgment is caused by quick moral intuitions" while moral reasoning simply serves as a post-hoc rationalization of already formed judgments. Haidt's work and his focus on quick, intuitive, emotional judgments quickly became very influential, attracting sustained attention from an array of researchers. As Haidt and his collaborators worked within the social intuitionist approach, they began to devote attention to the sources of the intuitions that they believed underlay moral judgments. In a 2004 article published in the journal ''
Daedalus In Greek mythology, Daedalus (, ; Greek: Δαίδαλος; Latin: ''Daedalus''; Etruscan: ''Taitale'') was a skillful architect and craftsman, seen as a symbol of wisdom, knowledge and power. He is the father of Icarus, the uncle of Perdix, an ...
'', Haidt and Joseph surveyed works on the roots of morality, including the work of
Frans de Waal Franciscus Bernardus Maria "Frans" de Waal (born October 29, 1948) is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, ...
, Donald Brown and Shweder, as well as Alan Fiske's relational models theory and Shalom Schwartz's
Theory of Basic Human Values The Theory of Basic Human Values is a theory of cross-cultural psychology and universal values that was developed by Shalom H. Schwartz. The theory extends previous cross-cultural communication frameworks such as Hofstede's cultural dimensions ...
. From their review of these earlier lines of research, they suggested that all individuals possess four "intuitive ethics", stemming from the process of
human evolution Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of ''Homo sapiens'' as a distinct species of the hominid family, which includes the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of ...
as responses to adaptive challenges. They labelled these four ethics as suffering, hierarchy, reciprocity, and purity. Invoking the notion of
preparedness Preparedness is a research-based set of actions that are taken as precautionary measures in the face of potential disasters. Preparedness is an important quality in achieving goals and in avoiding and mitigating negative outcomes. There are differ ...
, Haidt and Joseph claimed that each of the ethics formed a
cognitive module A cognitive module in cognitive psychology is a specialized tool or sub-unit that can be used by other parts to resolve cognitive tasks. It is used in theories of the modularity of mind and the closely related society of mind theory and was devel ...
, whose development was shaped by culture. They wrote that each module could "provide little more than flashes of affect when certain patterns are encountered in the social world", while a cultural learning process shaped each individual's response to these flashes. Morality diverges because different cultures utilize the four "building blocks" provided by the modules differently. Their ''Daedalus'' article became the first statement of moral foundations theory, which Haidt, Graham, Joseph, and others have since elaborated and refined, for example by splitting the originally proposed ethic of hierarchy into the separate moral foundations of ingroup and authority, and by proposing a tentative sixth foundation of liberty.


The foundations


The main five foundations

According to Moral Foundations Theory, differences in people's moral concerns can be described in terms of five moral foundations: ''Individualizing'' cluster of Care and Fairness, and the group-focused ''Binding'' cluster of Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity. The empirical evidence favoring this grouping comes from patterns of associations between the moral foundations observed with the Moral Foundations Questionnaire.


The liberty foundation

A sixth foundation, ''liberty'' (opposite of ''oppression'') was theorized by
Jonathan Haidt Jonathan David Haidt (; born October 19, 1963) is an American social psychologist and author. He is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School of Business. His main areas of study are the psychology of ...
in ''
The Righteous Mind ''The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion'' is a 2012 social psychology book by Jonathan Haidt, in which the author describes human morality as it relates to politics and religion. In the first section, Haidt de ...
'', chapter eight, in response to the need to differentiate between proportionality fairness and the objections he had received from conservatives and
right-libertarians Right-libertarianism,Rothbard, Murray (1 March 1971)"The Left and Right Within Libertarianism" ''WIN: Peace and Freedom Through Nonviolent Action''. 7 (4): 6–10. Retrieved 14 January 2020.Goodway, David (2006). '' Anarchist Seeds Beneath the ...
to coercion by a dominating power or person. Haidt noted that the latter group's moral matrix relies almost entirely on the ''liberty'' foundation. The evolutionary roots of the liberty foundation are theorized to lie in "hypervigilance of egalitarian hunter–gatherers for any sign of alpha male behavior, including boasting."


Additional candidate foundations

Several other candidate foundations have also been discussed: Efficiency/waste, Ownership/theft, Honesty/deception, and Equity/undeservingness (separate from Fairness).


Methods


Moral Foundations Questionnaire

A large amount of research on Moral Foundations Theory uses self-report instruments such as the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, formally published in 2011 (though earlier versions of the questionnaire had already been published). Subsequent investigations using the Moral Foundations Questionnaire in other cultures have found broadly similar correlations between morality and political identification to those of the US, with studies taking place in Korea, Sweden and New Zealand. However, other studies suggest that the structure of the MFQ is inconsistent across demographic groups (e.g., comparing religious and non-religious and Black and White respondents) and across cultures.


Other Methods

Other materials and methods used to study Moral Foundations Theory include the Moral Foundations Sacredness Scale, Moral Foundations Vignettes, the Socio-Moral Image Database, and Character Moral Foundations Questionnaire. Research on moral language use have also relied on variants of a Moral Foundations Dictionary. Researchers have also examined the topographical maps of somatosensory reactions associated with violations of different moral foundations. Specifically, in a study where participants were asked to describe key aspects of their subjective somatosensory experience in response to scenarios involving various moral violations, body patterns corresponding to violations of moral foundations were felt in different regions of the body depending on whether participants were liberal or conservative.


Applications


Political ideology

Researchers have found that people's sensitivities to the five/six moral foundations correlate with their
political ideologies An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied prim ...
. Using the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, Haidt and Graham found that libertarians are most sensitive to the proposed Liberty foundation, liberals are most sensitive to the Care and Fairness foundations, while conservatives are equally sensitive to all five/six foundations. According to Haidt, the differences have significant implications for political discourse and relations. Because members of two political camps are to a degree blind to one or more of the moral foundations of the others, they may perceive morally driven words or behavior as having another basisat best self-interested, at worst evil, and thus demonize one another. Haidt and Graham suggest a compromise can be found to allow liberals and conservatives to see eye-to-eye. They suggest that the five foundations can be used as "doorway" to allow liberals to step to the conservative side of the "wall" put up between these two political affiliations on major political issues (i.e. legalizing gay marriage). If liberals try to consider the latter three foundations in addition to the former two (therefore adopting all five foundations like conservatives for a brief amount of time) they could understand where the conservatives' viewpoints stem from and long-lasting political issues could finally be settled. Researchers postulate that the moral foundations arose as solutions to problems common in the ancestral hunter-gatherer environment, in particular intertribal and intra-tribal conflict. The three foundations emphasized more by conservatives (Loyalty, Authority, Sanctity) bind groups together for greater strength in intertribal competition while the other two foundations balance those tendencies with concern for individuals within the group. With reduced sensitivity to the group moral foundations, progressives tend to promote a more universalist morality. The usefulness of moral foundations theory as an explanation for political ideology has been contested on the grounds that moral foundations are less
heritable Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic informa ...
than political ideology, and longitudinal data suggest that political ideology predicts subsequent endorsement of moral foundations, but moral foundations endorsement does not predict subsequent political ideology.


Cross-cultural differences

Haidt's initial field work in Brazil and Philadelphia in 1989, and
Odisha Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of ...
, India in 1993, showed that moralizing indeed varies among cultures, but less than by social class (e.g. education) and age. Working-class Brazilian children were more likely to consider both taboo violations and infliction of harm to be morally wrong, and universally so. Members of traditional, collectivist societies, like political conservatives, are more sensitive to violations of the community-related moral foundations. Adult members of so-called
WEIRD Weird derives from the Anglo-Saxon word Wyrd, meaning fate or destiny. In modern English it has acquired the meaning of “strange or uncanny”. It may also refer to: Places * Weird Lake, a lake in Minnesota, U.S. People *"Weird Al" Yankovic (b ...
(western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) societies are the most
individualistic Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-relianc ...
, and most likely to draw a distinction between harm-inflicting violations of morality and violations of convention.


Sex differences

A recent large-scale ( ''u'' = 336,691) analysis of
sex differences Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the sexes of the same animal and/or plant species exhibit different morphological characteristics, particularly characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most ani ...
based on the five moral foundations suggested that women consistently score higher on care, fairness, and purity across 67 cultures. However, loyalty and authority were shown to have negligible sex differences, highly variable across cultures. This study, published in 2020 in
Proceedings of the Royal Society B ''Proceedings of the Royal Society'' is the main research journal of the Royal Society. The journal began in 1831 and was split into two series in 1905: * Series A: for papers in physical sciences and mathematics. * Series B: for papers in life s ...
, also examined country-level sex differences in moral foundations in relation to cultural, socioeconomic, and gender-related indicators revealing that global sex differences in moral foundations are larger in individualistic, Western, and gender-equal cultures. Examining multivariate sex differences in the five moral foundations (i.e.
Mahalanobis Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis OBE, FNA, FASc, FRS (29 June 1893– 28 June 1972) was an Indian scientist and statistician. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure, and for being one of the members of the fi ...
' D as well as its disattenuated bias-corrected version) in moral judgements, the authors concluded that multivariate effects were substantially larger than previously estimated sex differences in moral judgements using non-MFT frameworks and, more generally, the median effect size in social and personality psychology research. Mahalanobis' D of the five moral foundations were significantly larger in individualist and gender-equal countries.


Critiques and competing theories

A number of researchers have offered critiques of, and alternative theories to, Moral Foundations Theory. Critiques of the theory have included claims of biological implausibility and redundancy among the moral foundations (which are argued to be reducible to concern about harm). Both critiques have been disputed by the original authors. Alternative theories include the Model of Moral Motives, the Theory of Dyadic Morality, Relationship Regulation Theory, the
right-wing authoritarianism In psychology, the right-wing authoritarian (RWA) is a personality type that describes somebody who is highly submissive to their authority figures, acts aggressively in the name of said authorities, and is conformist in thought and behavior. Th ...
scale developed by
Bob Altemeyer Robert Anthony Altemeyer (born 6 June 1940) is a retired Professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba. Altemeyer also produced the right-wing authoritarianism scale, or RWA Scale, as well as the related left-wing authoritarianism scale, ...
, the theory of Morality As Cooperation
John Rawls John Bordley Rawls (; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the liberal tradition. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1 ...
and
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
's
categorical imperative The categorical imperative (german: kategorischer Imperativ) is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Introduced in Kant's 1785 ''Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals'', it is a way of evalu ...
.


References


External links


moralfoundations.org
{{Evolutionary psychology Psychological theories Evolutionary psychology Moral psychology