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THEORY-435: In Moral Foundations Questionnaire responses, Care and Fairness are endorsed across the political spectrum, while Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity rise toward the conservative end, in every world region sampled

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Properties3
StatusActive
Tagsmoral-psychology, society-and-governance
SourceLIT-499 — Moral Foundations Theory: The Pragmatic Validity of Moral Pluralism, LIT-500 — Morality beyond the WEIRD: How the nomological network of morality varies across cultures

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Source

Graham, Haidt, Koleva, Motyl, Iyer, Wojcik & Ditto (2013), LIT-499, read in NOTE-396, section 3.2, Figure 2.1 and Table 2.3. Atari et al. (2023), LIT-500, read in NOTE-398, for the MFQ-2.

What was actually shown

MFQ-1 (LIT-499). In large internet samples, Care and Fairness are valued across the spectrum, slightly more by liberals. Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity rise linearly toward conservatives (Figure 2.1). Table 2.3 reports the pattern in 12 world regions, with Authority and Sanctity correlating most strongly with ideology. Across 20 contested issues (N = 24,739), Sanctity was the strongest predictor for most, after ideology and demographics were partialled out (p. 88).

MFQ-2 (LIT-500). In 19 nations, Care and Equality go with the left; Proportionality, Loyalty, Authority and Purity go with the right. Splitting Fairness moves Proportionality to the right-hand side of the profile.

What could have come out otherwise. Conservatives could have scored higher on all five, or the gradient could have appeared in English-speaking samples only. Neither happened in the regions sampled.

What this does not say

  • That conservatives have more moral foundations. The finding is about questionnaire endorsement, not about which intuitions people possess or use when judging.
  • That the pattern holds outside online, literate samples. The chapter calls its samples likely WEIRD (p. 92). The MFQ-2’s are online, literate and mostly urban, about 200 per nation, with no small-scale society (LIT-500, p. 65).
  • That Purity scores can be compared across nations. In the MFQ-2, Purity is the one foundation whose intercepts fail the alignment invariance threshold (39.5% non-invariant against a 25% cut-off).
  • That the binding foundations form one cluster everywhere. In network analyses, the US split between Care–Fairness and the binding three appears in only three of 19 nations (THEORY-613).
  • That Sanctity’s predictive power shows its evolutionary origin. It is evidence that Sanctity scores predict attitudes, which every rival account of purity can accept.

Connections

  • The account this profile is offered as support for is THEORY-539.

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