Source
Rai & Fiske (2011), LIT-507 (Psychological Review 118(1)), read in NOTE-405.
What was actually shown
The four motives (pp. 61–64). Unity (communal sharing): care for and protect the in-group, give by need, avoid contamination. Hierarchy (authority ranking): subordinates defer, superiors lead and protect. Equality (equality matching): even balance, in-kind reciprocity, turn-taking. Proportionality (market pricing): reward and punishment in proportion to merit, contribution or guilt.
Fairness is relative (pp. 65–66). Equal treatment is fair only under Equality. It is wrong under Hierarchy or Proportionality, and stealing may be “nonsensical” under Unity or Hierarchy.
Violence (p. 65). Harm can be praiseworthy: against out-group threats (Unity), under orders (Hierarchy), in retaliation (Equality), or as a necessary cost (Proportionality). Cited cross-cultural and vignette work (Cohen et al. 2006; Kelly et al. 2007; Cikara et al. 2010) supports acceptability of violence following the motive.
Purity (pp. 66–67). “The foundations of in-group/loyalty and purity/sanctity are actually variants of the same social-relational regulation motive” (p. 66).
What could have come out otherwise. The cited framing studies (Clark & Waddell 1985; Fiske & Tetlock 1997 on taboo trade-offs) could have found the same act judged alike under every framing. The paper reports that they did not; it runs none itself.
What this does not say
- That the model in force can be identified in advance. The paper gives no way to fix it before observing the judgment, so the central claim risks being unfalsifiable.
- That purity is Unity. It is argued from cases. Food taboos with no group boundary, most of Haidt, Koller & Dias’s harmless wrongs, fit less easily.
- That there are exactly four universal moral motives. The moral extension of relational models theory is asserted, resting on that theory’s prior validation.
- That where no relationship exists there is moral indifference. Two ethnographic anecdotes support it (p. 64).
- What ought to be done. The ethical-implications section mixes description and prescription, and the authors flag the is–ought question (fn. 4).
Connections
- Rival. Moral Foundations Theory (THEORY-539) keeps Loyalty and Sanctity apart as foundations with separate origins.
- It is a third way, beside morality-as-cooperation (THEORY-468) and Baumard, André & Sperber (THEORY-457), of dividing the moral domain from a cooperative premise. That three such divisions exist counts against the idea that game theory yields a unique list.
- It gives a cooperative home to purity (THEORY-632) different from Fitouchi, André & Baumard’s (THEORY-494): group constitution rather than self-control.