Political Orientation and Moral Foundations: A Study on Psychology

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1PSYCHOLOGY
Abstract
A study was conducted to analyse the hypothesis that political liberals frame their moral systems
on the two psychological foundations like the reciprocity/fairness and care/harm whereas the
political conservatives construct a moral system which is based on the five psychological
foundation like the oppression/liberty; degradation/sanctity; subversion/authority;
betrayal/loyalty; cheating/fairness/harm/care. This study included a total of 227 individuals that
have a total of 59 men with a mean age of 23.42 years and the standard deviation is 7.6.
Whereas, the total number of women included in the study were 168 and the mean age was found
to be 21.41 years and with a standard deviation of 5.47 years. A total of 239 surveys were
gathered from the respondents and the data unavailability has rendered the remaining 12 sets of
the responses to be useless. It has also been seen that the a total of three respondents did not
return the test of political orientation. The moral foundation questionnaire was not completed by
the 9 respondents. Therefore, a total of 227 responses were used for further analysis. The data
explicitly showed that the hypothesis is correct while the lack of the moral foundation of
liberty/oppression have made it tough to prove the hypothesis correct.

2PSYCHOLOGY
Method
Participants
The study included a total of 227 individuals that have a total of 59 men with a mean age
of 23.42 years and the standard deviation is 7.6. Whereas, the total number of women included in
the study were 168 and the mean age was found to be 21.41 years and with a standard deviation
of 5.47 years. The male respondents were more aged in comparison to the female respondents.
The difference between the ages is significant with a t (225) = 2.18 and a p-value of 0.011. The
respondents were aged between the 18 to 55 years.
Materials
Within the field of the politics the general people consider themselves to be either
conservative or liberal. This particular study emphasises on the question of political orientation
and it is a scale that have 7 different options. The 7 options are highlighted to be slightly
conservative, slightly liberal, moderately conservative, moderately liberal, strongly conservative,
strongly liberal, neutral (moderate). The question in the survey can be effectively segregated into
the conservative and liberal psychology. A set of questionnaire is also considered which is called
the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). The questionnaire is found to be administered by
himself or herself and the individual choices regarding the decision making and priorities are
considered to be moral. The contents of the questionnaire deal with the five major moral
foundations called the care/harm, fairness, loyalty or ingroup, authority, purity. The
questionnaire consists of the two parts and the for this study the part 1 will be explicitly used.
Moral relevance and the moral judgements are the two different parts of the study. However, for
this study the moral relevance is used for the study. The section initiates with a question: The
stage where a person contemplates that something is wrong or right and the degree to which the

3PSYCHOLOGY
question is relevant. The first part of the questionnaire includes the 16 questions and also a scale
that shows the extent up to which it is irrelevant and relevant.
Procedure
The 168 women and the 59 men respondents were asked to respond to a single item
orientation question that is entirely based on the personal inclination towards the conservative or
liberal type of politics. The test explicitly is based on the single type of scale and the respondents
are asked to provide a rating based on the 7-point scale. The scale with a score of 7 shows a
strongly conservative and 1 depicts a strongly liberal. The questionnaire consists of a total of 16
questions and the entirely based on the moral relevance. The respondents that are aged between
the 18 to 55 years are provided with the questionnaires. The data gathered from the respondents
were further used for the analysis.
Results
In order to measure the MFQ relevancy, the moral relevance is quantified based on the
political orientation function. The table below shows the data of political orientation and are
shown in terms of the mean and standard deviation. It is also shown based on the number of the
respondents that have explicitly opted for a specific category. The table shows the total number
of the respondents and they are located at the bottom row. The standard deviation also shows as a
rating that facilitates with the mean value. It has been seen that the only one of the respondent
belongs to the category of strongly conservative. Due to this reason the standard deviation cannot
be calculated for the category of the strongly conservative.
A total of 239 surveys were gathered from the respondents and the data unavailability has
rendered the remaining 12 sets of the responses to be useless. It has also been seen that the a total