Moral Foundations and Political Attitudes : Doc

INSTITUTION YOU ARE IN
ANALYSIS OF MORAL FOUNDATIONS AND POLITICAL ORIENTATION
SUBMITTED BY
Name of the student
[Pick the date]

1
Introduction.
Background of the study.
Moral Foundations Theory was originally developed to describe moral differences across
cultures (Haidt & Joseph, 2004).The five foundations are ; harm/care, fairness/reciprocity,
ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity (Graham, J.; Haidt, J., 2007) .The
degree to which virtues are based on these foundations vary across cultures (Graham, J.;
Haidt, J., 2007), (Skitka, Morgan, & Wisneski, 2014).
According to Haidt and Graham (2007), political liberals values virtues based on the first two
foundations while the political conservatives values virtues based on all the foundations
(Graham, J.; Haidt, J.; Nosek, A., 2009). Although many studies are based in five moral
foundations, (Graham, Haidt, Motyl, & Meindl P., 2017) mentions that liberty/oppression
equity/deservingness and honesty/lying are other moral foundations that are under
considerations.
Literature review.
Conservatives have traditionally believed that people need the constraints of authority,
institutions and traditions to live civilly with each other while the liberals believe on personal
freedom. (Graham, J.; Haidt, J.; Nosek, A., 2009)
Moral politics theory indicates that both conservatives and liberals have political attitudes
rooted in moral concerns (Skitka, Morgan, & Wisneski, 2014) however, conservatives
have moral concerns that the liberals do not recognize (Graham, J.; Haidt, J., 2007).This is
the reason they have different opinions based on moral judgement (Graham, J.; Haidt, J.;
Nosek, A., 2009).

2
The ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ perceptions and decisions differ and it is evident even in
their voting preferences. In the 2004 U.S exit polls for example ,it indicated that most voters
considered moral values as the most important factor (Skitka, Morgan, & Wisneski,
2014)while casting their votes especially for the conservatives.
There was no correlation between political orientation and the participants’ general tendency
to moralize political issues (Skitka, Morgan, & Wisneski, 2014).However; the degree to
which they saw their most important issues in a moral light, the liberals felt stronger moral
conviction for their least important issues.
Moral convictions motivates both liberals and conservatives to show up at the polls on
election day(Stitka &Bauman,2008) and the degree to which voters attach moral significance
to candidates or issues motivates political engagement (Skitka, Morgan, & Wisneski,
2014).
From self-reported political meta-analysis along other demographic factors that included
age,gender,education level and income level, it was found that political identity was a
significant predictor variable across all five foundations (Graham, J.; Haidt, J.; Nosek, A.,
2009) .The effects of politics on foundation relevance scores were consistent across nations
under study (Graham, J.; Haidt, J.; Nosek, A.;, 2009).
From the literatures, it is clear that Meta-analysis method was employed determine whether
there was any relationship between politics and moral convictions (Graham, J.; Haidt, J.;
Nosek, A., 2009).Demographic factors were incorporated for better description and
understanding of the population. Political identity was the dependent variable and
demographic factors and the moral convictions were considered the independent variables.