Political discourse often adopts moral language, a division of the world into good and evil. Some refer to this moralization as bigotry and define it as the tendency to adopt a moralized identification with one political group and against another. We saw it recently in the American electoral campaign or in the communication on the crisis caused by DANA in Valencia. This moralization can generate social divisions if political groups adopt different moral values. The biggest problem comes when this division translates into intolerance of other people’s ways of thinking. But do moral values really depend on our ideology?
Some recent research may give us some clues to this question. The line I will follow here is that popularized by the moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt and on which numerous references can be found on his site MoralFoundations.org. The subtitle of Jonathan Haidt’s famous book The spirit of the righteous was: why politics and religion divide sane people. A quick answer is that politics has a lot to do with religion or, in other words, because both share the same moral foundations. Haidt and Graham’s moral foundations theory argues that, despite vast differences between cultures, we can find common elements in the morality of diverse populations around the world. Indeed, humans have innate psychological systems that give rise to ethical intuitions.
Moral foundations theory is barely twenty years old, and until recently most empirical studies on it have focused on the United States. However, in 2023, research has been published on 19 populations around the world and this year at IPP-CSIC we carried out a study as part of the NORPOL project which allows us to have the first results on this theory in a representative sample of the Spanish population. population. . In this article I will succinctly present the most recent version of Haidt and Graham’s theory of moral foundations, show data from their recent international study, and conclude by focusing on the relationship between ideology and morality in Spain.
In their most recent formulation, Haidt and Graham refer to six moral foundations present to varying degrees in most societies: care, equality, proportionality, loyalty, authority and purity. Care is linked to attachment and the capacity to feel the pain of others; It is the basis of the virtues of kindness, benevolence and protection. Equality concerns intuitions about equality of treatment and outcomes between people. Proportionality refers to intuitions aimed at rewarding individuals in proportion to their merits or contributions. Loyalty is activated whenever “one for all and all for one” situations arise; This underpins the virtues of patriotism and altruism for the group. Authority is the basis of the virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to authority figures and respect for traditions. Finally, holiness or purity is based on the virtues of self-discipline, self-transcendence, naturalness and spirituality.
In various previous research, the values of care and equality have been identified as “individualizing” values and are more present in WEIRD (white, educated, industrialized, wealthy and democratic) populations. The values of loyalty, authority and holiness are more present in populations who do not share some of these characteristics. There are also differences according to religion. Populations where Islam predominates score higher on all of these moral foundations and those who profess no religion are lower, with Christians placing themselves in an intermediate position.
Beyond the differences between groups, it is particularly interesting that the ranking in importance of these 6 moral foundations is very stable in different societies. In order to compare the study by Atari et al. and ours, in Figure 1, we used the same survey measures for both. Concretely, we present three sets of data: those referring to the 19 countries of the international study (yellow dots), the average of the European countries (Belgium, France and Switzerland) included in this sample (blue dot) and the data that we have obtained for Spain (red dot).
Source: Own development based on Atari and others and the IPP-CSIC NORPOL project.
Across all three datasets, we observed a similar ranking of moral principles: care/authority, proportionality, loyalty, equality, and purity. In the case of the first three, the differences between groups of countries are tiny. These are three principles shared and highly valued by these companies. In the less valued principles we find some differences. Equality is more important in Central European countries than in Spain or the sample as a whole, and loyalty and purity are much less important in Spain.
Source: Own development based on Atari and others and the IPP-CSIC NORPOL project.
The Spanish population data in Figure 2 shows trends similar to those observed in other places in the world, such as the United States, and others that are different. Among the similarities, we find that people on the right value authority and proportionality more as principles of justice. People on the left have care as their main value. But this last value is also very appreciated by those on the right. In terms of loyalty and holiness, they seem less valued by society as a whole, although they are rated much higher by those on the right. In this sense, the fact observed in other countries is confirmed that the left is monochromatic in terms of values, valuing in a very positive way only that of care and the right is more polychromatic, uniting questions of authority and proportionality to care.
Beyond the specific findings, it is fascinating to note that moral differences have more to do with individual characteristics such as religion or political ideology than with the country in which one lives. Of course, separating the person from their context is not completely possible and the mutual influences are enormous. Nevertheless, the fact that morality is so tied to our ideology can help us understand why many current social conflicts do not arise between countries, but within each society.
