Liberals vs Conservatives

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Liberals vs Conservatives

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Next quote to analyse

‘liberals and conservatives possess different moral profiles regarding the five moral foundations’

(Feinberg & Willer, 2013, p. 2)

Feinberg & Willer, 2013 p. 2

(van Leeuwen & Park, 2009, p. figure 1a)

van Leeuwen & Parks, 2009 figure 1a

Subjects are Dutch students

(van Leeuwen & Park, 2009, p. figure 1b)

van Leeuwen & Parks, 2009 figure 1b

Implicit measure: IAT test of conservative and liberal concepts; which are implicitly associated with good things?

Graham et al, 2009 figure 1

Also works with a web sample collected in USA (Graham et al., 2009, p. figure~1)

Graham et al, 2009 figure 3

Graham et al, 2009 figure 2

‘We tested whether the effects of political identity persisted after partialing out variation in moral relevance ratings for other demographic variables. We created a model representing the five foundations as latent factors measured by three manifest variables each, simultaneously predicted by political identity and four covariates: age, gender, education level, and income. [...] Including the covariates, political identity still predicted all five foundations in the predicted direction [...]. Political identity was the key explanatory variable: It was the only consistent significant predictor [...] for all five foundations’ (Graham et al., 2009, p. 1032)

‘liberals and conservatives possess different moral profiles regarding the five moral foundations’

(Feinberg & Willer, 2013, p. 2)

Feinberg & Willer, 2013 p. 2

Is there any conflicting research? Yes!

‘all morality is understood through the lens of harm’ (Gray et al., 2012).

‘harm is central in moral cognition across moral diversity for both liberals and conservatives’ (Schein & Gray, 2015, p. 1158).

Our results are ‘more consistent with a common dyadic template than with a specific number of distinct moral mechanisms that are differentially expressed across liberals and conservatives’ (Schein & Gray, 2015, p. 1158).

‘loyalty, purity, industriousness, and social order [...] are best understood as “transformations” or “intermediaries” of harm, values whose violation leads to perceptions of concrete harm’ (Schein & Gray, 2018).

My sense is that this is more likely to capture how some people think in abstract terms (but see Crone & Laham, 2015 for counter evidence) than to capture the psychological structure of ethical abilities.

Is there even more conflicting research?

Davies et al, 2014

New Zealand

MFT model supported by Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Harm and Fairness not linked to socially conservative/liberal.

Using participants in New Zealand, Davies et al. (2014, p. 434) found that ‘Although Harm/care and Fairness/reciprocity showed significant negative correlations with conservatism, these relationships were weak, indicating that these foundations are not related to ideology. [...] the individualizing foundation results are surprising, and different to those found by Graham et al. (2011).’

‘We hypothesized that the binding moral foundations would show a weaker relationship with political conservatism in Black people than in White people. Across two independent samples, we found support for this hypothesis’

(Davis et al., 2016, p. e29)

‘some of the current items may conflate moral foundations with other constructs such as religiosity or racial identity.’

(Davis et al., 2016, p. e29)

Davis et al, 2016

Graham et al, 2009 figure 1

Are the differences in means measurement artefacts?

On balance, this seems likely.

There is a risk of building a theory on measurement artefacts.

‘entire literatures can develop on the basis of faulty measurement assumptions.’

(Davis, Dooley, Hook, Choe, & McElroy, 2017, p. 128)

Davis et al, 2017 p. 128

Stop.

Is there any conflicting research? Yes, plenty!

‘liberals and conservatives possess different moral profiles regarding the five moral foundations’

(Feinberg & Willer, 2013, p. 2)

Feinberg & Willer, 2013 p. 2

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Liberals vs Conservatives

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