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The Argument and Some Objections

thestudentsurvey.com

NSS

Do cultural differences in moral psychology explain political conflict on climate change?

the answer ...

1. ‘Moral convictions and the emotions they evoke shape political attitudes’

2. There are at least two fundamental domains of human morality, including harm and purity.

3. ‘liberals and conservatives possess different moral profiles’

4. ‘liberals express greater levels of environmental concern than do conservatives in part because liberals are more likely to view environmental issues in moral terms.’

5. ‘exposing conservatives to proenvironmental appeals based on moral concerns that uniquely resonate with them will lead them to view the environment in moral terms and be more supportive of proenvironmental efforts.’

First discussion: is it entirely clear? (Not interested in whether it is correct. Clarification only!)

1. ‘Moral convictions and the emotions they evoke shape political attitudes’

2. There are at least two fundamental domains of human morality, including harm and purity.

3. ‘liberals and conservatives possess different moral profiles’

4. ‘liberals express greater levels of environmental concern than do conservatives in part because liberals are more likely to view environmental issues in moral terms.’

5. ‘exposing conservatives to proenvironmental appeals based on moral concerns that uniquely resonate with them will lead them to view the environment in moral terms and be more supportive of proenvironmental efforts.’

Do cultural differences in moral psychology explain political conflict on climate change?

objection 2

1. ‘Moral convictions and the emotions they evoke shape political attitudes’

2. There are at least two fundamental domains of human morality, including harm and purity.

3. ‘liberals and conservatives possess different moral profiles’

4. ‘liberals express greater levels of environmental concern than do conservatives in part because liberals are more likely to view environmental issues in moral terms.’

5. ‘exposing conservatives to proenvironmental appeals based on moral concerns that uniquely resonate with them will lead them to view the environment in moral terms and be more supportive of proenvironmental efforts.’

‘Latvia is the only country [...] with a positive care-conservatism, and negative right-authority and right-sanctity associations.’

(Kivikangas, Fernández-Castilla, Järvelä, Ravaja, & Lönnqvist, 2021, p. 71)

Important because if this is true, an explanation of the association between politics and moral foundations needs to explain why purity is sometimes right and sometimes left.

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, Sibley, & Liu (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).’
This matters because it means we have another thing to explain: why is harm/care sometimes linked to political ideology (Graham et al’s US sample) and sometimes not (Davies et al New Zealand sample)?

‘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

illustrate this with MFQ-1 item
From MFQ-1. Participants given statements and asked how strongly they agree or reject. These are examples for harm.

harm

If I saw a mother slapping her child, I would be outraged.

It can never be right to kill a human being.

Compassion for those who are suffering is the most crucial virtue.

The government must first and foremost protect all people from harm.

Might be high on harm but sceptical of government’s ability to do this without making things worse.

purity

People should not do things that are revolting to others, even if no one is harmed.

I would call some acts wrong on the grounds that they are unnatural or disgusting.

Chastity is still an important virtue for teenagers today, even if many don’t think it is.

The government should try to help people live virtuously and avoid sin.

(Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009, p. Appendix B)

If you find yourself in strong agreement with these, you are someone who treats purity as more important than someone who agrees less strongly.
Btw, this is MFQ-1 and it looks like there is a confound with religiosity.

Does Moral Foundations Theory provide a model that is invariant?

Our focus is scalar invariance -> allows us to control means.
nice example:
‘if purity items with religious connotations would load strongly on the purity factor in one group but weakly in another and the opposite was true for purity items without religious connotations, then the purity construct would have different meanings in the two groups (i.e., it would not be invariant).’ (Nilsson, 2023, p. 164)

Davies et al, 2014 : metric invariance for gender groups

(scalar invariance not tested)

Davis et al, 2014 : metric but not scalar invariance for Black people vs White people

(Davis et al., 2016) found metric but not scalar invariance

Dogruyol et al, 2019 : metric non-invariance for WEIRD/non-WEIRD samples

Iurino and Saucier, 2020 : five-factor model not supported

‘the five-factor model of MFQ revealed a good fit to the data on both WEIRD and non-WEIRD samples. Besides, the five-factor model yielded a better fit to the data as compared to the two-factor model of MFQ. Measurement invariance test across samples validated factor structure for the five-factor model, yet a comparison of samples provided metric non-invariance implying that item loadings are different across groups [...] although the same statements tap into the same moral foundations in each case, the strength of the link between the statements and the foundations were different in WEIRD and non-WEIRD cultures’ (Doğruyol, Alper, & Yilmaz, 2019).

Graham et al, 2009 figure 1 p.notes.handout.show: :t

‘across subscales, there were problems with scalar invariance, which suggests that researchers may need to carefully consider whether this scale is working similarly across groups before conducting mean comparisons’ (Davis et al., 2016, p. e27)

Maybe there is scalar invariance for some groups?

Could that be enough to justify the claim that conservatives put less emphasis on individualizing foundations and more on binding foundations?
The problem is that, to my knowledge, scalar invariance has not been measured in many of these studies. But there is one ...
This appears to confirm the suspicion. But don't just read the abstract!
The authors of this research present it in a way that is a bit different from how I understand it.

‘The results of this research suggest that the original MFQ permits meaningful generalizations across population strata, at least in WEIRD populations.’

(Nilsson, 2023, p. 171)

Quote continues: ‘ Caution should be exercised particularly with respect to generalizations that encompass groups with very low education and income.’

!

Nilsson (2023)

Sweden (nationally representative sample)

scalar invariance across left vs right groups
for an eight-factor models MFQ only
not for three- and six-factor models of MFQ

‘the scalar non- invariance disappeared when the analyses were based on the eight-factor model, which distinguished lifestyle liberty and freedom from the government. This finding shows that it important to subdivide intuitions about liberty into smaller components when comparisons across political groups are made.’ (Nilsson, 2023, p. 170)
What is this model?

Nilsson (2023, p. figure~2)

Nilsson (2023)

Sweden (nationally representative sample)

scalar invariance across left vs right groups
for an eight-factor models MFQ only
not for three- and six-factor models of MFQ .slide

afaik (and iirc—haven’t gone back to check yet ∞todo), no-one has been using an eight factor in making con–lib comparision using MFQ-1
The eight-factor model is linked to Iyer, Koleva, Graham, Ditto, & Haidt (2012), who note that libertarians have a distinctive moral system and suggest that they cannot be placed on the left–right scale.
Don't just read the abstract!

Maybe there is scalar invariance for some groups? Not unless you ignore libertarians, black people, poor people, migrants, religious people ...

Could that be enough to justify the claim that conservatives put less emphasis on individualizing foundations and more on binding foundations?
so far I was talking only about MFQ-1, which was used in all but the very latest study.

MFQ-2

fairness -> equality and proportionality (six factors)

Equality (which concerns equal treatment) and Proportionality (which concerns being rewarded in proportion to one’s contribution)
Also new questions to avoid conflating regilious issues.

scalar invariance ✓

liberals differ from conservatives in scoring:

higher on care and equality

lower on proportionality, loyality, authority and purity

‘We conducted a random-intercept, multilevel model to predict political ideology based on all six moral foundations. We found care (B = −0.25, SE = 0.070, p < .001) and equality (B = −0.57, SE = 0.048, p < .001) to be negatively correlated with political conservatism, while proportionality (B = 0.30, SE = 0.075, p < .001), loyalty (B = 0.24, SE = 0.075, p = .001), authority (B = 0.55, SE = 0.087, p < .001), and purity (B = 0.13, SE = 0.063, p = .039) were positively associated with right-wing ideology. That care is associated with liberal ideology, and that loyalty, authority, and purity are associated with conservative ideology are consistent with prior work (Graham et al., 2009; Kivikangas et al., 2021; McAdams et al., 2008). We also present novel findings with regard to the differential relationships between two novel foundations and political ideology. In line with our theorizing and prior work, we find that liberals are more concerned with equality and conservatives are more concerned with proportionality.’ (Atari et al., 2023, p. 1171)

(Atari et al., 2023)

While Atari et al emphasize that this new finding is in line with many aspects of earlier results, it is a bit puzzling that proportionality, which was previously one part of fairness, comes out as conservative. If this result is correct, how could they have found that fairness was liberal?

1. ‘Moral convictions and the emotions they evoke shape political attitudes’

2. There are at least two fundamental domains of human morality, including harm and purity.

3. ‘liberals and conservatives possess different moral profiles’

4. ‘liberals express greater levels of environmental concern than do conservatives in part because liberals are more likely to view environmental issues in moral terms.’

5. ‘exposing conservatives to proenvironmental appeals based on moral concerns that uniquely resonate with them will lead them to view the environment in moral terms and be more supportive of proenvironmental efforts.’

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.

On balance, MFT seems to be supported by a growing body of evidence.

Although limited, MFT is probably useful and there is no better alternative.

objection 3

Graham et al, 2009 figure 1

The Joan-Lars-Joseph objection

The evidence on cultural variation says socially conservative participants tend to regard all five foundations as roughly equally morally relevant.

This does not generate the prediction that socially conservative participants will be more likely to view climate issues as ethical issues when linked on one foundation (e.g. purity) than when linked to another foundation (e.g. harm).

Link this to (Kivikangas et al., 2021)’s results ‘suggesting a broad agreement across the political divide on moral questions about harming and caring about others‘ (p.~78).

objections 2 & 3 are complementary

The scalar invariance and Lars-et-al puzzles are nicely complementary: if the first fails and the evidence *is* correct, then the second objection gets you.

puzzle

If the evidence for cultural variation in moral psychology is at best weak,
and if the theoretical argument for moral reframing is flawed,
why does moral reframing seem to work?