DISCUSSIONS OF COVID MESSAGING AND VACCINE HESITANCY DRAWING ON MORAL FOUNDATIONS THEORY
— Chan, E. (2021). Moral Foundations Underlying Behavioral Compliance During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Personality and Individual Differences. Caring and fairness concerns predicted complying with staying-at-home, wearing face masks, and social distancing, while sanctity concerns only predicted compliance with wearing face masks and social distancing. A deeper investigation revealed age differences in loyalty and sanctity concerns for staying-at-home and social distancing, and in sanctity concerns only for wearing face masks.
— Karimi-Malekabadi, Reimer, Atari, Trager, Kennedy, Graham, & Dehghani (2021). Moral values predict county-level COVID-19 vaccination rates in the United States. PsyArXiv. Study found that county-level moral values (i.e., Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity) are associated with COVID-19 vaccination rates across 3,106 counties in the contiguous United States. Specifically, they found that fewer people are vaccinated in counties whose residents prioritize moral concerns about bodily and spiritual purity. In addition, stronger endorsements of concerns about fairness and loyalty to the group predict higher vaccination rates. The associations were robust after adjusting for structural barriers to vaccination, the demographic make-up of the counties, and their residents’ political voting behavior.
— Pivetti, Melotti, Bonomo, & Hakokongas (2021). Conspiracy Beliefs and Acceptance of COVID-Vaccine: An Exploratory Study in Italy.Social Sciences. A sample of 590 Italian participants were surveyed during the first Italian lockdown in April–May 2020. Results showed that endorsing purity values predicted negative attitude towards COVID-vaccines.
— Rossen et al. (2019). Accepters, Fence Sitters, or Rejecters: Moral Profiles of Vaccination Attitudes.Social Science & Medicine. The authors identified three profiles (i.e., groups), interpretable as vaccine “accepters”, “fence sitters”, and “rejecters”, each characterized by a distinct pattern of vaccination attitudes and moral preferences. Accepters exhibited positive vaccination attitudes and strong intentions to vaccinate; rejecters exhibited the opposite pattern of responses; whilst fence sitters exhibited an intermediate pattern of responses. Compared to accepters, rejecters and fence sitters exhibited a heightened moral preference for liberty (belief in the rights of the individual) and harm (concern about the wellbeing of others). Compared to acceptors and fence sitters, rejecters exhibited a heightened moral preference for purity (an abhorrence for impurity of body), and a diminished moral preference for authority (deference to those in positions of power).
— Callaghan, Motta, Sylvester, Lunz Trujillo, & Crudo Blackburn (2019). Parent Psychology and the Decision to Delay Childhood Vaccination. Social Science & Medicine. Used the 4 items from the MFQ20 to measure purity; found that purity was an insignificant predictor at first, but after controls added, it became a significant additional predictor, especially for the HPV vaccine.
— Christie et al. (2019). The Moral Foundations of Needle Exchange Attitudes.Social Cognition. Participants in the study (n = 5,369) completed a questionnaire on needle exchange attitudes (NEA) and also completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). NEA was most strongly predicted (in the negative direction) by individual level of Purity concerns, followed by (in the positive direction) Care concerns. Additionally, there was clear statistical evidence that Political Affiliations was associated with differences in NEA but not statistical evidence that the relationship between moral foundations and NEA differed for different political identifications.
— Betsch & Bohm (2018). Moral Values Do Not Affect Prosocial Vaccination.Nature Human Behavior. Shows that purity and liberty were significant predictors of vaccine hesitancy, whereas the other moral values were not. Second, communicating (versus not communicating) the social benefit of herd immunity increased vaccination intentions. The moral values purity and liberty were also significant predictors and decreased the vaccination intention. Moreover, the moral value care significantly increased vaccination intentions. However, contradicting the authors hypothesis, the moral values care and fairness did not become more relevant when the social benefit of herd immunity was communicated (that is, there were no significant interaction effects with herd immunity communication).
— Amin et al. (2017). Association of Moral Values with Vaccine Hesitancy.Nature Human Behavior. Shows that harm and fairness foundations are not significantly associated with vaccine hesitancy, but purity and liberty foundations are. High-hesitancy parents were twice as likely than low-hesitancy parents to strongly emphasize purity and liberty. Results demonstrated that endorsement of harm and fairness—ideas often emphasized in traditional vaccine-focused messages—are not predictive of vaccine hesitancy.
DISCUSSIONS OF ENVIRONMENTALISM AND CLIMATE CHANGE DRAWING ON MORAL FOUNDATIONS THEORY
Several studies have used Moral Foundations Theory and The Righteous Mind to enhance persuasion on political topics, particularly environmental issues:
— Wolsko, Ariceaga, & Seiden (2016). Red, White, and Blue Enough To Be Green: Effects of moral framing on climate change attitudes and conservation behaviors. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. From the abstract: “While liberals did not generally differ across conditions, conservatives shifted substantially in the pro-environmental direction after exposure to a binding moral frame, in which protecting the natural environment was portrayed as a matter of obeying authority, defending the purity of nature, and demonstrating one’s patriotism to the United States.”
— Kidwell, Farmer, & Hardesty (2013). Getting Liberals and Conservatives To Go Green: Political Ideology and Congruent Appeals. Journal of Consumer Research. Shows that messages framed using the right moral foundations can appeal to conservatives or liberals, on recycling.
— Feinberg & Willer (2012). The Moral Roots of Environmental Attitudes. Psychological Science. Shows that messages that speak to conservatives’ morals narrow partisan gap on environment. See essay summarizing the research here.
Here are additional essays and videos using moral psychology to understand environmental issues:
— On the great flouridation debate in Portland, OR, which scrambled the usual left-right divide, see Tim Nesbitt, at OregonLive.com (2019).
— Landrum & Lull (2017). Stop Preaching to the Converted.Nature Climate Change. Analyzes Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si, shows that the Pope relies mostly on the Care and Fairness foundations; urges the Pope and others to “stop preaching to the converted” and use other moral foundations to appeal to conservatives.
— Lewis, K. (Dec. 2013). Here’s a set of articles on climate change. See especially the first, on how conservative Protestants don’t doubt the science so much; its more that they don’t trust the scientists to make policy recommendations. (As the academy gets more liberal, conservatives trust professors less).
— Mooney, C. (Apr. 2013). How Science Can Predict Where You Stand on Keystone XL. Mother Jones. Applies MFT to explain the differences between the radical environmentalists and the moderates, who favor tradeoffs. Radicals are higher on sanctity and fairness. Radicals sometimes make room for moderates to success — a positive flank effect.
— Haidt, J. In Search of Liberal Purity, a blog post I wrote on how some on the left use the sanctity/degradation foundation to support environmentalist positions.
DISCUSSIONS OF AMERICAN POLITICS DRAWING ON THE RIGHTEOUS MIND
— Mark Green, Ariana Huffington, & Kellyanne Conway (Dec. 2017). Do Beliefs Precede Facts?Both Sides Radio on Huffington Post. They devote an episode to applying The Righteous Mind to major controversies of the day, including the Trayvon Martin killing and gender politics. They all agree with the book’s claims, and then apply them in interesting ways.
— Koerth-Baker, M. (Aug. 2012). The Mind of a Flip-Flopper.New York Times. People change their minds all the time, even about very important matters. It’s just hard to do when the stakes are high. That’s why marshaling data and making rational arguments won’t work. Whether you’re changing your own mind or someone else’s, the key is emotional, persuasive storytelling.”
— Jacobs, T. (Aug. 2012). Red States, Blue States, Gray Matter.Pacific Standard. Discussion of a new article by G. Lewis et al. in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience that found differences in brain structure corresponding to several of the moral foundations.
— Mirus, J. (June 2012). One-Eyed Liberals.CatholicCulture.org. “We may grant, I suppose, that there are none so sure of themselves as the morally insensitive, and none so morally insensitive as those who take their superior position for granted.”
— Kling, A. (April 2012). The Tribal Mind: Moral Reasoning and Public Discourse.AEI. Kling understands the book perfectly, and offers creative ideas for how to work with our tribal minds to reduce the blindness and bad policy caused by our hyper-partisan politics. He discusses 1)Taking opposing points of view at face value, 2) Policing your own side, and 3) Scrambling the teams.
— Wehner, P. (April 2012). Challenging Sacred Assumptions. Commentary. Wehner takes to heart my comments about the confirmation bias, and the need for other people who challenge our reasoning: “In the White House in particular, where you have access to more information than is available to most people and are surrounded by some of the leading experts in the country, it’s tempting to think that you and your colleagues are all-wise and your critics are all-foolish. And before long you can find yourself in an intellectual cul-de-sac. That’s a dangerous place to be. We need at least a few people in our orbit who have standing in our lives and who are willing to challenge what we claim and how we claim it. That is, I think, an important, even essential, element when striving for intellectual honesty.”
— Darwinian Conservatism, a blog by Larry Arnhart, argues that I’m not really a centrist, I’m more of a Darwinian conservative, a ” fusion of classical liberalism (promoting the political liberty that secures the free exercise of hivishness) and traditional conservatism (promoting the social virtue that is cultivated in hives).”
— Discussion in the New York Times philosophy blog — The Stone — about “Cannibals, Kings and Culture: The problem of Ethnocentrism,” addressing questions of moral truth and relativism.
DISCUSSIONS OF SOCIOLOGY
— Vaisey, S. (Jan. 2013). About Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind. The European Journal of Sociology. “In effect, Haidt is trying to place a lot of the action in morality out of his area of expertise and into ours – into the socialworld. There is nothing of intellectual imperialism here, no eagerness to do away with all other ideas by imposing his own. In my experience, this sort of generosity and openness is extremely rare.”
— Blankenhorn, D. (June 2013). My Conversation with Jonathan Haidt. Huffington Post. An article and podcast of my discussion with David Blankenhorn, a social conservative who had formerly opposed gay marriage, but changed his mind because what he most cares about is spreading the benefits of marriage as widely as possible.
Discussions of the Book
DISCUSSIONS OF COVID MESSAGING AND VACCINE HESITANCY DRAWING ON MORAL FOUNDATIONS THEORY
— Chan, E. (2021). Moral Foundations Underlying Behavioral Compliance During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Personality and Individual Differences. Caring and fairness concerns predicted complying with staying-at-home, wearing face masks, and social distancing, while sanctity concerns only predicted compliance with wearing face masks and social distancing. A deeper investigation revealed age differences in loyalty and sanctity concerns for staying-at-home and social distancing, and in sanctity concerns only for wearing face masks.
— Karimi-Malekabadi, Reimer, Atari, Trager, Kennedy, Graham, & Dehghani (2021). Moral values predict county-level COVID-19 vaccination rates in the United States. PsyArXiv. Study found that county-level moral values (i.e., Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity) are associated with COVID-19 vaccination rates across 3,106 counties in the contiguous United States. Specifically, they found that fewer people are vaccinated in counties whose residents prioritize moral concerns about bodily and spiritual purity. In addition, stronger endorsements of concerns about fairness and loyalty to the group predict higher vaccination rates. The associations were robust after adjusting for structural barriers to vaccination, the demographic make-up of the counties, and their residents’ political voting behavior.
— Pivetti, Melotti, Bonomo, & Hakokongas (2021). Conspiracy Beliefs and Acceptance of COVID-Vaccine: An Exploratory Study in Italy. Social Sciences. A sample of 590 Italian participants were surveyed during the first Italian lockdown in April–May 2020. Results showed that endorsing purity values predicted negative attitude towards COVID-vaccines.
— Rossen et al. (2019). Accepters, Fence Sitters, or Rejecters: Moral Profiles of Vaccination Attitudes. Social Science & Medicine. The authors identified three profiles (i.e., groups), interpretable as vaccine “accepters”, “fence sitters”, and “rejecters”, each characterized by a distinct pattern of vaccination attitudes and moral preferences. Accepters exhibited positive vaccination attitudes and strong intentions to vaccinate; rejecters exhibited the opposite pattern of responses; whilst fence sitters exhibited an intermediate pattern of responses. Compared to accepters, rejecters and fence sitters exhibited a heightened moral preference for liberty (belief in the rights of the individual) and harm (concern about the wellbeing of others). Compared to acceptors and fence sitters, rejecters exhibited a heightened moral preference for purity (an abhorrence for impurity of body), and a diminished moral preference for authority (deference to those in positions of power).
— Callaghan, Motta, Sylvester, Lunz Trujillo, & Crudo Blackburn (2019). Parent Psychology and the Decision to Delay Childhood Vaccination. Social Science & Medicine. Used the 4 items from the MFQ20 to measure purity; found that purity was an insignificant predictor at first, but after controls added, it became a significant additional predictor, especially for the HPV vaccine.
— Christie et al. (2019). The Moral Foundations of Needle Exchange Attitudes. Social Cognition. Participants in the study (n = 5,369) completed a questionnaire on needle exchange attitudes (NEA) and also completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). NEA was most strongly predicted (in the negative direction) by individual level of Purity concerns, followed by (in the positive direction) Care concerns. Additionally, there was
clear statistical evidence that Political Affiliations was associated with differences in NEA but not statistical evidence that the relationship between moral foundations and NEA differed for different political identifications.
— Betsch & Bohm (2018). Moral Values Do Not Affect Prosocial Vaccination. Nature Human Behavior. Shows that purity and liberty were significant predictors of vaccine hesitancy, whereas the other moral values were not. Second, communicating (versus not communicating) the social benefit of herd immunity increased vaccination intentions. The moral values purity and liberty were also significant predictors and decreased the vaccination intention. Moreover, the moral value care significantly increased vaccination intentions. However, contradicting the authors hypothesis, the moral values care and fairness did not become more relevant when the social benefit of herd immunity was communicated (that is, there were no significant interaction effects with herd immunity communication).
— Amin et al. (2017). Association of Moral Values with Vaccine Hesitancy. Nature Human Behavior. Shows that harm and fairness foundations are not significantly associated with vaccine hesitancy, but purity and liberty foundations are. High-hesitancy parents were twice as likely than low-hesitancy parents to strongly emphasize purity and liberty. Results demonstrated that endorsement of harm and fairness—ideas often emphasized in traditional vaccine-focused messages—are not predictive of vaccine hesitancy.
DISCUSSIONS OF ENVIRONMENTALISM AND CLIMATE CHANGE DRAWING ON MORAL FOUNDATIONS THEORY
Several studies have used Moral Foundations Theory and The Righteous Mind to enhance persuasion on political topics, particularly environmental issues:
— Wolsko, Ariceaga, & Seiden (2016). Red, White, and Blue Enough To Be Green: Effects of moral framing on climate change attitudes and conservation behaviors. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. From the abstract: “While liberals did not generally differ across conditions, conservatives shifted substantially in the pro-environmental direction after exposure to a binding moral frame, in which protecting the natural environment was portrayed as a matter of obeying authority, defending the purity of nature, and demonstrating one’s patriotism to the United States.”
— Day et al. (2014). Shifting Liberal and Conservative Attitudes Using Moral Foundations Theory. PSPB.
— Kidwell, Farmer, & Hardesty (2013). Getting Liberals and Conservatives To Go Green: Political Ideology and Congruent Appeals. Journal of Consumer Research. Shows that messages framed using the right moral foundations can appeal to conservatives or liberals, on recycling.
— Feinberg & Willer (2012). The Moral Roots of Environmental Attitudes. Psychological Science. Shows that messages that speak to conservatives’ morals narrow partisan gap on environment. See essay summarizing the research here.
Here are additional essays and videos using moral psychology to understand environmental issues:
— On the great flouridation debate in Portland, OR, which scrambled the usual left-right divide, see Tim Nesbitt, at OregonLive.com (2019).
— Landrum & Lull (2017). Stop Preaching to the Converted. Nature Climate Change. Analyzes Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si, shows that the Pope relies mostly on the Care and Fairness foundations; urges the Pope and others to “stop preaching to the converted” and use other moral foundations to appeal to conservatives.
— Why People Don’t Believe in Climate Science (Dec. 2014). PBS Video. Uses the Rider and Elephant metaphor.
— Singal, J. (Oct. 2014). Psychologists Are Learning How To Make Conservatives Take Climate Change Seriously. New York Magazine.
— Winerman, J. (June 2014). Climate Change Communication Heats Up. APA Monitor. Summarizes current research on how to communicate about climate change despite the psychological obstacles. Includes a discussion of the “Global Warming’s 6 Americas” and of The Psychology of Climate Change Communication, from the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions.
— Rottman, Keleman & Young (2014). Hindering Harm and Preserving Purity: How Can Moral Psychology Save the Planet? Philosophy Compass.
— Lewis, K. (Dec. 2013). Here’s a set of articles on climate change. See especially the first, on how conservative Protestants don’t doubt the science so much; its more that they don’t trust the scientists to make policy recommendations. (As the academy gets more liberal, conservatives trust professors less).
— Mooney, C. (Apr. 2013). How Science Can Predict Where You Stand on Keystone XL. Mother Jones. Applies MFT to explain the differences between the radical environmentalists and the moderates, who favor tradeoffs. Radicals are higher on sanctity and fairness. Radicals sometimes make room for moderates to success — a positive flank effect.
— Haidt, J. In Search of Liberal Purity, a blog post I wrote on how some on the left use the sanctity/degradation foundation to support environmentalist positions.
DISCUSSIONS OF AMERICAN POLITICS DRAWING ON THE RIGHTEOUS MIND
— Mark Green, Ariana Huffington, & Kellyanne Conway (Dec. 2017). Do Beliefs Precede Facts? Both Sides Radio on Huffington Post. They devote an episode to applying The Righteous Mind to major controversies of the day, including the Trayvon Martin killing and gender politics. They all agree with the book’s claims, and then apply them in interesting ways.
— Bailey, R. (March, 2013). Progressives Won the Social Culture War; Can Libertarians and Conservatives Win the Economic Culture War? Reason.
— Dreher, R. (Jan. 2013). Asteroids and Other Problems. The American Conservative.
— Bast, M. (Jan. 2013). Defusing Political Conflicts. TED blog.
— Reimer, S. (Dec. 2012). Why There Won’t Be Real Gun Reform in the Wake of Sandy Hook. Baltimore sun. Makes the challenging analogy between those who hold reproductive rights sacred and those who hold gun rights sacred.
— Smith, E. (Oct. 2012). All About Libertarians. The Washington Times.
— Koerth-Baker, M. (Aug. 2012). The Mind of a Flip-Flopper. New York Times. People change their minds all the time, even about very important matters. It’s just hard to do when the stakes are high. That’s why marshaling data and making rational arguments won’t work. Whether you’re changing your own mind or someone else’s, the key is emotional, persuasive storytelling.”
— Jacobs, T. (Aug. 2012). Red States, Blue States, Gray Matter. Pacific Standard. Discussion of a new article by G. Lewis et al. in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience that found differences in brain structure corresponding to several of the moral foundations.
— Mirus, J. (June 2012). One-Eyed Liberals. CatholicCulture.org. “We may grant, I suppose, that there are none so sure of themselves as the morally insensitive, and none so morally insensitive as those who take their superior position for granted.”
— Kling, A. (April 2012). The Tribal Mind: Moral Reasoning and Public Discourse. AEI. Kling understands the book perfectly, and offers creative ideas for how to work with our tribal minds to reduce the blindness and bad policy caused by our hyper-partisan politics. He discusses 1)Taking opposing points of view at face value, 2) Policing your own side, and 3) Scrambling the teams.
— Wehner, P. (April 2012). Challenging Sacred Assumptions. Commentary. Wehner takes to heart my comments about the confirmation bias, and the need for other people who challenge our reasoning: “In the White House in particular, where you have access to more information than is available to most people and are surrounded by some of the leading experts in the country, it’s tempting to think that you and your colleagues are all-wise and your critics are all-foolish. And before long you can find yourself in an intellectual cul-de-sac. That’s a dangerous place to be. We need at least a few people in our orbit who have standing in our lives and who are willing to challenge what we claim and how we claim it. That is, I think, an important, even essential, element when striving for intellectual honesty.”
— Mangu-Ward, K. (March 2012). Science Asks: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along? The Atlantic.
DISCUSSIONS OF BRITISH POLITICS DRAWING ON THE RIGHTEOUS MIND
— PoliticsIsMoralPsychology.com, a blog examining British and Scottish politics from the perspective of The Righteous Mind.
— Jenkins, S. (May 2012). So You Think Reason Guides Your Politics? Think Again. The Guardian.
— Davis, R. (April 2012). Labour Needs To Rediscover Its Conservatism. New Statesman.
DISCUSSIONS OF RELIGION DRAWING ON THE RIGHTEOUS MIND… CLICK HERE
DISCUSSIONS OF PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
— Discussion in the New York Times philosophy blog — The Stone — about my claims about reason. Michael Lynch and Gary Gutting offer constructive critiques. I reply here: Reasons matter (when intuitions don’t object).
— Darwinian Conservatism, a blog by Larry Arnhart, argues that I’m not really a centrist, I’m more of a Darwinian conservative, a ” fusion of classical liberalism (promoting the political liberty that secures the free exercise of hivishness) and traditional conservatism (promoting the social virtue that is cultivated in hives).”
— Discussion in the New York Times philosophy blog — The Stone — about “Cannibals, Kings and Culture: The problem of Ethnocentrism,” addressing questions of moral truth and relativism.
DISCUSSIONS OF SOCIOLOGY
— Vaisey, S. (Jan. 2013). About Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind. The European Journal of Sociology. “In effect, Haidt is trying to place a lot of the action in morality out of his area of expertise and into ours – into the socialworld. There is nothing of intellectual imperialism here, no eagerness to do away with all other ideas by imposing his own. In my experience, this sort of generosity and openness is extremely rare.”
DISCUSSIONS OF GAY RIGHTS
— Miner, P. (Feb. 2016). Fighting a Boogeyman, How Gut Reactions Slowed the LGBT Movement. Huffington Post.
— Blankenhorn, D. (June 2013). My Conversation with Jonathan Haidt. Huffington Post. An article and podcast of my discussion with David Blankenhorn, a social conservative who had formerly opposed gay marriage, but changed his mind because what he most cares about is spreading the benefits of marriage as widely as possible.