Spassena Koleva

Mapping the Moral Domain

The moral domain is broader than the empathy and justice concerns assessed by existing measures of moral competence, and it is not just a subset of the values assessed by value inventories. To fill the need for reliable and theoretically grounded measurement of the full range of moral concerns, we developed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire on the basis of a theoretical model of 5 universally available (but variably developed) sets of moral intuitions: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. We present evidence for the internal and external validity of the scale and the model, and in doing so we present new findings about morality: (a) Comparative model fitting of confirmatory factor analyses provides empirical justification for a 5-factor structure of moral concerns; (b) convergent/discriminant validity evidence suggests that moral concerns predict personality features and social group attitudes not previously considered morally relevant; and (c) we establish pragmatic validity of the measure in providing new knowledge and research opportunities concerning demographic and cultural differences in moral intuitions. These analyses provide evidence for the usefulness of Moral Foundations Theory in simultaneously increasing the scope and sharpening the resolution of psychological views of morality.

Understanding libertarian morality: the psychological dispositions of self-identified libertarians.

Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S. politics, yet they have been largely unstudied. Across 16 measures in a large web-based sample that included 11,994 self-identified libertarians, we sought to understand the moral and psychological characteristics of self-described libertarians. Based on an intuitionist view of moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview. Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of personality differences in the organization of political attitudes.

Are All Types of Morality Compromised in Psychopathy

A long-standing puzzle for moral philosophers and psychologists alike is the concept of psychopathy, a personality disorder marked by tendencies to defy moral norms despite cognitive knowledge about right and wrong. Previously, discussions of the moral deficits of psychopathy have focused on willingness to harm and cheat others as well as reasoning about rule-based transgressions. Yet recent research in moral psychology has begun to more clearly define the domains of morality, encompassing issues of harm, fairness, loyalty, authority, and spiritual purity. Clinical descriptions and theories of psychopathy suggest that deficits may exist primarily in the areas of harm and fairness, although quantitative evidence is scarce. Within a broad sample of participants, we found that scores on a measure of psychopathy predicted sharply lower scores on the harm and fairness subscales of a measure of moral concern, but showed no relationship with authority, and very small relationships with in group and purity. On a measure of willingness to violate moral standards for money, psychopathy scores predicted greater willingness to violate moral concerns of any type. Results are further explored via potential mediators and analyses of the two factors of psychopathy.

The Moral Ties That Bind . . . Even to Out-Groups The Interactive Effect of Moral Identity and the Binding Moral Foundations

Throughout history, principles such as obedience, loyalty, and purity have been instrumental in binding people together and helping them thrive as groups, tribes, and nations. However, these same principles have also led to in-group favoritism, war, and even genocide. Does adhering to the binding moral foundations that underlie such principles unavoidably lead to the derogation of out-group members? We demonstrated that for people with a strong moral identity, the answer is “no,” because they are more likely than those with a weak moral identity to extend moral concern to people belonging to a perceived out-group. Across three studies, strongly endorsing the binding moral foundations indeed predicted support for the torture of out-group members (Studies 1a and 1b) and withholding of necessary help from out-group members (Study 2), but this relationship was attenuated among participants who also had a strong moral identity.

Moral Empathy Gaps and the American Culture War

Our inability to feel what others feel makes it difficult to understand how they think. Because moral intuitions organize political attitudes, moral empathy gaps can exacerbate political conflict (and other kinds of conflict as well) by contributing to the perception that people who do not share our moral opinions are unintelligent and/or have malevolent intentions.

The Moral Compass of Insecurity Anxious and Avoidant Attachment Predict Moral Judgment

Three studies examined the associations between relational adult attachment and moral judgment. Study 1 shows that attachment-related anxiety and avoidance are uniquely and differentially related to moral concerns. Relative to low insecurity, higher avoidance was associated with weaker moral concerns about harm and unfairness, whereas higher anxiety was associated with stronger moral concerns about harm, unfairness, and impurity. Study 2 replicates these associations and shows that the effect for harm and fairness is mediated by attachment differences in empathic concern, whereas the effect for purity is mediated by disgust sensitivity. Furthermore, using an alternative measure of moral judgment we replicate the negative association between avoidance and harm concerns. Study 3 unpacks fairness judgments into three subcomponents and shows that even at this level avoidance and anxiety show divergent associations. Future directions for empirical examinations of morality and attachment are discussed.

Let's Use Einstein's Safety Razor, Not Occam's Swiss Army Knife or Occam's Chainsaw

In 1945, Pablo Picasso distilled the essence of a bull. In 1946, Picasso’s 6-year-old niece asked him to draw a buffalo. Picasso told the child that he’d already done it, and he referred her to his drawing of a bull. The girl then asked for pictures of a yak, an impala, and a gazelle. Picasso’s response: see the bull. It’s the essence of all ungulates. The girl then asked for a picture of an animal. See the bull. It’s the essence of all animals. The girl ran away crying. This story did not really happen, but it distills the essence of our concern about Gray, Young, and Waytz’s (this issue) target article. Picasso’s drawing (Figure 1) is so abstract that it is not very informative. One would never know, for example, that bulls have large heads and can be aggressive under some circumstances. Picasso’s drawing is so minimal that it could be a rendering of a variety of male ungulates. Did this one drawing capture the platonic form of bulls, ungulates, or animals? Are other images of bulls, ungulates, or animals now rendered superfluous or uninformative? We don’t think so. We think morality is not a basic-level category, like a chair or a bull, that can be depicted in a single image. We think morality is a superordinate category, like furniture or animals. We agree that harm is enormously important in moral psychology. Harm may be to morality what chairs are to furniture—the most prominent basic-level member of the category. But we see neither pragmatic utility nor a philosophical need to engage in the kind of eliminative reductionism that says that harm is therefore all of morality. As we read their article, Gray, Young, and Waytz (this issue) propose that (a) perceptions of others’ mental states and intentions influence moral judgments, (b) the primary locus of moral judgment is the dyadic template of a moral agent + a moral patient, and (c) all moral judgments are based on perceptions of suffering. We fully agree with the first proposition and say no more about it. We generally agree with the second proposition, and we praise the authors for bringing a powerful new idea into moral psychology. We are persuaded by their empirical studies that human minds easily and frequently interpret actions in terms of agents and patients. We think that dyadic completion is real, interesting, and useful in explaining some otherwise puzzling aspects of moral judgment. The rest of our commentary concerns the third proposition, with which we disagree. Is all moral judgment ultimately reducible to perceptions of suffering by a patient, caused by an agent?

Moral Foundations Theory: Building Value Through Moral Pluralism

Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) is a novel psychological framework that advances a pluralist view of morality, expanding it beyond commonly-discussed themes of preventing harms and injustices to individuals. According to MFT societies construct moral virtues, norms, and meanings based upon multiple psychological systems (moral foundations): Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Purity/degradation. MFT thus identifies moral concerns which govern how we treat other individuals, as well as how we operate within groups. Insights and concepts from MFT, particularly its attention to group-level moral concerns and virtues, have a range of potential applications in business, from increased understanding of clients and employees, to improving organizational culture and leadership, to value-based marketing.

Moral judgment of close relationship behaviors

Two studies with a college student (n = 287) and an Internet volunteer sample (n = 795) assessed moral judgments for norm violations in close relationships. We developed a 31-item questionnaire that assessed participants’ moral judgments of potential norm violations in relationships, including sexual threats (e.g., watching others masturbate), emotional threats (e.g., keeping romantic memorabilia from past relationships), friendship boundaries (e.g., dating a best friend’s ex-partner), digital infidelity (e.g., sexting), and privacy violations (e.g., looking through a partner’s belongings). In addition, we assessed general moral concerns, attachment style, and sociosexuality. Results showed that concerns about purity/degradation predicted harsher moral judgments for most types of violations, even when controlling for other moral concerns. Attachment-related avoidance predicted greater permissiveness toward emotional threats, digital infidelity, and friendship boundaries but harsher judgments for privacy violations, whereas attachment anxiety predicted the opposite pattern. Sociosexuality predicted greater permissiveness toward sexual behaviors. Female participants judged most behaviors more harshly than did males. We interpret findings within the frameworks of Attachment Theory and Moral Foundations Theory.