Morals and Values, Part 2

A Question of Morals

Part Deux

I wrote my favorite blog entry EVER yesterday...not necessarily because of the quality of my writing or my ego, but TOTALLY because of the response I received. It seems many people are JUST AS INTRIGUED by morals and values as I am, and also contributed a GREAT DEAL to the conversation. I feel like I just hit the iceberg, and thanks to people (LIKE YOU! READING RIGHT NOW!) out there, I got a lot of fantastic feedback and have learned SO MUCH MORE about myself. I want to share, and also want to share some links so you all have the chance to be as FASCINATED as I am!!!!

My friend (and brother's boyfriend), Andrew, shared a link with me: 

www.yourmorals.org

This is a website of grad students and professors from various universities, teaming up to identify FIVE core values found across cultures. One quiz I found PARTICULARLY fun and interesting. When I'm bored with friends, to pass time, I'm ALWAYS the one to ask, "Would you (fill in the blank here) for a million dollars?!?!" Well, they took that game to A WHOLE OTHER LEVEL! This survey asked what you would do, for how much money, if you wouldn't get in trouble... but the person/group affected could not know that you were being paid. 

There are many other surveys that are available on the site; I found this one particularly entertaining.

If you are interested in reviewing your OWN MORALS without a BIAS prior to taking surveys, I suggest you click on that link, REGISTER (it literally took me under a minute, and it will help advance research for grad students across the country!), and answer the questions prior to seeing what the foundations are, and how I responded...

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The survey that asked what one would do for an amount of money identified the FIVE values across CULTURES as:

*Harm (or care)

*Fairness (or reciprocity)

*Ingroup (or loyalty)

*Authority (or respect)

*Purity (or sanctity)

I did not know these prior to taking the survey. I answered all of the "harm" questions as "I would not do this for any amount of money..." which means that is my STRONGEST value. I thought that was really interesting! The following graph shows my results for the NUMBER OF TIMES I answered "I would not do this for any amount of money." My results are in GREEN, LIBERALS are in blue, and CONSERVATIVES are in red.

When I answered I WOULD do something for a certain amount of money, it calculated an average. This was funny!!! An average of $0 means that I wouldn't do it, regardless of the monetary value. Here are my results:

* It would take an average of $0 to get you to violate the HARM foundation.
* It would take an average of $666.67 to get you to violate the FAIRNESS foundation.
* It would take an average of $200,400 to get you to violate the INGROUP foundation.
* It would take an average of $2220 to get you to violate the AUTHORITY foundation.
* It would take an average of $5000 to get you to violate the PURITY foundation.

The site also includes scholarly articles to read more about the theory:

To learn more about Moral Foundations Theory, you can read this paper, the first one written on the topic: Haidt, J., & Joseph, C. (2004). Intuitive Ethics: How Innately Prepared Intuitions Generate Culturally Variable Virtues. Daedalus, pp. 55-66

To learn more about sacredness and how psychologists have studied it by asking people to make "taboo trade-offs," you can read this paper: Tetlock, P.E. (2003). Thinking about the unthinkable: Coping with secular encroachments on sacred values. Trends in Cognitive Science, 7, 320-324.


To learn more about "Moral Foundations Theory" and political psychology you can read this paper:Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research, 20, p. 98-116 or visitwww.moralfoundations.org.



The group of professors and graduate students have made a statement regarding the response they have received as it relates to political ideology: 

"Haidt and Graham have found that political liberals generally place a higher value on the first two foundations; they are very concerned about issues of harm and fairness (including issues of inequality and exploitation). Political conservatives care about harm and fairness too, but they generally score slightly lower on those scale items. The big difference between liberals and conservatives seems to be that conservatives score slightly higher on the ingroup/loyalty foundation, and much higher on the authority/respect and purity/sanctity foundations. This difference seems to explain many of the most contentious issues in the culture war. For example, liberals support legalizing gay marriage (to be fair and compassionate), whereas many conservatives are reluctant to change the nature of marriage and the family, basic building blocks of society. Conservatives are more likely to favor practices that increase order and respect (e.g., spanking, mandatory pledge of allegiance), whereas liberals often oppose these practices as being violent or coercive." I took another survey, utilizing the same theory, that shows my results in green, liberals in blue, and conservatives in red.  The taller the bar, the more that foundation is endorsed:

They also utilized a study from ISRAEL that identifies TEN morals across cultures.

In the circle graph below, there are TEN identified morals. If the morals are NEXT to each other, they are closely related. If they are ACROSS from each other, they tend to be opposed. 

Studies have found that political liberals are more likely to endorse the "openness to change" values, while political conservatives are more likely to endorse the "conservation" values. 

Here is how I scored on this Israeli survey (again, I am GREEN, liberals are BLUE, and conservatives are RED):

To learn more, you can read this paper.

As well, here is another reference, which is not available on the Web:


Schwartz, S.H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, M. Zanna, San Diego: Academic Press.


IN GENERAL, I learned SO MUCH about myself and my PERSONAL set of values! I found this website REALLY ADDICTING, interesting, and relevant. I hope you all ponder what YOUR morals are, and realize that whatever they are, they are VALUED by me! Thanks for reading, and PLEASE keep that feedback a-comin'!!! It totally helped inspire me this week!!!!