Liberals & conservatives are similarly obedient to their own authorities & condemn perceived abuses of their ideology’s sacralized objects & and heroes; liberals & conservatives seem made up of the same psychological stuff

Do liberals and conservatives use different moral languages? Two replications and six extensions of Graham, Haidt, and Nosek’s (2009) moral text analysis. Jeremy A. Frimer. Journal of Research in Personality, November 28 2019, 103906.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.103906

Abstract: Do liberals and conservatives tend to use different moral languages? The Moral Foundations Hypothesis states that liberals rely more on foundations of care/harm and fairness/cheating whereas conservatives rely more on loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and purity/degradation in their moral functioning. In support, Graham, Haidt, and Nosek (2009; Study 4) showed that sermons delivered by liberal and conservative pastors differed as predicted in their moral word usage, except for the loyalty foundation. I present two high-powered replication studies in religious contexts and six extension studies in politics, the media, and organizations to test ideological differences in moral language usage. On average, replication success rate was 30% and effect sizes were 38 times smaller than those in the original study. A meta-analysis (N=303,680) found that compared to liberals, conservatives used more authority r=.05, 95% confidence interval=[.02,.09] and purity words, r=.14 [.09,.19], fewer loyalty words, r=-.08 [-.10,-.05], and no more or less harm, r=.00 [-.02,.02], or fairness words, r=-.03 [-.06,.01].

Keywords: morality, language, ideology, conservatism, replication, moral foundations theory

General Discussion

Two replications and six extensions found limited support for the MFH in terms of language usage. Whereas a close replication of sermons from the same two U.S. Christian denominations as those in the original was successful (Study 1), a conceptual replication with 12 other U.S. Christian denominations was largely unsuccessful (Study 2), meaning that the two denominations studied in Graham et al. (2009) may not be representative of Christian denominations in general. This suggests that even within the context of religious sermons by U.S. Christian pastors, liberals and conservatives may not use different moral languages as much as previously thought. Although Graham et al. (2009) suggested that political speeches may not be the ideal context for detecting the different moral languages of liberals and conservatives, conceptual replications with four political samples were successful in aggregate for four of the five foundations (Study 3). A moderation analysis found that the differences in the moral languages of liberals and conservatives changed when moving from a religious to a political context for two of the five foundations only, meaning that the distinction between religion and politics may not be as important as Graham et al. (2009) suggested.

Samples drawn from the media and organizations, contexts not ruled out by Graham et al. (2009), allowed for a novel assessment of whether liberal and conservative commoners (broadly defined) use different moral languages (Studies 4-5). Tests of the MFH in these contexts were predominantly unsuccessful. Across all samples, metrics, foundations, and dictionaries, replication success rate was just 30%, meaning that 70% of replications failed. A meta-analysis (Study 6) of all the available data found support for the MFH for the authority and purity foundations, no evidence to support the MFH for harm and fairness, and evidence that is counter to the MFH for the loyalty foundation. Effect sizes were 38 times smaller on average. The most generous viable conclusion is that these results offer limited support for the MFH in the language of liberals and conservatives.

Analytical Considerations

The present analyses revealed that most distributions generated by the moral foundations dictionaries have a large number of identically-zero entries and are skewed. Correcting for this skew had relatively little effect on replication success and the resulting effect sizes. Thus, this analytic issue ended up being relatively inconsequential vis-à-vis replication considerations. Another analytical question concerned the dictionaries themselves. I used both the original MFD1 and the more recent and more valid MFD2. While results were not always the same, they tended to be largely similar. Analyses of non-skewed distributions stemming from the MFD2 are probably the most valid due to enhanced normality and predictive validity of this analytical set up.

Both GHN and the present studies relied on a simple word counting program to operationalize the usage of moral languages (GHN also coded the speakers’ attitudes towards those words). For more than a century, psychologists have drawn inferences about topics of conversation and speakers’ internal states and traits through methods like these. And word counting procedures have generally been shown to be valid. However, topics are not fully reducible to the presence of certain words. Future work might use other linguistic techniques to assess whether liberals and conservatives have similar or different attitudes toward moral languages and use them in similar or different ways.

Theoretical Considerations

Graham et al. (2009) found that liberals used more loyalty words than conservatives, a finding that is at variance with the MFH. The present analyses suggested that although this effect is weak, it is robust. Why liberals talk more about a topic upon which their morality is not based remains an important and pressing question for MFT.

The present and recent empirical findings motivate the revisiting of a fundamental question: what is a moral foundation, psychologically speaking? Proponents of the theory have advocated for construct pluralism in the sense that foundations are general mental modules that manifest in multiple psychological forms, including values, perceptions, behavioral orientations, language, and so on. The present findings, along with other work, raise questions about this tenet of Moral Foundations Theory. Results from the present studies suggest that differences in the moral language usage of liberals and conservatives are generally small. Moreover, for three foundations, the MFH was unsupported. It would probably be more accurate to conclude that liberals and conservatives use similar moral languages than that they use different languages.

Along with their similar languages, liberals and conservatives may not be as different as previously thought in terms of their general action orientations: liberals and conservatives are similarly obedient to their own authorities (Frimer, Gaucher, & Schaefer, 2014) and condemn perceived abuses of their ideology’s sacralized objects (Frimer et al. 2015, 2016) and heroes (Frimer, Biesanz, Walker, & MacKinley, 2013). This growing body of evidence is in line with idea that liberals and conservatives are made up of the same psychological stuff, but each ideology has its own set of cherished values and symbols. Whereas conservatism tends to cherish religion and the military, liberalism champions social justice and the environment (Frimer et al. 2015, 2016). Psychologically speaking, liberals and conservatives may cut from the same cloth.