Moral Foundations Theory

Moral Expressions in 280 Characters or Less: An Analysis of Politician Tweets Following the 2016 Brexit Referendum Vote

Ideas about morality are deeply entrenched into political opinions. This article examines the online communication of British parliamentarians from May 2017-December 2019, following the 2016 referendum that resulted in Britain's exit (Brexit) from the European Union. It aims to uncover how British parliamentarians use moral foundations to discuss the Brexit withdrawal agreement on Twitter, using Moral Foundations Theory as a classification basis for their tweets. It is found that the majority of Brexit related tweets contain elements of moral reasoning, especially relating to the foundations of Authority and Loyalty. There are common underlying foundations between parties, but parties express opposing viewpoints within a single foundation. The study provides useful insights into Twitter's use as an arena for moral argumentation, as well as uncovers the politician's uses of moral arguments during Brexit agreement negotiations on Twitter. It contributes to the limited body of work focusing on the moral arguments made by politicians through Twitter.

Analyzing the Perceived Utility of Covid-19 Countermeasures: The Role of Pronominalization, Moral Foundations, Moral Disengagement, Fake News Embracing, and Health Anxiety

An online survey (N = 210) is presented on how the perceived utility of correct and exaggerated countermeasures against Covid-19 is affected by different pronominalization strategies (impersonal form, you, we). In evaluating the pronominalization effect, we have statistically controlled for the roles of several personal characteristics: Moral Disengagement, Moral Foundations, Health Anxiety, and Embracing of Fake News. Results indicate that, net of personal proclivities, the you form decreases the perceived utility of exaggerated countermeasures, possibly due to simulation processes. As a second point, through a Structural Equation Model, we show that binding moral values (Authority, Ingroup, and Purity) positively predict both fake news embracing and perceived utility of exaggerated countermeasures, while individualizing moral values (Harm and Fairness) negatively predict fake news embracing and positively predict the perceived utility of correct countermeasures. Lastly, fake news embracing showed a doubly bad effect: not only does it lead people to judge exaggerated countermeasures as more useful; but, more dangerously, it brings them to consider correct countermeasures as less useful in the struggle against the pandemic.

The Development of Giving in Forms of Object Exchange: Exploring the Roots of Communication and Morality in Early Interaction around Objects

Giving is an act of great social importance across cultures, with communicative as well as moral dimensions because it is linked to sharing and fairness. We critically evaluate various explanations for how this social process develops in infancy and take a process-relational approach, using naturalistic observations to illustrate forms of interaction involving the exchange of objects and possible developmental trajectories for the emergence of different forms of giving. Based on our data, we propose that the object becomes a pivot point for interaction, and through the process of such interaction the social actions of showing and giving emerge and take on diverse social meanings within the relations between infants and caregivers.

Individual differences in ethics positions: The EPQ-5

We revised the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ), which measures variations in sensitivity to harm (idealism) and to moral standards (relativism). Study 1 identified the core components of the measured constructs theoretically and verified those features through confirmatory factor analysis (n = 2,778). Study 2 replicated these findings (n = 10,707), contrasted the theoretically defined two-factor model to alternative models, and tested for invariance of factor covariances and mean structures for men and women. Study 3 examined the relationship between the EPQ and related indicators of ethical thought (values and moral foundations) and the theory’s four-fold classification typology of exceptionists, subjectivists, absolutists, and situationists. The three studies substantially reduced the original EPQ’s length, clarified the conceptual interpretation of the idealism and relativism scales, affirmed the EPQ’s predictive and convergent validity, and supported the four-fold classification of individuals into ethics positions. Implications for previous findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Moralizing mental states: The role of trait self-control and control perceptions

Which attributes of a person contribute to their tendency to moralize others' thoughts? Adopting an individual-difference approach to moral cognition, eight studies (N = 2,033) investigated how people's ability for self-control shapes their moral reactions to others' mental states. Specifically, Studies 1a-2b found positive predictive effects of trait self-control (TSC) on the moralization (e.g., blaming) of another person's fantasies about different immoral behaviors. While ruling out alternative explanations, they furthermore supported the mediating role of ascribing targets control over their mental states. Studies 3a-3b provided correlational evidence of the perceived ability to control one's own mental states as a mechanism in the relationship between TSC and ascriptions of control to others. Studies 4a-4b followed a causal-chain experimental approach: A manipulation of participants' self-perceived ability to control their emotions impacted their control ascriptions to others over their immoral mental states (Study 4a), and targets perceived as high (vs. low) in control over their immoral mental states elicited stronger moralizing reactions. Taken together, the present studies elucidate why people moralize others' purely mental states, even in the absence of overt behavior. More broadly, they advance our knowledge about the role of individual differences, particularly in self-control, in moral cognition.

Deciding between moral priorities and COVID-19 avoiding behaviors: A moral foundations vignette study

Novel moral norms peculiar to the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in tension between maintaining one's preexisting moral priorities (e.g., loyalty to one's family and human freedoms) and avoiding contraction of the COVID-19 disease and SARS COVID-2 virus. By drawing on moral foundations theory, the current study questioned how the COVID-19 pandemic (or health threat salience in general) affects moral decision making. With two consecutive pilot tests on three different samples (ns ≈ 40), we prepared our own sets of moral foundation vignettes which were contextualized on three levels of health threats: the COVID-19 threat, the non-COVID-19 health threat, and no threat. We compared the wrongness ratings of those transgressions in the main study (N = 396, M _age = 22.47). The results showed that the acceptability of violations increased as the disease threat contextually increased, and the fairness, care, and purity foundations emerged as the most relevant moral concerns in the face of the disease threat. Additionally, participants' general binding moral foundation scores consistently predicted their evaluations of binding morality vignettes independent of the degree of the health threat. However, as the disease threat increased in the scenarios, pre-existing individuating morality scores lost their predictive power for care violations but not for fairness violations. The current findings imply the importance of contextual factors in moral decision making. Accordingly, we conclude that people make implicit cost-benefit analysis in arriving at a moral decision in health threatening contexts.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-021-01941-y.

Six minutes to promote change: People, not facts, alter students' perceptions on climate change

Anthropogenic climate change threatens the structure and function of ecosystems throughout the globe, but many people are still skeptical of its existence. Traditional "knowledge deficit model" thinking has suggested that providing the public with more facts about climate change will assuage skepticism. However, presenting evidence contrary to prior beliefs can have the opposite effect and result in a strengthening of previously held beliefs, a phenomenon known as biased assimilation or a backfire effect. Given this, strategies for effectively communicating about socioscientific issues that are politically controversial need to be thoroughly investigated. We randomly assigned 184 undergraduates from an environmental science class to one of three experimental conditions in which we exposed them to short videos that employed different messaging strategies: (a) an engaging science lecture, (b) consensus messaging, and (c) elite cues. We measured changes in student perceptions of climate change across five constructs (content knowledge, acceptance of scientific consensus, perceived risk, support for action, and climate identity) before and after viewing videos. Consensus messaging outperformed the other two conditions in increasing student acceptance of the scientific consensus, perceived risk of climate change, and climate identity, suggesting this may be an effective strategy for communicating the gravity of anthropogenic climate change. Elite cues outperformed the engaging science lecture condition in increasing student support for action on climate, with politically conservative students driving this relationship, suggesting that the messenger is more important than the message if changing opinions about the necessity of action on climate change is the desired outcome. Relative to the other conditions, the engaging science lecture did not support change in students' perceptions on climate, but appealing to student respect for authority produced positive results. Notably, we observed no decline in students' acceptance of climate science, indicating that none of the conditions induced a backfire effect.

The aesthetic experience of critical art: The effects of the context of an art gallery and the way of providing curatorial information

The aim of our research was to investigate the influence of the situational context of presenting contemporary critical artworks (in an art gallery vs in a laboratory setting) and the way in which one is acquainted with contextual information, i.e. a curatorial description (reading it on one's own vs listening to it vs a lack of curatorial information), on the reception of critical art. All experimental stimuli were exemplars of contemporary art which raise current controversial social and political issues. Non-experts in the field of art were asked to rate their emotional reactions on non-verbal scales and estimate their liking and understanding of the artworks. As predicted, the art gallery context increased both the experience of aesthetic emotions-in terms of valence, arousal, subjective significance, and dominance and aesthetic judgements-in terms of liking. Thus, for critical art (i.e. current artworks which critically address serious, up-to-date issues) the situational context of the gallery increased the aesthetic experience-which is in line with previous studies on the gallery (or museum) effect. Curatorial information increased understanding, so non-experts seem to need interpretative guidance in the reception of critical art. Subjective significance was higher in the reading of curatorial information condition than the listening to curatorial information condition or the control condition (a lack of curatorial information). It seems, therefore, that art non-experts have a better understanding of critical art after being exposed to the curatorial description, but this does not result in an increase in liking and aesthetic emotions. Probably this is because the curatorial description allows one to grasp the difficult, often unpleasant issue addressed by critical art.

The Interplay Between Absolute Language and Moral Reasoning on Endorsement of Moral Foundations

Morality – the subjective sense that humans discern between right and wrong – plays a ubiquitous role in everyday life. Deontological reasoning conceptualizes moral decision-making as rigid, such that many moral choices are forbidden or required. Not surprisingly, the language used in measures of deontological reasoning tends to be rigid, including phrases such as “always” and “never.” Two studies (N = 553) drawn from two different populations used commonly used measures of moral reasoning and measures of morality to examine the link between individual differences in deontological reasoning and language on the endorsement of moral foundations. Participants low on deontological reasoning generally showed less endorsement for moral principles when extreme language was used in the measures (relative to less extreme language).

Social dominance orientation predicts lower moral condemnation of causing harm to animals

BACKGROUND

Recent studies and theorizing (SD-HARM model) suggested that social dominance orientation (SDO) constitutes the ideological foundation of negative attitude towards animals and acceptance of their exploitation. At the same time, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is expected to predict speciesist beliefs only when they are perceived as part of societal tradition. The present studies investigated these predictions with moral condemnation of harm done to animals by humans as an indicator of speciesism.

PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE

400 and 324 people, aged 18-87, took part in two cross-sectional studies. They reported their levels of SDO and RWA and made moral judgments of harm done to animals.

RESULTS

In both studies, SDO, but not RWA, negatively predicted moral condemnation of harming animals.

CONCLUSIONS

The results offer additional support for the SD-HARM model. The more people accept SDO beliefs, the less they morally condemn harm done to animals by humans.

Politics Turns Moral Foundations Into Consequences of Intergroup Attitudes

Abstract. Applying a longitudinal design, we tested the directions of the relationships between moral foundations and attitudes toward Muslim immigrants. The study was conducted during the official campaign period of the Hungarian parliamentary elections in 2018. It was found that moral foundations are consequences of intergroup attitudes. Latent change modeling showed that while individualizing foundations were independent of anti-Muslim attitudes, longitudinal change in binding foundations was predicted by prior anti-Muslim attitudes, but not the other way around. Furthermore, this relationship was moderated by exposure to the anti-Muslim and anti-immigration campaigns led by the government. These results suggest that people are motivated to harmonize their moral concerns with their prior social beliefs, and they actively utilize available political messages in this process.

The extended Moral Foundations Dictionary (eMFD): Development and applications of a crowd-sourced approach to extracting moral intuitions from text

Moral intuitions are a central motivator in human behavior. Recent work highlights the importance of moral intuitions for understanding a wide range of issues ranging from online radicalization to vaccine hesitancy. Extracting and analyzing moral content in messages, narratives, and other forms of public discourse is a critical step toward understanding how the psychological influence of moral judgments unfolds at a global scale. Extant approaches for extracting moral content are limited in their ability to capture the intuitive nature of moral sensibilities, constraining their usefulness for understanding and predicting human moral behavior. Here we introduce the extended Moral Foundations Dictionary (eMFD), a dictionary-based tool for extracting moral content from textual corpora. The eMFD, unlike previous methods, is constructed from text annotations generated by a large sample of human coders. We demonstrate that the eMFD outperforms existing approaches in a variety of domains. We anticipate that the eMFD will contribute to advance the study of moral intuitions and their influence on social, psychological, and communicative processes.

Biased Benevolence: The Perceived Morality of Effective Altruism Across Social Distance

Is altruism always morally good, or is the morality of altruism fundamentally shaped by the social opportunity costs that often accompany helping decisions? Across four studies, we reveal that in cases of realistic tradeoffs in social distance for gains in welfare where helping socially distant others necessitates not helping socially closer others with the same resources, helping is deemed as less morally acceptable. Making helping decisions at a cost to socially closer others also negatively affects judgments of relationship quality (Study 2) and in turn, decreases cooperative behavior with the helper (Study 3). Ruling out an alternative explanation of physical distance accounting for the effects in Studies 1 to 3, social distance continued to impact moral acceptability when physical distance across social targets was matched (Study 4). These findings reveal that attempts to decrease biases in helping may have previously unconsidered consequences for moral judgments, relationships, and cooperation.

Promoting Food for the Trash Bin? A Review of the Literature on Retail Price Promotions and Household-Level Food Waste

Supermarkets receive criticism for irresponsible marketing practices, such as price promotions, that trigger over-purchasing and seemingly contribute to consumer waste. In the wake of this, retailers have abolished certain price promotions as part of an effort to meet corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals. We aim to investigate whether the underlying assumption that price promotions are positively related to consumer food waste needs to hold true. Through a review of the existing literature, we show that there is no scientific consensus on this assumption. Our findings show that half of the studies conclude that price promotions result in food waste by encouraging over-purchase, while the remaining conclude that consumers buying price-promoted food products show average or even lower levels of household food waste. Unraveling this inconsistency, we contribute by proposing a multi-level model of CSR behavior, where CSR actions at an institutional level (retailer) interact with individual characteristics at a micro (consumer) level leading to demonstrably different outcomes. We argue that the assumption that price promotions necessarily cause food waste has been overly simplistic, as it did not take into account the consumers’ role. We conclude that the relationship between price promotions and consumer food waste is conditional on price consciousness, attitudes, values, household identities, and household roles. Thus, we illustrate that CSR problems are often wicked ones, where first-order solutions often lead to secondary problems that stymie the progress of institutions and policy makers in addressing social needs in business. We derive specific recommendations for retailers seeking to meet CSR goals.

Moral concerns are differentially observable in language

Language is a psychologically rich medium for human expression and communication. While language usage has been shown to be a window into various aspects of people's social worlds, including their personality traits and everyday environment, its correspondence to people's moral concerns has yet to be considered. Here, we examine the relationship between language usage and the moral concerns of Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity as conceptualized by Moral Foundations Theory. We collected Facebook status updates (N = 107,798) from English-speaking participants (n = 2691) along with their responses on the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. Overall, results suggested that self-reported moral concerns may be traced in language usage, though the magnitude of this effect varied considerably among moral concerns. Across a diverse selection of Natural Language Processing methods, Fairness concerns were consistently least correlated with language usage whereas Purity concerns were found to be the most traceable. In exploratory follow-up analyses, each moral concern was found to be differentially related to distinct patterns of relational, emotional, and social language. Our results are the first to relate individual differences in moral concerns to language usage, and to uncover the signatures of moral concerns in language.

Heuristic thinking and altruism toward machines in people impacted by COVID-19

Autonomous machines are poised to become pervasive, but most treat machines differently: we are willing to violate social norms and less likely to display altruism toward machines. Here, we report an unexpected effect that those impacted by COVID-19—as measured by a post-traumatic stress disorder scale—show a sharp reduction in this difference. Participants engaged in the dictator game with humans and machines and, consistent with prior research on disasters, those impacted by COVID-19 displayed more altruism to other humans. Unexpectedly, participants impacted by COVID-19 displayed equal altruism toward human and machine partners. A mediation analysis suggests that altruism toward machines was explained by an increase in heuristic thinking—reinforcing prior theory that heuristic thinking encourages people to treat machines like people—and faith in technology—perhaps reflecting long-term consequences on how we act with machines. These findings give insight, but also raise concerns, for the design of technology.

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Participants engaged in a dictator experiment with humans and computers

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We measured impact of COVID-19 using a PTSD scale

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COVID-19 led to increased heuristic thinking, faith in, and altruism with computers

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These findings raise opportunities and concerns for the design of future technology

Moral judgement development during medical student clinical training

BACKGROUND

Whereas experience and cognitive maturity drives moral judgement development in most young adults, medical students show slowing, regression, or segmentation in moral development during their clinical years of training. The aim of this study was to explore the moral development of medical students during clinical training.

METHODS

A cross-sectional sample of medical students from three clinical years of training were interviewed in groups or individually at an Australian medical school in 2018. Thematic analysis identified three themes which were then mapped against the stages and dimensions of Self-authorship Theory.

RESULTS

Thirty five medical students from years 3-5 participated in 11 interviews and 6 focus groups. Students shared the impacts of their clinical experiences as they identified with their seniors and increasingly understood the clinical context. Their accounts revealed themes of early confusion followed by defensiveness characterised by desensitization and justification. As students approached graduation, some were planning how they would make moral choices in their future practice. These themes were mapped to the stages of self-authorship: External Formulas, Crossroads and Self-authorship.

CONCLUSIONS

Medical students recognise, reconcile and understand moral decisions within clinical settings to successfully reach or approach self-authorship. Curriculum and support during clinical training should match and support this progress.

Validation of Morality as Cooperation Questionnaire in Turkey, and Its Relation to Prosociality, Ideology, and Resource Scarcity

Abstract. The theory of morality as cooperation (MAC) argues that there are seven distinct and evolved universal moral foundations. Curry, Chesters, and Van Lissa (2019) developed a scale to test this theoretical approach and showed that the Relevance subscale of the MAC questionnaire (MAC-Q) fits data well, unlike the Judgment and full-form. However, an independent test of the validity of this questionnaire has not been hitherto conducted, and its relation with ideology is unknown. In the first study, we attempted to validate the Turkish form of MAC-Q and then examined the relationship with prosociality and political ideology. The results showed that the fit indices of MAC-Q Relevance are above the standard criteria, unlike the Judgment and full form ( n = 445), and significant relationships with prosociality and political ideology provided additional evidence for the validity. We used the MAC-Q Relevance in Study 2 ( n = 576, Turkey) and Study 3 ( n = 921, US), and investigated whether manipulating resource scarcity influences the endorsement of MAC. Although there was no effect of the manipulation, correlational findings provided some support for the predictive validity of MAC-Q. Overall, MAC-Q Relevance performs well in representing the lay notions of morality in both Turkey and the US, unlike full-form.

Reanalysing the factor structure of the moral foundations questionnaire

The moral foundations theory (MFT) is an influential multifactorial model that posits how decision-making in the moral context originates from a set of six intuitive moral foundations: care, fairness, authority, loyalty, purity, and liberty. The established measure of these foundations-the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ)-has been used extensively in a range of empirical projects. However, recent analyses of its factor structure and the internal consistency of each of the foundation clusters have called its validity into question. In this paper, data from a large sample of British voters were used to re-examine the factor structure of the MFQ. As opposed to a 6-factor structure, only three meaningful clusters emerged in an exploratory principal factors analysis (Study 1; N = 428): traditionalism, compassion, and liberty. This structure was broadly confirmed in an independent sample (Study 2; N = 322). Concurrent validity was established via correlations with measures of 'social change' and 'systemic inequality' insecurities (Study 1) and voting behaviour and preferences (Study 2). Significant differences on each of the three factors of the revised MFQ (MFQ-r) were observed between the voters of different political parties (Study 1) and sides of the Brexit issue (Study 2). Implications for moral foundations theory and its measurement are discussed.

Development and Validation of the Purity Orientation-Pollution Avoidance Scale: A Study With Japanese Sample

The moral foundations theory (MFT) proposes that there are five moral foundations that work as the standard to make moral judgments. Among them, the purity foundation is a complex concept. It is considered to be a distinctive foundation compared with the other ones partly because it involves religious beliefs. The assumption underlying the purity foundation is Christian beliefs, so the MFT was developed and made prevalent mostly in the Western cultures. However, because of that assumption, cultural differences in perceiving the purity foundation should be observed with a non-Western sample, such as Japan. It would be important to discuss and clarify the Japanese unique aspect of their orientation toward the pure and impure. We constituted a scale to measure people's tendency toward purity orientation-pollution avoidance (POPA), based on the purity/sanctity subscale of the MFT. For validation, we administered several scales along with POPA. In Study 1, we developed the scale and measured the relationship between the degree of one's POPA, disgust, and animism. We identified four factors as POPA subscales. In Study 2, we investigated the test-retest reliability of POPA and conducted questionnaire surveys to measure attitudes toward paranormal phenomena and the degree of concern for each of the moral foundations. The results showed the validity of the scale, based on the moderate correlations with other scales. The POPA can be a promising tool to better understand the phenomena involving the purity foundation in a Japanese context.

Conservatives' Moral Foundations Are More Densely Connected Than Liberals' Moral Foundations

We use network psychometrics to map a subsection of moral belief systems predicted by moral foundations theory (MFT). This approach conceptualizes moral systems as networks, with moral beliefs represented as nodes connected by direct relations. As such, it advances a novel test of MFT's claim that liberals and conservatives have different systems of foundational moral values, which we test in three large datasets (NSample1 = 854; NSample2 = 679; NSample3 = 2,572), from two countries (the United States and New Zealand). Results supported our first hypothesis that liberals' moral systems show more segregation between individualizing and binding foundations than conservatives. Results showed only weak support for our second hypothesis, that this pattern would be more typical of higher educated than less educated liberals/conservatives. Findings support a systems approach to MFT and show the value of modeling moral belief systems as networks.

Religious Identity and Morality: Evidence for Religious Residue and Decay in Moral Foundations

Religion provides a powerful social identity. Building on previous work demonstrating that formerly religious individuals (i.e., religious dones) more closely resemble currently religious individuals than do never religious individuals (i.e., religious nones), we report three studies examining a potential religious residue effect for the endorsement of moral foundations. In Study 1 (N = 312), we found evidence of a stairstep pattern of endorsement of the five moral foundations, descending from currently religious to formerly religious to never religious individuals. Study 2 (N = 957) replicated these findings with a larger sample. In Study 3 (N = 2,071), we found evidence for the religious residue effect in a 4-wave longitudinal study of adolescents and young adults and suggest that the residual effects of religion on endorsement of moral foundations may erode over time. These studies add to a recently burgeoning line of work on the nature and consequences of religious deidentification.

The Sociology of Prayer: Dimensions and Mechanisms

The sociology of prayer has a long history and routinely stresses the centrality of prayer to religious belief and ritual solidarity. Still, we have struggled to clearly define the parameters of prayer and the various components of this ubiquitous practice. Drawing from a comprehensive literature review of prayer research, we propose that there are four conceptually distinct dimensions of the private prayer experience which vary across religious cultures and traditions; they are (1) the quantity of prayer, (2) the style of prayer, (3) the purpose of prayer, and (4) prayer targets. Our proposed measures of these dimensions offer researchers a framework to better theorize and investigate the social mechanisms which produce variation in prayer as well as the individual and social outcomes of prayer. In particular, we discuss how each prayer dimension fits within specific theoretical framings to better test the extent to which the emotional, rational, and behavioral elements matter to prayer outcomes.

Exploring the Mechanisms of Influence on COVID-19 Preventive Behaviors in China's Social Media Users

The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) posed a powerful threat to human life. The preventive behaviors of individuals (e.g., home quarantine, disinfection, and wearing masks) play a key role in preserving and controlling the disease. In this case, as a motivational psychological system oriented toward avoiding infection, the behavioral immune system (BIS) may be activated and link to preventive behaviors. This study investigated the mechanisms through which emotional and cognitive processes resulted by BIS have promoted preventive behaviors in relation to COVID-19. We collected data on 22,005 active Sina Weibo users from 31 December 2019 to 8 February 2020 to measure their emotions (including disgust, happiness, and fear), cultural values (individualism and collectivism), moral concern (including purity vice, fairness vice, and authority virtue), and behavioral intentions (including isolation intention, protection intention, and aid intention) using Text Mind software and related dictionaries. Multiple regression and mediation analyses were performed to explore the relationships among variables. The results showed seven complete mediation paths (such as disgust-purity vice-protection intention). Each of these paths describes the effects of cognitive processes caused by BIS on preventive behaviors. We inferred that there may be path mechanisms such as disgust-cognitive processes-preventive behaviors. Using these results, policy makers can take appropriate measures to intervene in preventive behaviors (e.g., by posting disgusting images on social media to evoke disgust). The results can be used to explain differences in preventive behaviors among populations even in the face of similar thread levels. Furthermore, our research provides empirical evidence for the hypothesis of pathogen prevalence.

How fear and collectivism influence public's preventive intention towards COVID-19 infection: a study based on big data from the social media

BACKGROUND

Despite worldwide calls for precautionary measures to combat COVID-19, the public's preventive intention still varies significantly among different regions. Exploring the influencing factors of the public's preventive intention is very important to curtail the spread of COVID-19. Previous studies have found that fear can effectively improve the public's preventive intention, but they ignore the impact of differences in cultural values. The present study examines the combined effect of fear and collectivism on the public's preventive intention towards COVID-19 through the analysis of social media big data.

METHODS

The Sina microblog posts of 108,914 active users from Chinese mainland 31 provinces were downloaded. The data was retrieved from January 11 to February 21, 2020. Afterwards, we conducted a province-level analysis of the contents of downloaded posts. Three lexicons were applied to automatically recognise the scores of fear, collectivism, and preventive intention of 31 provinces. After that, a multiple regression model was established to examine the combined effect of fear and collectivism on the public's preventive intention towards COVID-19. The simple slope test and the Johnson-Neyman technique were used to test the interaction of fear and collectivism on preventive intention.

RESULTS

The study reveals that: (a) both fear and collectivism can positively predict people's preventive intention and (b) there is an interaction of fear and collectivism on people's preventive intention, where fear and collectivism reduce each other's positive influence on people's preventive intention.

CONCLUSION

The promotion of fear on people's preventive intention may be limited and conditional, and values of collectivism can well compensate for the promotion of fear on preventive intention. These results provide scientific inspiration on how to enhance the public's preventive intention towards COVID-19 effectively.

Neural and Linguistic Considerations for Assessing Moral Intuitions Using Text-Based Stimuli

This review takes a focused look at neural and linguistic considerations for assessing moral intuitions using text-based stimuli. Relevant neural correlates of moral salience, emotional processing, moral emotions (shame and guilt), semantic processing, implicit stereotype activation (e.g., gender, age, and race stereotypes), and functional brain network development (the default mode network and salience network) are considered insofar as they relate to unique considerations for text-based instruments. What emerge are not only key considerations for researchers assessing moral intuitions using text-based stimuli but also considerations for the study of moral psychology more broadly, especially in developmental and educational contexts.

Ideology as Filter: Motivated Information Processing and Decision-Making in the Energy Domain

The transition towards more renewable energy will substantially increase voters’ involvement in the political decision-making process in the energy domain. Decisions such as whether to approve or reject large-scale energy programs can be complex, especially when available information cues are numerous and conflicting. Here, we hypothesize that political ideology is a strong determinant in this process, serving as a filter that voters apply when evaluating the relevance of provided information cues. We tested this hypothesis in the context of the 2017 Public Vote on the Swiss Energy Act. A sample of n = 931 Swiss voters were presented with arguments in favor or against the Energy Act, which were framed in terms of values found to be relevant for liberal and conservative ideologies, respectively. Political ideology strongly determined individual attitudes and voting preferences. Political ideology moreover moderated the influence of information provision on decisions, in that arguments congruent with voters’ political ideology were more likely to be evaluated as personally relevant and integrated into their decisions. We discuss the implications of our findings for measures on how to address ideology-based decision-making in order to ensure a well-informed electorate.

Developing brief versions of the Moral Foundations Vignettes using a genetic algorithm-based approach

The time-efficient assessment of moral values using systematically validated measures is a high priority in moral psychology research. However, few such options exist for researchers working with Moral Foundations Theory, one of the most popular theories in moral psychology. Across two samples totaling 1336 participants (756 Australian undergraduates and 580 American Mechanical Turk workers), we used a genetic algorithm-based (GA) approach to construct and validate abbreviated versions of the Moral Foundations Vignettes (MFV), a 90-item scale comprising vignettes of concrete violations of each of the six moral foundations. We constructed 36- and 18-item versions of the MFV, demonstrating close correspondence with the complete MFV, and adequate reliability, predictive validity, and factor-analytic goodness of fit for both abbreviated versions. Overall, the abbreviated scales achieve substantially reduced length with minimal loss of information, providing a useful resource for moral psychology researchers.

Toward a Brain-Based Bio-Marker of Guilt

Guilt is a quintessential emotion in interpersonal interactions and moral cognition. Detecting the presence and measuring the intensity of guilt-related neurocognitive processes is crucial to understanding the mechanisms of social and moral phenomena. Existing neuroscience research on guilt has been focused on the neural correlates of guilt states induced by various types of stimuli. While valuable in their own right, these studies have not provided a sensitive and specific bio-marker of guilt suitable for use as an indicator of guilt-related neurocognitive processes in novel experimental settings. In a recent study, we identified a distributed Guilt-Related Brain Signature (GRBS) based on 2 independent functional MRI datasets. We demonstrated the sensitivity of GRBS in detecting a critical cognitive antecedent of guilt, namely one’s responsibility in causing harm to another person, across participant populations from 2 distinct cultures (ie, Chinese and Swiss). We also showed that the sensitivity of GRBS did not generalize to other types of negative affective states (eg, physical and vicarious pain). In this commentary, we discuss the relevance of guilt in the broader scope of social and moral phenomena, and discuss how guilt-related biomarkers can be useful in understanding their psychological and neurocognitive mechanisms underlying these phenomena.

Psychospiritual Developmental Risk Factors for Moral Injury

There is increasing theoretical, clinical, and empirical support for the hypothesis that psychospiritual development, and more specifically, postconventional religious reasoning, may be related to moral injury. In this study, we assessed the contributions of exposure to potentially morally injurious events, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and psychospiritual development to moral injury symptoms in a sample of military veterans (N = 212). Psychospiritual development was measured as four dimensions, based on Wulff’s theory juxtaposing conventional vs. postconventional levels of religious reasoning, with decisions to be an adherent or a disaffiliate of faith. After controlling for exposure to potentially morally injurious events and severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms, veterans who were conventional disaffiliates reported higher scores on the Moral Injury Questionnaire than conventional adherents, postconventional adherents, or postconventional disaffiliates. We conclude that the role of psychospiritual development offers a theoretical approach to moral injury that invites collaboration between social scientists, philosophers, theologians, and medical professionals.