Do liberals and conservatives use different moral languages? Two replications and six extensions of Graham, Haidt, and Nosek’s (2009) moral text analysis

Publication date: Available online 28 November 2019Source: Journal of Research in PersonalityAuthor(s): Jeremy A. FrimerAbstractDo 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].

Source: Journal of Research in Personality - November 29, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research