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Ethics and Morality
Which of the 5 Types of Political Moralizer are You?
Take the political moralizer quiz and see how you compare to others.
Posted March 17, 2013
A lot of factors affect how we evaluate politicians. The major factor is party identification. Primarily, Democrats vote for Democrats, and Republicans vote for Republicans. While we want to think people carefully consider each candidate and their issue positions, many people are so busy living their lives – with work and school, kids and family, friends and neighbors – they just don’t want to spend their free time thinking about complex government policies and power hungry politicians.
But people do often use other factors in addition to partisanship (including unexpected things like height, see "Do We Reallly Prefer Taller Leaders?"). And some of these factors include personal characteristics of the candidates such as if they feel they can trust the politician to act appropriately on their behalf. In a sense, we evaluate politicians in terms of morality as well.
How do you evaluate politicians in terms of morality?
Before you read any further, click on the following link to complete the anonymous online quiz to find out. It tells you about a hypothetical candidate then asks 30 quick questions that together measure what kind of political moralizer you. After that it asks a few more questions about you to provide some context. Altogether it should take about 5 minutes to complete. Come back after you’re finished, and I will tell you about each of the five types of political moralizer and show you the results of others who have taken the quiz so you can see how you compare.
TAKE THE POLITICAL MORALIZER QUIZ HERE
… Welcome Back!
According to Jonathan Haidt and colleagues, there are five moral foundations for human behavior. He and his colleagues identified these “universal” values by evaluating the links between anthropological and evolutionary perspectives on morality. Interestingly, he and others have found liberals rely more heavily on two of the foundations, which are more individualizing in nature, while conservatives are more reliant on the other three, which are more related to group cohesion.
The 5 Types of Political Moralizers
With that background, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the five political moralizers.
Political Moralizer #1 (Harm/Care): Focuses on if a person prevents or relieves harm. Favors virtues such as kindness and compassion, and disapproves of vices such as cruelty and aggression. Evolutionarily related to the maternal brain and its sensitivity to the suffering of offspring, with an extension beyond the mother-child relationship. Receives greater attention from political liberals.
Political Moralizer #2 (Fairness/Reciprocity): Concentrates on if a person acts fairly and justly toward others and reciprocates appropriately in social and economic exchanges. Prefers virtues such as altruism and cooperation, and disapproves of vices such as greed and ingratitude. Evolutionarily related to emotions that influence people to cooperate in groups. Receives greater attention from political liberals.
Political Moralizer #3 (In-group/Loyalty): Emphasizes whether a person makes personal sacrifices or not for other members of her or his group. Sees loyalty and patriotism as virtues, and dissent and disloyalty, particularly in times of conflict, as vices. Evolutionarily related to survival instincts involving fear of unknown non-group members who may be dangerous. Receives greater attention from political conservatives. See my related blog posts "Why You May Be A Bigot" and "Our Genes and Anti-Immigration Attitudes."
Political Moralizer #4 (Authority/Respect): Focuses on if a person voluntarily defers to organizing structures (institutions and leaders) in society. Favors virtues such as respect, duty, and obedience, and disapproves of vices such as insubordination and insolence. Evolutionarily related to hierarchical group structures where leaders enjoyed special privileges but also had special obligations to the group. Receives greater attention from political conservatives.
Political Moralizer #5 (Purity/Sanctity): Concerned about bodily activities that may cause disgust and physical disease and spiritual activities like religiosity that may protect the soul. Sees chastity, piety, and spirituality as virtues, and gluttony, greed, and anger as vices. Evolutionarily related to disease avoidance. Receives greater attention from political conservatives. See my related blog posts that indicate the remarkable effects of disgust in particular: "Are You Easily Disgusted? You May Be A Conservative" and "Could Disgust Make You An Environmentalist?"
How do you compare?
Not too long ago about 350 of my students anonymously took the same quiz you just did. I wanted to know if people actually use the five moral foundations to evaluate candidates, and, if so, if some people use them differently than others. In other words, I wanted to know if there are political moralizers.
First of all, I found that, as expected, the Democratic (more liberal) students (looking only at the blue bars on the graph below) relied more heavily on Harm and Fairness (average scores of 4.7 and 4.8) than In-group, Authority, or Purity (4.4, 4.2, and 3.8). On the other hand, the Republican (more conservative) students (looking only at the red bars) relied more heavily on In-group and Authority (5.0 and 4.7) than on Harm and Fairness (4.5 and 4.6), although the difference between Authority and Fairness is not at all large (4.7 v. 4.6).
What was unexpected was that both Democrats and Republicans relied least on Purity, which may not be surprising given the “festive” nature of some of the student parties that go on around my campus. That said, there is still a major difference between how the Republican and Democratic students used Purity (4.4 versus 3.8).
Second and more importantly, you can see that when you directly compare Democrats to Republicans on each foundation, as expected, the Democrats rely a bit more on Harm (average scores of 4.7 v. 4.5) and Fairness (4.8 v. 4.6), while Republicans rely more on In-group (5.0 v. 4.4), Authority (4.7 v. 4.2), and Purity (4.4 v. 3.8), and they rely a lot more on these foundations. By the way, the results do not change if you use political ideology, like Haidt and his colleagues did, instead of party identification.
Finally, you might be interested in how you compare to people of your own sex. The first thing that strikes me in the graph below is how women use the moral foundations more than men. All the bars for women (pink bars) are taller than the corresponding bars for men (blue bars), and often by quite a bit. Also, it’s interesting women use the first three foundations more or less equally. This is unusual because scholars don’t usually group Harm and Fairness (individualizing values often associated with liberals) with In-group (a binding value typically associated with conservatives). From this at least, it appears women are different kinds of political moralizers than men.
Surprising…
I was a little surprised by my results when I took the quiz, and I think some of my students were surprised by theirs as well. What I didn’t expect was how big a role these played in my evaluation of the candidate, particularly for Fairness. After all my years in politics I think I just want to know if the politician I support can be trusted not to take advantage of her or his position.
Leave a comment and let me know what kind of political moralizer you are.
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