Intuitive Ethics and Political Orientations: Testing Moral Foundations as a Theory of Political Ideology

Originally developed to explain cultural variation in moral judgments, moral foundations theory (MFT) has become widely adopted as a theory of political ideology. MFT posits that political attitudes are rooted in instinctual evaluations generated by innate psychological modules evolved to solve social dilemmas. If this is correct, moral foundations must be relatively stable dispositional traits, changes in moral foundations should systematically predict consequent changes in political orientations, and, at least in part, moral foundations must be heritable. We test these hypotheses and find substantial variability in individual-level moral foundations across time, and little evidence that these changes account for changes in political attitudes. We also find little evidence that moral foundations are heritable. These findings raise questions about the future of MFT as a theory of ideology. Replication Materials: The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available on the American Journal of Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WTUGFZ. Moral foundations theory (MFT) posits that moral judgments are based in “intuitive ethics,” an “innate preparedness to feel flashes of approval or disapproval toward certain patterns of events involving other human beings” (Haidt and Joseph 2004, 56). Widely adapted as a trait theory, MFT’s most prominent empirical application is as an explanatory model of individual-level political ideology (Federico et al. 2013; Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009; Haidt, Graham, and Joseph 2009; Joseph, Graham, and Haidt 2009; Koleva et al. 2012). MFT may also address an unresolved issue raised by research suggesting that ideology, broadly defined as interrelated sets of political attitudes, is a stable individuallevel dispositional trait that is heritable and neuroKevin B. Smith is Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 511 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588 ([email protected]). John R. Alford is Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science MS-24, Rice University, Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251 ([email protected]). John R. Hibbing is Foundation Regents University Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 511 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588 ([email protected]). Nicholas G. Martin is Director, Genetic Epidemiology Laboratory, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, 300 Herston Road, Q 4029, Australia ([email protected]). Peter K. Hatemi is Distinguished Professor, Department of Political Science, The Pennsylvania State University, 307 Pond Lab, University Park, PA 16801 ([email protected]). We thank Soad Hancock and Anjali Henders for project coordination, and David Smyth for database management. Most of all, we thank the twins and their family members for participation in the study. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (0729493,0721707). biologically influenced (Ahn et al. 2014; Hatemi and McDermott 2012). It remains unclear how preferences on, say, gay marriage or immigration can be biologically influenced and, presumably, products of evolutionary selection pressures. As a theory of ideology, MFT offers a potential solution to this puzzle. Political attitudes are often rooted in judgments of right and wrong, and more instinctual and rationalized than informed and rational (Lakoff 2002; McDermott 2004). Succinctly, MFT suggests these instinctual judgments spring from individuallevel variation in psychological modules evolved to deal with “long standing threats and opportunities in social life” (Haidt 2012, 144). If true, these modules—moral foundations—must have certain properties. First, they must be stable and American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 00, No. 0, xxx 2016, Pp. 1–14 C ©2016, Midwest Political Science Association DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12255