PoliPsych.com Exploring Political Attitudes Through Moral Psychology

Robustness of Liberal-Conservative Moral Foundations Questionnaire Differences

All social science research faces questions about the external validity of the results.  Much social psychology research is done on students and so the natural question is whether those findings generalize to non-student populations.  Even representative surveys of the population face questions about validity due to the assumptions which go into what representative means.  Since all measurement is imperfect, one of the main ways to determine the robustness of a finding is to examine many measurements and look for overall patterns.  FiveThirtyEight.com did this during the 2008 presidential election and became a national sensation.

The central finding of Moral Foundations theory to date is the split between what liberals and conservatives report caring about.  Specifically, Liberals care more exclusively about issues concerning harm and fairness, while conservatives also care about issues surrounding obeying rightful authority, being loyal to one's ingroup, and avoiding "unnatural" violations of one's purity.

How can we tell if this finding is robust?  All web servers keep track of referring traffic and so we can analyze the data we collect at yourmorals.org by the source of the traffic.  If the pattern holds among people who read the New York Times, people who come from conservative blogs (a minority, but there are some), people who read the Houston Chronicle, people who find the site by typing 'morality quiz' into a search engine, and people who read Libertarian magazines....then it is likely that the pattern is somewhat robust.  Of course, these patterns are all among internet samples, so it would be fair to say that if this pattern of liberal-conservative differences holds among all these groups, then it is fairly robust amongst the type of people who use the internet to read about news or politics.

Below are graphs across many of these groups.  You'll see the same pattern where as you move from liberal to conservative, the exclusivity of concern about issues of harm and fairness gets less and less.

 

World vs. Country focus for Obama vs. McCain supporters

These results aren't really surprising, but Obama and McCain supporters have different ideas about who they identify with, based on Sam McFarland's Identification with All Humanity Scale.

Specifically, those who plan to vote for McCain identify most with their country while those who plan to vote for Obama identify most with the world as a whole.

More interesting is the fact that Obama supporters have a relatively flat identification pattern where they are a bit more identified with all people in the world vs. people in their country while McCain supporters have over a full point difference (on a 5 pt. scale) between their identification with their country vs. their identification with people all over the world (3.7 vs. 2.6).

Below are the results...

I wanted to explore the results a bit further, so I looked at differences within self identified conservatives based on whether they are slightly, moderately, or very conservative.  As you can see below, the more conservative one gets, the greater one identifies with one's country and the less one identifies with the world.

The question that comes to my mind is:

Why is it necessary to have this tradeoff between loving one's country and identifiying with people of all kinds?

And lastly, as a comparison, here are the results for liberals.  It seems like the main difference for extreme liberals is greater concern for the world as a whole.

What do moral psychology scales say about supporters of Obama and Clinton?

Draft by Ravi Iyer, Sena Koleva, Jesse Graham, and Peter Ditto

The 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary has featured 2 candidates, Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton, with very similar political positions who nevertheless have garnered enthusiastic support from different groups of people. The popular media has reported numerous statistics about the supporters of each candidate based on gender, race, age, and education. It is hardly surprising that people tend to vote for candidates who are members of the same “group”, with people voting for the candidate who matches best based on age, gender, and race. Still, within these groups, there are still individuals with vastly different opinions of each candidate and this study will hopefully shed light on some of the individual differences that may have led people to support one candidate or the other, as can be divined from scales used in psychological research.

From October of 2007 to February of 2008, as the primary season was heating up, we surveyed 8,026 people at yourmorals.org as to their opinions of the leading contenders in the democratic primary. A large number of these people also took 1 or more moral psychology scales, most of which have been well validated by previous psychological research. In this study, we explored the data generated in this period and attempted to form a picture of the personality variables which best predict relative favorability ratings toward Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Our Sample

These findings explore scores on personality tests and their relation to favorability ratings of “the final 2” 2008 Democratic Presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama. Over 8,000 people visited yourmorals.org and answered the question “What is your opinion of the politicians listed below?” on a 7 point scale from very unfavorable to very favorable with the midpoint of the scale, 4, being neither favorable nor unfavorable. The dependent variable that we used in our sample was based on the difference in favorability ratings between the 2 candidates with higher scores indicating that the subject had a more favorable opinion of Obama than Clinton.

Most of the respondents are readers of political or science blog and news articles which linked to our website, so conclusions may be specific to this sample. However, many of the correlations mirror previous polls/research (ie. Women have lower psychopathy scores and higher empathy scores. Women favor Clinton. Younger and better educated subjects favor Obama.), so it seems unlikely that our sample is completely unrepresentative.

All results presented are the result of a linear regression analysis, which allows us to control for differences in gender, age, education, and political orientation. We did not control for race statistically, as our sample was relatively homogenous (88% white, 1-2% black and latino) such that we did not have a reasonable enough sample to analyze results by race. However, having such a homogenous sample means that it is unlikely that race drives our results as for the vast majority of our sample, that variable is naturally held constant.

Moral Foundations Questionnaire

The most popular psychology scale on YourMorals.org is the Moral Foundations Questionnaire and 7,458 people took this scale in addition to completing our survey on favorability towards presidential candidates. The scale is a measure of reliance on and endorsement of five psychological foundations of morality that seem to be found across cultures. Each of the two parts of the scale contained four questions related to each foundation: 1) harm/care, 2) fairness/reciprocity (including issues of rights), 3) ingroup/loyalty, 4) authority/respect, and 5) purity/sanctity. The idea behind the scale is that human morality is the result of biological and cultural evolutionary processes that made human beings very sensitive to many different (and often competing) issues. Some of these issues are about treating other individuals well (the first two foundations - harm and fairness). Other issues are about how to be a good member of a group or supporter of social order and tradition (the last three foundations – authority, loyalty, and purity).

Favoring Obama was related to endorsing the moral values of harm (B=.1, p=.003) and fairness (B = .19, p<.001). Favoring Clinton was related to endorsing the moral values of loyalty (B=.08, p=.012) and authority (B=.07, p<.05). While the effect sizes are statistically significant, but not large, this is interesting because Clinton supporters appear to be more morally conservative though they identify themselves as being just as strongly liberal (see Appendix A for simple correlations of controlling variables). Favoring Clinton appears to be related to being a good group member and/or supporting a social order while favoring Obama appears to be related to endorsing moral foundations related to treating individuals well.

Big 5 Personality Scale

2,379 people also took the the "Big 5 Personality Inventory," created by Oliver John at the University of California at Berkeley. This particular scale is a "short form" of a much longer scale originally developed by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae in the 1980s. The scale is a measure of 5 traits that are said to be most indicative of personality. The traits are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Favorability towards Clinton was related to higher conscientiousness (B=.30, p<.05) with no other relationship approaching significance. High scorers in conscientiousness are often described as people who are well organized with high standards and who always strive to achieve their goals. They sometimes are seen as uptight.

Empathy

1,224 people took the "Interpersonal Reactivity Index," developed by Mark H. Davis. The scale is a measure of empathy, covering four distinct aspects of empathic responding to others: 1) perspective-taking, 2) fantasy, 3) empathic concern, and 4) personal distress. The idea behind the scale is that empathy is a multi-faceted human trait, and that there are different domains in which people may be particularly sensitive to the feelings of others.

Favoring Obama was significantly related to higher scores on perspective taking (B=.20, p=.01) and personal distress (B=.22, p<.01). The relation to empathic concern was of marginal signficance (B=.15, p=.07). According to Davis (1983), a high score on perspective taking indicates “the tendency to spontaneously adopt the psychological point of view of others”. A high score on personal distress indicates “'self-oriented' feelings of personal anxiety and unease in tense interpersonal settings”. A high score on empathic concern indicates 'other-oriented' feelings of sympathy and concern for unfortunate others. Taken together the results paint a picture of favorability towards Obama being related to increased empathy, though this relation is stronger in areas other than concern for unfortunate others, which may be popularly thought of as the central component of empathy.

Psychopathy

1,063 people took the Levenson Primary and Secondary Psychopathy Scale, created by Michael Levenson, currently at Oregon State University. The scale is a measure of psychopathic personality traits in noninstitutionalized populations. Psychopathy is a disorder characterized by a lack of guilt, empathy, and conscience; psychopaths are often manipulative, insincere, and violate social and moral norms. Contrary to popular belief, psychopathy is not limited to the most extreme serial killers, but can be found everywhere, in all types of industries and social classes. The idea behind the scale is that psychopathy is thought to be continuously distributed in the population so that individuals have varying degrees of psychopathic traits which can be measured.

In addition, the concept of psychopathy is often separated into two factors, each with emphasis on a different aspect of psychopathy. The first type, primary psychopathy, more closely resembles the prototype description of a psychopath and emphasizes a lack of emotion as well as other personality features. Primary psychopaths are often described as glib, superficially charming, grandiose, lying, conning, manipulative, lacking empathy or guilt, emotionally shallow, and callous. The second type, secondary psychopathy, describes individuals characterized mostly by deviant behavior. Features include a need for stimulation, proneness to boredom, impulsivity, irresponsibility, risk-taking, and poor behavioral control. Psychopathy has been found to correlate positively with other personality traits such as extraversion, adventure-seeking, and other traits which are often valued in leadership and competitive environments, so higher scores may not necessarily reflect deviant or immoral behavior, but instead reflect more outgoing personality styles.

Favorability toward either candidate was negatively correlated with psychopathy, meaning that it would be incorrect to state that either candidate’s supporters exhibit greater psychopathy. However, relative favorability towards Obama was highly related to lower primary psychopathy scores (B=.54, p<.001) indicating that those who support Obama may have higher degrees of social emotions such as empathy and guilt that prevent them from advancing their cause at the expense of others.

Forgiveness

1,061 people took the the Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS), a self-report measure by Laura Yamhure Thompson, C. R. Snyder, Lesa Hoffman, Scott T. Michael, Heather N. Rasmussen, Laura S. Billings, Laura Heinze, Jason E. Neufeld, Hal S. Shorey, Jessica C. Roberts, and Danae E. Roberts at the University of Kansas. The scale is a measure of dispositional forgiveness (with subscales to assess forgiveness of self, others, and situations).

Favorability towards Clinton was significantly related to higher scores on forgiving oneself (B=.15, p<.01) and forgiving situations (B=.17, p<.01), but not to forgiving others (B=.03, p=.6). This might be indicative of an ability to “let go” and not ruminate about negative events.

Preference for the Merit Principle

1,996 people took the the Preference for the Merit Principle (PMP) Scale, by Liane M. Davey, D. Ramona Bobocel, Leanne S. Son Hing and Mark P. Zanna (2004). The scale is a measure of people's preference for allocating outcomes on the basis of the distributive justice principle of merit. The idea behind the scale is that fairness has many meanings to many people. Some people believe that rewards and promotions should be distributed strictly on the basis of merit, even if that means that some people end up with much more than others.

Favorability towards Clinton relative to Obama was not significantly related to scores on this scale (B=.008, p=.915). Neither candidate’s supporters appear to be significantly more concerned with awarding benefits on the basis of merit.

Identification with All of Humanity Scale

2,555 people completed the Identification with All of Humanity Scale developed by Sam McFarland at the University of Western Kentucky. The scale is a measure of how much one identifies with people locally, nationally, and globally. The idea behind the scale is that some people identify with and feel a sense of community primarily with those nearby. Other people seem less interested in what's going on locally, and think about people more generally, even those far away.

Relative favorability towards Obama was related to identifying with humanity more globally (B=.12, p<.05). There were no significant differences in identifying with people in one’s neighborhood or with people in one’s country.

Ethics Position Questionnaire

1,491 people completed the "Ethics Positions Questionnaire," developed by Donelson R. Forsyth. The scale is a measure of how people determine what is moral or immoral along 2 dimensions, idealism and relativism. Idealism is a measure of how willing a person is to consider committing an immoral act in the service of a greater good. Higher scores indicate less willingness to make such sacrifices. Relativism is a measure of how much one subscribes to the idea that morality can vary depending upon situation and culture. Higher scores indicate more willingness to believe that moral principles are not universal. The idea behind the scale is that, independent of subject matter, some people believe that the nature of morality differs.

Favorability towards Clinton was related to higher scores on moral relativism (B=.17, p<.05). For people who think that morals are absolute, moral relativists may be labelled immoral while moral relativists may see absolutists as rigid.

Discussion/Summary

Correlational evidence can be a function of many things. It could be that some 3^rd factor is causing all of these relationships. However, taken as a whole, the pattern of results from these scales does seem to converge on a set of personality characteristics that match well with what has been reported in the press about these candidates during this election cycle.

Clinton is normally portrayed as the more experienced candidate who is more part of the Democratic establishment. Sheila Leslie, a Democratic assemblywoman from Nevada, stated, “Both Ohio and Rhode Island are Democratic machine states. She (Clinton) tends to do well in machine states.” CBS news reported in one article that Obama had to contend with the fact that Clinton has “earned the intense loyalty of core
Democratic partisans.” As such, it is unsurprising that Clinton supporters score higher in endorsing moral foundations that are a strong part of being a good group member, in this case, being a good group member of the Democratic Party. It makes sense that her supporters would value loyalty more and be loyal to the Clinton family, which has led the Democratic Party throughout the 90s. It makes sense that her supporters would also value authority and might feel that her longevity entitles her to higher standing within the party. Obama supporters value individual based morality (higher Moral Foundation results for harm and fairness) and are therefore perhaps do not see any issue in being “disloyal” to Clinton and refusing to recognize the standing that her years in the public eye might entitle her to. Interestingly, Clinton supporters do not appear to be more concerned with the idea of merit than Obama supporters. Politico.com wrote “"Obama has attracted tens of thousands of young supporters who are loyal to him, not to the Democratic Party. Clinton, on the other hand, has strong support among party regulars." Evidence that Obama supporters might be more concerned with people in general rather than groups can also be seen in the fact that Obama supporters scored higher on concern for people in “the World” but not higher on concern for people in their neighborhood or country level groups.

Obama supporters appear to be a bit more emotional. This would fit his reported campaign style where he attempts to play on the emotions of his audience through inspiring rhetoric. More empathic voters might be more easily swayed by such a campaign. In contrast, Clinton supporters appear to be more coldly rational, scoring lower on empathy measures. Relatively higher moral relativism, forgiveness and psychopathy scores indicate an emotionally cool willingness to make tough decisions that might have negative consequences, in the service of some superseding goal. This could be framed as a positive quality (“the ability to make tough decisions”) or as a negative quality (“the willingness to do anything to get ahead”) and both characterizations have been made of Clinton in the election. Social emotions can be seen as a double edged sword and it makes sense that people favor the candidate who is portrayed as being most similar to them in terms of disposition toward these emotions.

Clinton supporters scored higher on conscientiousness, which can be an indication of being a high achiever or an indication of being uptight. Again, both characterizations have been made of Clinton during this election, indicating that again, voters appear to prefer candidates that are most like themselves. Indeed, perhaps the most academically interesting conclusion of this study is the consistency with which our findings replicate popular media stereotypes about each candidate. Just as with race and gender, voters are apparently also trying to find a candidate that matches them on personality.

Appendix A - Correlations

more on Obama vs. Clinton and the Moral Foundations of their supporters

I shared this post with my colleagues and was asked if the result (Hillary supporters are "loyal" or structure oriented democrats who score higher on authority/ingroup/purity) would hold for just democrats or just people who are very interested in the election. It turns out that the pattern does indeed hold when we just include self described liberals (group 1 = Obama more favorable, 2=Clinton more favorable)....

...but the opposite pattern occurs for self described conservatives...

This perhaps confirms conventional wisdom that more conservative people dislike Clinton, but that "loyal" liberals like her as opposed to liberals who believe less in loyalty and other structure oriented moral foundations. Clinton is, after all, an integral part of liberal structure.

I also ran the analyses by level of interest in the election and it seems like these results are driven by those who are "very interested" in the election.

moral foundation facts about barack obama and hillary clinton supporters

I recently attended SPSP, the main conference for personality and social psychologists, and met with the people who I work with on yourmorals.org. Among the things we discussed at the meeting was the idea of reporting results that touch on current events in a more timely fashion, rather than focusing solely on academic publications. In keeping with that, I downloaded data from the website today and compared supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on our main scale, the moral foundations questionnaire.

Here is the table of results:

Group 1 are people who rated Obama higher than Clinton. Group 2 are people who rated Clinton higher than Obama. There were about 3000 people in this sample who gave them the same rating. The question was "What is your opinion of the politicians listed below?" with ratings running from very unfavorable to very favorable. Note that far more of our visitors had a favorable opinion about Obama vs. Clinton, and most of our sample was collected before the Iowa caucuses gave Obama his first victory. The skew for Obama is probably indicative of our homogenous sample of web savvy New York Times readers, a demographic which Obama has been winning handily in the primaries.

The scores really aren't radically different, perhaps reflecting the general consensus that many people would be happy with either candidate, but there are some significant results (significance, in social psychology terms, means that there is a 95% chance that there is indeed a true difference between the groups). Specifically, Clinton supporters score higher on the supposedly conservative moral foundations of ingroup loyalty (p<.001), authority (p=.003), and purity (p=.049). Obama supporters score marginally significantly higher on the fairness foundation (p=.087). These results become even more significant if you put the political affiliation of the subject into a regression equation as Clinton supporters tended to rate themselves as more liberal than Obama supporters, which would indicate that all other things being equal, Clinton supporters should have lower scores on loyalty, authority, and purity.  As such, it's even more interesting that her supporters rate loyalty, authority and purity higher, as measured by our moral foundations questionnaire, even though they say they are more liberal.

How can we interpret these results?

One possible interpretation is that Clinton supporters tend to be people who are "loyal" democrats. That means that they identify with being liberal and that they also believe in being loyal to the democratic party structure and respecting the rightful authority within the party. Clinton clearly represents the party structure and the rightful authority better, of the two candidates. So even if her supporters identify with being liberal more, they still tend to be those people who subscribe more to normally conservative ideals about loyalty and authority. For more discussion of liberal versus conservative morality, try this link.

Another possible interpretation is that Obama supporters tend to be better educated (from exit polls) and so they tend to rate themselves as less extreme in their liberalism, as those with higher education levels rarely use the extremes of self report measures. This tendency may exist despite the fact that Obama supporters are actually more liberal according the the moral foundation questionnaire.

It's worth noting that Clinton supporters rate themselves as more liberal on both economic and social issues, but slightly less liberal on foreign policy issues. A relative majority of our sample was from the New York Times article linked above, which may skew what we can say about our results, but also gives us a relatively homogenous sample which we can use to compare Clinton and Obama supporters. It may be true that among blue collar workers, different factors may explain Clinton-Obama leanings better, but among relatively well educated internet savvy New York Times online readers, this pattern seems to make sense.

Incidentally, we also analyzed Clinton and Obama supporters on the Schwartz Values Scale and found that Clinton supporters were slightly higher on Power, Universalism, and Security, but none of these relationships remained significant when controlling for political orientation. Lastly, we compared scores on the Ethics Position Questionnaire and found that Clinton supporters scored slightly (but statistically significantly) higher on moral relativism, but that's perhaps a topic for another post.

Liberals vs. Conservatives on the Schwartz Values Scale

I had to do a presentation relating some of my current work on yourmorals.org to some of the history of moral psychology and in doing so, I created this graph.  It doesn't include all the respondents on yourmorals.org as we changed our politics measure at one point and this graph only represents our newest subjects.  Still, it's interesting as it confirms elements of the 5 foundation theory using a well validated measure (the Schwartz Values Scale) which has been previously used on representative samples of thousands across various cultures.

Notable results, IMHO, are that conservatives appear to value power, tradition, conformity, and security more than liberals.  Liberals appear to value universality and stimulation more and to a lesser degree self direction and hedonism.  All of these results seem to confirm conventional wisdom.  From a liberal perspective, the fact that conservatives score as highly (or even a bit higher, though I'm not sure if the difference is statistically significant yet) on benevolence is perhaps surprising....but only to liberals...:)

btw, the green bar represents my scores and obviously I've interpreted the scale instructions differently than most...or else I just don't value anything...