Abstract
The current research aimed to explain how conservatives and liberals differ in moral expansiveness, which is the extent to which an individual ascribes moral status to others. Using two measures of moral expansiveness, we demonstrated that both conservatives and liberals give moral regard to in-groups (e.g., friends, family, co-workers), but liberals tend to show more concern for out-groups (e.g., foreign citizen, people with different religious beliefs, members of LGBTI community) than conservatives do. Conservatives reserve their moral concern for friends and family, whereas liberals have no moral boundaries between people. In policy-making, conservatives and liberals disagree when their focuses of moral consideration do not match. We discuss that conflicts between the two can be explained by expansiveness of moral regard for out-groups. The results explain the relationship between political orientation and moral expansiveness and the way an individual includes others in the circle of moral regard.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aquino, K., & Reed, A. (2002). The self-importance of moral identity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1423–1440. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.83.6.1423.
Ariely, G. (2017). Global identification, xenophobia and globalization: A cross-national exploration. International Journal of Psychology, 52, 87–96. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12364.
Bloom, P. (2016). Against empathy: The case for rational compassion. London: The Bodley Head.
Crimston, D., Bain, P. G., Hornsey, M. J., & Bastian, B. (2016). Moral expansiveness: Examining variability in the extension of the moral world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111, 636–653. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000086.
Crimston, D., Hornsey, M. J., Bain, P. G., & Bastian, B. (2018). Toward a psychology of moral expansiveness. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 14–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417730888.
Cuddy, A. J. C., Rock, M., & Norton, M. I. (2007). Aid in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina: Inferences of secondary emotions and intergroup helping. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 10, 107–118. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430207071344.
Day, M. V., Fiske, S. T., Downing, E. L., & Trail, T. E. (2014). Shifting liberal and conservative attitudes using moral foundations theory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 1559–1573. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167214551152.
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–191. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193146.
Feldman, S., & Johnston, C. (2014). Understanding the determinants of political ideology: Implications of structural complexity. Political Psychology, 35, 337–358. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12055.
Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1029–1046. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015141.
Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P. H. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 366–385. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021847.
Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon Books.
Hall, D. L., Cohen, A. B., Meyer, K. K., Varley, A. H., & Brewer, G. A. (2015). Costly signaling increases trust, even across religious affiliations. Psychological Science, 26, 1368–1376. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615576473.
Harris, L. T., & Fiske, S. T. (2006). Dehumanizing the lowest of the low: Neuroimaging responses to extreme out-groups. Psychological Science, 17, 847–853. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01793.x.
Hasson, Y., Tamir, M., Brahms, K. S., Cohrs, J. C., & Halperin, E. (2018). Are liberals and conservatives equally motivated to feel empathy toward others? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44, 1449–1459. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218769867.
Houck, S. C., & Repke, M. (2017). When and why we torture: A review of psychology research. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 3, 272–283. https://doi.org/10.1037/tps0000120.
Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., Knobe, J., & Bloom, P. (2009). Disgust sensitivity predicts intuitive disapproval of gays. Emotion, 9, 435–439. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015960.
Jost, J. T. (2006). The end of the end of ideology. American Psychologist, 61, 651–670. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.61.7.651.
Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339–375. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339.
Jost, J. T., Nosek, B. A., & Gosling, S. D. (2008). Ideology: Its resurgence in social, personality, and political psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 126–136. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00070.x.
Jost, J. T., Federico, C. M., & Napier, J. L. (2009). Political ideology: Its structure, functions, and elective affinities. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 307–337. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163600.
Kugler, M., Jost, J. T., & Noorbaloochi, S. (2014). Another look at moral foundations theory: Do authoritarianism and social dominance orientation explain liberal-conservative differences in “moral” intuitions? Social Justice Research, 27, 413–431. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-014-0223-5.
Laham, S. M. (2009). Expanding the moral circle: Inclusion and exclusion mindsets and the circle of moral regard. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 250–253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.08.012.
McCrae, R. R. (1987). Creativity, divergent thinking, and openness to experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology., 52, 1258–1265. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.6.1258.
McFarland, S., Webb, M., & Brown, D. (2012). All humanity is my ingroup: A measure and studies of identification with all humanity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 830–853. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028724.
Muller, J. Z. (1997). What is conservative social and political thought? In J. Z. Muller (Ed.), Conservativism: An anthology of social and political thought from David Hume to the present (pp. 3–31). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Opotow, S. (1990). Moral exclusion and injustice: An introduction. Journal of Social Issues, 46, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1990.tb00268.x.
Pettigrew, T. F., Wagner, U., & Christ, O. (2007). Who opposes immigration? Comparing German with north American findings. Du Bois Review, 4, 19–39. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X07070038.
Reed II, A., & Aquino, K. F. (2003). Moral identity and the expanding circle of moral regard toward out-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1270–1286. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.6.1270.
Reese, G., Proch, J., & Finn, C. (2015). Identification with all humanity: The role of self-definition and self-investment. European Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 426–440. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2102.
Reysen, S., & Hackett, J. (2015). Further examination of the factor structure and validity of the identification with all humanity scale. Current Psychology, 1–13 (Online first). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-015-9341-y.
Singer, P. (2011). The expanding circle: Ethics, evolution, and moral progress. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Skitka, L., & Tetlock, P. E. (1993). Providing public assistance: Cognitive and motivational processes underlying liberal and conservative policy preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1205–1224. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.65.6.1205.
Smith, I. H., Aquino, K., Koleva, S., & Graham, J. (2014). The moral ties that bind…even to out-groups: The interactive effect of moral identity and the binding moral foundations. Psychological Science, 25, 1554–1562. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614534450.
Tang, T. L., & Tzeng, J. Y. (1992). Demographic correlates of the Protestant work ethic. Journal of Psychology, 126, 163–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.1992.10543351.
Terrizzi Jr., J. A., Shook, N. J., & Ventis, W. L. (2010). Disgust: A predictor of social conservatism and prejudicial attitudes toward homosexuals. Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 587–592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.05.024.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Conflict of Interest
There is no potential conflict of interest pertaining to this submission to Current Psychology.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
ESM 1
(DOCX 32 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Takamatsu, R. Striving to protect friends and family or holding everyone accountable: Moral expansiveness explains the difference between conservatives and liberals. Curr Psychol 41, 793–801 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00615-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00615-5