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Group Dynamics and the Public Sphere

Morality

Do political liberals and conservatives differ in the way they understand morality?

Attitudes toward the five categories of moral concerns may also influence political beliefs. In a large Website-based study, Jonathan Haidt and colleagues found that, when liberals and conservatives were compared with each other, liberals valued harm/care and fairness/reciprocity more than conservatives did, and conservatives valued authority/respect, ingroup/loyalty, and purity/sanctity more than liberals did. These differences held even after accounting for the effects of age, gender, education, and income.