Original Article
Moral concerns across the United States: associations with life-history variables, pathogen prevalence, urbanization, cognitive ability, and social class

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.06.005Get rights and content

Abstract

This study evaluated the extent to which predictions derived from several theories could account for variability in human moral values across US states. We investigated moral values as conceptualized by Moral Foundations Theory, which argues that morality evolved in response to adaptive challenges in at least five domains: Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, Purity/sanctity ("binding" foundations) and Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity ("individualizing" foundations). We report correlations for measures of cognitive ability, social class, urbanization, pathogen prevalence, life expectancy, and teenage birth rates. Social class and educational attainment had fairly consistent but small effects across moral foundations (social class: positively associated with Ingroup/loyalty, negatively with individualizing foundations and Purity/sanctity; education: positively associated with individualizing foundations, negatively with binding foundations). We conducted multilevel regressions that were stratified for ethnicity. The most consistent state-level predictor of moral values was teenage birth rates (negatively associated with individualizing foundations, positively with binding foundations). This suggests that life-history theory may provide an explanation for individual differences in moral values, although the directions of effects for teenage birth rates diverged from predictions of life-history theory. We conclude that none of the tested theories provides a good explanation for the observed variability in moral values in the USA. We discuss how a life-history approach might account for the findings, and note the need for improved measurement of pathogen stress to better distinguish its effects from those of life-history variables.

Introduction

People everywhere are concerned with morality, but exactly what people find moral, immoral, or amoral varies widely around the world. In some societies, individual welfare and justice are prioritized; in other societies, values relevant to intragroup and interpersonal harmony (such as loyalty and deference) are considered just as important. Is there any pattern to this variation? According to Moral Foundations Theory, human moral values are grounded in at least five intuitive foundations, each related to a distinct evolutionary problem (Graham et al., 2013). Two of them – concern for Harm and Fairness – are the focus of liberal ethics and are referred to as individualizing foundations. The other three – concern for Ingroup, Authority, and Purity – tend to be endorsed more by conservatives and are referred to as binding foundations (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). Research has revealed a great deal of variability in endorsement of the moral foundations across societies and across individuals within a given society. This variability has been found to be systematic, being associated with a number of ecological, historical, and personality variables. Typically, the variation is greatest for the binding foundations, with some individuals/societies endorsing them as much as the individualizing foundations and others assigning much lower moral relevance to them. In the present research, we focused on variation in the endorsement of the moral foundations across the states of the USA. We considered several theories and empirical findings – specifically regarding cognitive ability, urbanization, social class, pathogen prevalence, and life-history strategy – to identify potential explanatory variables. In 1.1 Cognitive ability, 1.2 Urbanization, 1.3 Social class, 1.4 Pathogen prevalence, 1.5 Life-history strategy we specify the empirical predictions regarding moral foundation valuation derived from these five approaches (for an overview, see Table 1).

Cognitive ability may be related to moral values. Kohlberg (1984) proposed an approach in which moral reasoning is hypothesized to go through a stage-based developmental process. He reported that moral maturity – i.e., the stage of moral reasoning attained by an individual – correlated in the range of .30 to .50 with group IQ test scores at age 12 across studies. However, Kohlberg also noted that the relationship between IQ and moral maturity is somewhat more complicated (see Table 1, prediction 1):

In fact, a curvilinear relation between IQ and moral maturity is found. In the below-average range, a linear correlation (r = .53) is found between IQ and moral maturity, whereas no relationship (r = .16) is found between the two measures in the above-average group. (p. 64)

Kohlberg argued that this dissociation exists because the terminal status of moral maturity results from social experience rather than IQ. As higher-stage post-conventional moral reasoning is characterized by emphasis on individual’s rights and wellbeing (e.g., Kohlberg & Hersh, 1977), and as such concerns are associated with the individualizing foundations (Haidt & Kesebir, 2010), a positive correlation between cognitive ability and moral maturity would be indicated by a positive correlation between cognitive ability and endorsement of the individualizing foundations (see Table 1, prediction 1). Regardless of the exact relations between IQ and stages of moral maturity, multiple studies have shown findings consistent with an effect of cognitive ability or education on moral values. For example, less education is associated with greater political conservatism (Sidanius, Pratto, & Bobo, 1996), and lower cognitive ability (as measured by aptitude test scores) is associated with stronger conservative values (Stankov, 2009). Furthermore, a large developmental study in the UK has shown that higher general intelligence in childhood is associated with more liberal and less traditional social attitudes in adulthood (Deary, Batty, & Gale, 2008; see Table 1, predictions 2a and 2b). In sum, these findings suggest that cognitive ability may be a predictor of moral values. Therefore, we evaluated whether cognitive ability (as indicated by education completed) can explain variation in endorsement of the moral foundations.

Several researchers have suggested that urbanization (i.e., the proportion of people in a region living in cities) may be associated with a certain pattern of moral values. For example, cross-cultural psychologists have proposed that urbanization is related to individualism rather than collectivism (Triandis, McCusker, & Hui, 1990). Researchers who study moral psychology have expressed a similar notion (see Table 1, predictions 3a and 3b):

The free and open social order of a big Western city is a moral system…just as is the more binding and constricting social order of a small Indian village. The suppression of selfishness in a big city may rely more upon padlocks, police, and norms of non-interference than on caste, gossip, and norms of respect. (Haidt & Kesebir, 2010, p. 800)

In support of the idea that the morality of people in large and small communities differs, recent cross-cultural research on economic behavior (i.e., decisions in economic games) has found that increased community size is associated with tendencies to reject unfair offers by others and tendencies to punish those who make unfair offers (Henrich et al., 2010). For larger communities, the increased cultural diversity may make moral norms about group boundaries and rigid social hierarchies less viable, and so care and fairness at the level of the individual (rather than the group) may become more of the moral focus. Thus, larger community size is predicted to be associated with greater support for the individualizing foundations and lower support for the binding foundations (see Table 1, predictions 3a and 3b).

Moral values may also be associated with social class. Researchers have suggested that the different availability of resources for individuals of different social classes may influence diverse aspects of behavior and psychology, including moral values (Kraus, Piff, Mendoza-Denton, Rheinschmidt, & Keltner, 2012). Availability of resources may be associated with social class or socioeconomic status, with lower social class being associated with less education, less income, and lower perceived social rank (Kraus et al., 2012). Studies have shown socioeconomic status or social class to be associated with moral judgments (Haidt et al., 1993, Horberg et al., 2009) and unethical behavior (Piff, Stancato, Côté, Mendoza-Denton, & Keltner, 2012). Kraus et al. (2012) formulated hypotheses regarding the relations between social class and moral values. Specifically, they predicted that lower social class would be associated with moral values emphasizing Harm, Fairness, and Purity, whereas higher social class would be associated with moral values emphasizing Authority (see Table 1, predictions 4a, 4b, 4c, and 4d).

Pathogens have led to the evolution of physiological defenses. It has been proposed that animals may also have evolved a behavioral immune system – a set of behavioral mechanisms that facilitate the avoidance of pathogens (Curtis and Biran, 2001, Kurzban and Leary, 2001, Loehle, 1995, Schaller and Park, 2011). At the psychological level, perceived disease threat reduces self-perceived extraversion (Mortensen, Becker, Ackerman, Neuberg, & Kenrick, 2010), and enhances xenophobia and ethnocentrism (Faulkner et al., 2004, Navarrete and Fessler, 2006), negative attitudes toward physically non-normative individuals (Park, Faulkner, & Schaller, 2003), intentions to use condoms (Tybur, Bryan, Magnan, & Caldwell Hooper, 2011), and perceived danger of disease-related animals (Prokop, Usak, & Fančovičová, 2010). A meta-analysis of 24 studies indicated that disgust sensitivity and fear of contamination predict many forms of social conservatism, such as right-wing authoritarianism and collectivism (Terrizzi, Shook, & McDaniel, 2013).

In addition to these individual-level reactions that may serve to neutralize pathogen threat, certain cultural patterns appear to reflect adaptive responses to pathogens, an idea known as the parasite-stress model. Pathogen prevalence – how much exposure a society has had to infectious diseases – is positively correlated with culture-level measures of authoritarianism (Murray, Schaller, & Suedfeld, 2013), religious diversity (Fincher & Thornhill, 2008), collectivism (Fincher, Thornhill, Murray, & Schaller, 2008), and conformity (Murray, Trudeau, & Schaller, 2011), whereas it is negatively correlated with democracy (Thornhill, Fincher, & Aran, 2009), sociosexuality, extraversion, and openness to experience (Schaller & Murray, 2008).

These cross-cultural manifestations of adaptation to pathogen threat appear to extend to moral psychology. Van Leeuwen, Park, Koenig, and Graham (2012) hypothesized that endorsement of the binding foundations would be enhanced in cultures with a higher prevalence of pathogens. This is because binding morals may help protect against out-group members who harbor novel pathogens and prevent unconventional actions within the group that could increase risk of infection. Analysis of data from 82 countries supported this hypothesis. The binding foundations – but not the individualizing foundations – were endorsed more strongly in regions that historically have had higher levels of pathogens. Thus, one possibility is that pathogen prevalence across states is associated with endorsement of the binding moral foundations (see Table 1, prediction 5).

Life-history theory suggests that animals (including humans) strategically adapt during development to the local ecology. In unstable and dangerous environments, animals adopt a faster life-history strategy by investing in reproduction and focusing on short-term outcomes. In stable and safe environments, animals adopt a slower life-history strategy by investing in somatic development and focusing on long-term outcomes (Kaplan & Gangestad, 2005). Variables associated with life-history strategy, such as investment in mating and indicators of extrinsic risk (e.g., Hill & Kaplan, 1999), may explain an observed relation between pathogen prevalence and moral preferences. Indeed, recent research by Hackman and Hruschka (2013) showed that, across the USA, controlling for life-history variables resulted in non-significant correlations among pathogen prevalence and the variables theoretically related to it. Specifically, when controlling for teenage birth rate and ethnicity as measures of faster life-history strategy and extrinsic risk, respectively, pathogen prevalence no longer predicted variation in homicide, child abuse, and strength of family ties across states (cf. Fincher and Thornhill, 2012, Thornhill and Fincher, 2011). Faster life-history strategy is expected to be associated with higher teenage birth rate and shorter life expectancy. Therefore, we tested whether life-history variables predicted moral values by including teenage birth rate (as a measure of faster life-history strategy), life expectancy (as a measure of safety of the environment), and conducting ethnicity-stratified analyses. For individuals living in the USA, ethnicity is indicative of a broad range of risks and uncertainties (e.g., infant mortality and homicide; Arias et al., 2003, Xu et al., 2010) and is associated with discrepancies in life expectancy (Harper, Lynch, Burris, & Smith, 2007). Analyses that aggregate across ethnicity may thus confound ethnicity with variables related to risk and uncertainty (Hackman & Hruschka, 2013).

Theories diverge regarding how life-history strategy relates to moral values. Thornhill and Fincher (2007) proposed that conservative ideology reflects in-group specialization, a consequence, they suggest, of secure attachment which in turn results from low risk exposure during childhood. Given the associations of political orientation with moral foundations (Graham et al., 2009), this approach suggests that slower life-history strategy should be associated with stronger endorsement of Ingroup, Authority, and Purity, but weaker endorsement of Harm and Fairness (see Table 1, predictions 6a and 6b). In contrast, Gladden, Welch, Figueredo, and Jacobs (2009) proposed that individuals adopting a slower life-history strategy benefit from generating stable social environments by moralizing social interactions generally and that such a strategy should correlate positively with endorsement of all moral values (see Table 1, predictions 7a and 7b). Both approaches predict that slower life history correlates positively with the binding foundations, but the approaches generate competing predictions about how life history correlates with the individualizing foundations.

The goal of the current study was to assess support for the predictions summarized in Table 1. We therefore tested the predictive ability of multiple variables on the endorsement of moral foundations across states of the USA. This involved multilevel analyses including state-level predictors (i.e., pathogen prevalence, urbanization, teenage birth rate, and life expectancy) and individual-level predictors (i.e., education and childhood social class). Following Hackman and Hruschka (2013), we controlled for ethnicity by conducting separate analyses for non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks.

Section snippets

Method

Data on moral values were obtained from 86,296 adult visitors to the website YourMorals.org who completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ; Graham et al., 2011; see supplement S1, available on the journal's website at www.ehbonline.org). For all states, moderate sample sizes were available (individual state ns ranged from 106 to 11,995; mean n = 1726, SD = 2103). Average endorsement scores for the five moral foundations were computed for all states (range of mean scores: Harm 3.35–3.63,

Results

Across the fifty states of the USA, endorsement scores of non-Hispanic Whites for Fairness, Ingroup, Authority, and Purity correlated significantly with life expectancy and teenage birth rate (see Table 2). Consistent with previous analyses of ethnicity-stratified pathogen prevalence (Hackman & Hruschka, 2013), Whites’ C&G rates did not correlate significantly with endorsement of any foundation. Urbanization correlated negatively with Purity. Of the individual-level variables, both education

Discussion

In analyses of a large sample of non-Hispanic Whites across states of the USA, state-level teenage birth rates significantly predicted endorsement of the five moral foundations. However, the effects for the binding foundations were in the opposite direction than the predictions derived from a life-history perspective (see Table 1 for a summary of predictions and findings). Nevertheless, this finding suggests that life-history theory might play an important role in explaining variability in

Supplementary Materials

The following are the Supplementary data to this article.

Supplementary materials.

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