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Depletion of Cognitive Resources May Not Affect Conservatives’ Endorsement of Binding Moral Foundations

Presentation Type

Poster Presentation (Electronic Copy Not Available)

Keywords

Party affiliation--Moral and ethical aspects;

Abstract

Moral Foundations Questionnaire research (MFQ; Graham, Nosek, Haidt, Iyer, Koleva, & Ditto, 2011) suggests that political liberals and conservatives have different moral foundations (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009), however, the MFQ has been criticized for its validity within various sub-groups (Davis, Dooley, Hook, Choe, & McElroy, 2017), possibly due to biased items (e.g., references to “God”). Modified items without these references were less related to political orientation (PO; Lewey, Zubrod, & Harton, 2018). In this study, we examined whether Lewey et al’s items would also be less affected by cognitive busyness. Online participants (N= 207) kept a mental count of their eye blinks during a filler questionnaire or during the entire study (randomly assigned; Ulkumen, Thomas, & Morwitz, 2008) to manipulate cognitive busyness. After the filler questionnaire, participants completed the MFQ (Graham et al, 2011), our modified MFQ items, and demographic questions. In the low cognitive busyness condition, all five original MFQ subscales were correlated with PO, whereas only authority from our modified subscales was. In the high cognitive busyness condition, loyalty, authority, and purity from the original MFQ correlated with PO, and fairness, authority, and purity from our modified subscales did. The original MFQ was more related to PO than the modified MFQ for most subscales. Our results provide further support for our revised scale as well as evidence of conservatives endorsing the binding moral foundations even under cognitive load, contradictory to previous research, suggesting that the default may not be liberal after all (cf., Greene et al., 2008).

Start Date

3-4-2019 11:00 AM

End Date

3-4-2019 1:00 PM

Faculty Advisor

Helen Harton

Department

Department of Psychology

File Format

application/pdf

Embargo Date

4-16-2019

Electronic copy is not available through UNI ScholarWorks.

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Apr 3rd, 11:00 AM Apr 3rd, 1:00 PM

Depletion of Cognitive Resources May Not Affect Conservatives’ Endorsement of Binding Moral Foundations

Moral Foundations Questionnaire research (MFQ; Graham, Nosek, Haidt, Iyer, Koleva, & Ditto, 2011) suggests that political liberals and conservatives have different moral foundations (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009), however, the MFQ has been criticized for its validity within various sub-groups (Davis, Dooley, Hook, Choe, & McElroy, 2017), possibly due to biased items (e.g., references to “God”). Modified items without these references were less related to political orientation (PO; Lewey, Zubrod, & Harton, 2018). In this study, we examined whether Lewey et al’s items would also be less affected by cognitive busyness. Online participants (N= 207) kept a mental count of their eye blinks during a filler questionnaire or during the entire study (randomly assigned; Ulkumen, Thomas, & Morwitz, 2008) to manipulate cognitive busyness. After the filler questionnaire, participants completed the MFQ (Graham et al, 2011), our modified MFQ items, and demographic questions. In the low cognitive busyness condition, all five original MFQ subscales were correlated with PO, whereas only authority from our modified subscales was. In the high cognitive busyness condition, loyalty, authority, and purity from the original MFQ correlated with PO, and fairness, authority, and purity from our modified subscales did. The original MFQ was more related to PO than the modified MFQ for most subscales. Our results provide further support for our revised scale as well as evidence of conservatives endorsing the binding moral foundations even under cognitive load, contradictory to previous research, suggesting that the default may not be liberal after all (cf., Greene et al., 2008).