Words count: how moral psychology can help us understand one another
By Scott Koenig
In a time of hyperpartisanship when messages that resonate with red and blue voters alike seem like a fantasy, research in moral psychology shows that framing political appeals in terms of caring, harming, fairness, and cheating can appeal to voters across the left-right divide and help society break free of partisan gridlock.
The source of this insight, Moral Foundations Theory, states that everything that we consider a matter of right or wrong falls into one of five categories, or foundations: feeling compassion for the suffering and vulnerable (what scholars call care/harm), making sure people are getting what they deserve (fairness/cheating), keeping track of who is “us” and who is “them” (loyalty/betrayal), valuing order, tradition, and hierarchy (authority/subversion), and believing certain things are elevated and pure and shouldn’t be tarnished (sanctity/degradation).
The rub is that different people feel differently about the foundations. Studies show that liberals tend to prioritize care/harm and fairness/cheating, while conservatives tend to value all five foundations equally. But political appeals grounded in care/harm and fairness/cheating — known to researchers as the “universal foundations” — can attract both liberals and conservatives.
There’s a good deal of evidence that tailoring a political argument to the moral tastes of your audience makes it more persuasive, even for people on the other side of the aisle. Take gay marriage, for example. Couching this typically liberal position in the language of a conservative moral foundation, such as loyalty, can make conservatives more supportive of it: “We should legalize gay marriage because same-sex couples are no less proud and patriotic Americans.”
The reverse is true as well: Couching an argument for a typically conservative position (e.g., “We should make English the official language of the United States”) in the language of a typically liberal foundation, like fairness (e.g., “We should make English the official language of the United States because it will reduce language discrimination and level the playing field for immigrants”) can make it more appealing to liberals.
This means the “universal foundations” could be a sorely needed gateway to unifying political messaging. In fact, there’s evidence to suggest that subtly shifting moral language to be more universal can spark widespread public opinion change. In one study, researchers looked at several decades of survey data that tracked Americans’ opinions on a wide range of political issues. They found that the rate of public opinion change on a given issue was strongly associated with how well arguments for a position (such as “We should limit carbon emissions because people are suffering”) connected to the care/harm and fairness/cheating foundations relative to opposing arguments (such as “We shouldn’t limit carbon emissions because it would impede economic growth”).
In other words, if a political appeal has a stronger connection to the language of the two universal foundations than its counterargument, public opinion will change in its favor. The stronger the so-called “harm-fairness connection advantage”, the faster public opinion changes. In the case of gay marriage, for example, emphasizing the equal rights of gay couples has the harm-fairness connection advantage over a common counterargument: that gay marriage isn’t what god wants.
Of course, some positions are more logically framed in terms of care/harm and fairness/cheating than others. Not every position can be stretched to have universal appeal. This explains, according to the authors of the study, “why gay rights, gender equality and racial equality are gaining support faster than opinions in favor of abortion rights, affirmative action and suicide, for which harm-and-fairness considerations are much less clear-cut.” Still, for issues where the harm-and-fairness considerations are clear-cut, it’s worth crafting messages that appeal to the widest possible audience.
We may be seeing this play out already in the context of the pandemic. One study found that public health messages were more persuasive when they emphasized the potential harm to others, versus harm to oneself, of failing to take precautions like socially distancing and wearing a mask.
Whether a matter of life and death, like public health messaging during a pandemic, or just an argument with family at Thanksgiving, word choice is crucial. Choosing to ground political appeals in the universal moral foundations can make the difference between preaching to the choir and sparking a social movement.
Scott Koenig is a graduate student in neuroscience at the CUNY Graduate Center.
