Generational Change? The Effects of Family, Age, and Time on Moral Foundations

Abstract

One way to uncover the persistent role of religion across generations is to look past traditional understandings of religious belief and denominational belonging and examine the presence of bedrock principles that could influence political beliefs in families. The Moral Foundations framework was developed for this purpose – to describe human behavior and attitudes in the moral realm without relying upon country, culture, or time specific labels. In an original and rare three-generation dataset, college students, their parents, and their grandparents were asked about political attitudes and preferences for the Moral Foundations of Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. The Foundations are not equally shared across generations as preferences for each Foundation increase with the age of the cohorts in this sample, with especially large differences on Authority and Purity. A follow-up survey reveals that Moral Foundations may not be stable across even short periods of time. These findings suggest that the political appeals that may work on older Americans may be less effective on the younger generations. If individuals indeed make moral decisions based on these types of bedrock principles, understanding which of these principles or Foundations drive particular age groups can help us better understand shifts in public opinion.

Religious Fundamentalism and Quest as Predictors of Moral Foundations Among Iranian Muslims

“…Finally, the results also provide further evidence of a role for demographic variables in the endorsement of moral foundations. Age predicted the five moral foundations, consistent with findings from past research done by Friesen (2019) that showed the concerns with each foundation increases with age. Also, partially consistent with previous studies (Graham et al 2011), female gender was a predictor of the foundation of care, and it had a certain trend toward significance for predicting Fairness.…”

Moral foundations underlying behavioral compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…However, there may be deeper underlying concerns relating to moral foundations at play. Indeed, there is early evidence that age predicts which moral foundations are stressed—with loyalty and sanctity more relevant for older than younger age groups ( Friesen, 2019 ; Sağel, 2015 ). However, it might also be that younger (or older) adults may associate different moral foundations with different behaviors that “flatten the curve.”…”

Moral Salience in Film Reviews Associated With Film Success

“…Similarly, words conveying general morality and purity in Google Books decline from 1900 to 1980 and then rebound sharply. This fact echoes Americans' weakening endorsement of moral foundations over generations, particularly in relation to the binding foundations (i.e., concern about preserving the group as a whole including the foundations of loyalty, authority, and purity; Cochrane & Nevitte, 2006;Friesen, 2019). A recent Gallup poll also indicates a record-high number of Americans rating the US's moral values as poor in the past 20 years and widespread belief in moral deterioration (Brenan & Willcoxon, 2022).…”

“…Consistent with Lewis et al (2017), we controlled for three genres: drama, action, and comedy, based on IMDb's classification system. The year of release has also been controlled for in order to compensate for inflation in previous research (Lewis et al, 2017;Oliver et al, 2014) and to account for the potential effects of covariation between moral salience in reviews and release years on film evaluation given the shifting moral values over time (Friesen, 2019). Also it makes you see and love the human being as a whole, with its cracks and flaws, its weaknesses and its greatness.…”