Moral-Language Use by U.S. Political Elites.

We used a distributed-language model to examine the moral language employed by U.S. political elites. In Study 1, we analyzed 687,360 Twitter messages (tweets) posted by accounts belonging to Democratic and Republican members of Congress from 2016 to 2018. In Study 2, we analyzed 2,630,688 speeches given on the floor of the House and Senate from 1981 to 2017. We found that partisan differences in moral-language use shifted over time as the parties gained or lost political power. Overall, lower political power was associated with greater use of moral language for both Democrats and Republicans. On Twitter, Democrats used more moral language in the period after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. In Congressional transcripts, both Democrats and Republicans used more of most kinds of moral language when they were in the minority.

Recency negativity: Newer food crops are evaluated less favorably.

Food crops produced by new technologies such as genetic engineering are widely opposed (Gaskell, Bauer, Durant, & Allum, 1999; Scott, Inbar, Wirz, Brossard, & Rozin, 2018). Here, we examine one reason for this opposition: recency. More recently-developed crops are evaluated less favorably, whether they are produced by artificial selection (i.e., conventional breeding), natural or man-made irradiation, or genetic engineering. Negative effects of recency persist in a within-subjects design where people are able to explicitly compare crops developed at different times, and an internal meta-analysis shows that the negative effect of recency is robust across measures and stimuli. These results have implications for the evaluation of crops produced using new modification techniques, including the widespread opposition to genetic engineering.

An Overview of Attitudes Toward Genetically Engineered Food.

Genetically engineered food has had its DNA, RNA, or proteins manipulated by intentional human intervention. We provide an overview of the importance and regulation of genetically engineered food and lay attitudes toward it. We first discuss the pronaturalness context in the United States and Europe that preceded the appearance of genetically engineered food. We then review the definition, prevalence, and regulation of this type of food. Genetically engineered food is widespread in some countries, but there is great controversy worldwide among individuals, governments, and other institutions about the advisability of growing and consuming it. In general, life scientists have a much more positive view of genetically engineered food than laypeople. We examine the bases of lay opposition to genetically engineered food and the evidence for how attitudes change. Laypeople tend to see genetically engineered food as dangerous and offering few benefits. We suggest that much of the lay opposition is morally based. One possibility is that, in some contexts, people view nature and naturalness as sacred and genetically engineered food as a violation of naturalness. We also suggest that for many people these perceptions of naturalness and attitudes toward genetically engineered food follow the sympathetic magical law of contagion, in which even minimal contact between a natural food and an unnatural entity, either a scientist or a piece of foreign DNA, pollutes or contaminates the natural entity and renders it unacceptable or even immoral to consume.

Parasite stress and pathogen avoidance relate to distinct dimensions of political ideology across 30 nations.

People who are more avoidant of pathogens are more politically conservative, as are nations with greater parasite stress. In the current research, we test two prominent hypotheses that have been proposed as explanations for these relationships. The first, which is an intragroup account, holds that these relationships between pathogens and politics are based on motivations to adhere to local norms, which are sometimes shaped by cultural evolution to have pathogen-neutralizing properties. The second, which is an intergroup account, holds that these same relationships are based on motivations to avoid contact with outgroups, who might pose greater infectious disease threats than ingroup members. Results from a study surveying 11,501 participants across 30 nations are more consistent with the intragroup account than with the intergroup account. National parasite stress relates to traditionalism (an aspect of conservatism especially related to adherence to group norms) but not to social dominance orientation (SDO; an aspect of conservatism especially related to endorsements of intergroup barriers and negativity toward ethnic and racial outgroups). Further, individual differences in pathogen-avoidance motives (i.e., disgust sensitivity) relate more strongly to traditionalism than to SDO within the 30 nations.

Increasing ideological tolerance in social psychology.

We argue that recognizing current ideological diversity in social psychology and promoting tolerance of minority views is just as important as increasing the number of non-liberal researchers. Increasing tolerance will allow individuals in the minority to express dissenting views, which will improve psychological science by reducing bias. We present four recommendations for increasing tolerance.

Disgust, politics, and responses to threat.

We address two questions regarding the relationship between political ideology and responses to threatening or aversive stimuli. The first concerns the reason for the connection between disgust and specific political and moral attitudes; the second concerns the observation that some responses to threat (i.e., neuroticism/anxiety) are associated with a more left-wing political orientation.

Anticipated affect predicts moral praise and character judgments.

In four preregistered studies (total N = 5,067), we investigated whether people use their own anticipated affective responses to a situation to make judgments about the praiseworthiness of helping and the moral character of helpers. We found that helpers in more affectively arousing scenarios were seen as more morally motivated, received greater praise, and were seen as having more positive moral character, even when controlling for the perceived benefits of helping. Describing helpers as unemotional reduced the effect of observers' anticipated affect on character judgments. These results suggest that when making praise and character judgments, people not only consider the consequences of a helper's actions but also the emotions they experience when engaging in them-and that they use their own anticipated emotional experience to do this. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Mitigating consequence insensitivity for genetically engineered crops.

Many opponents of genetically engineered (GE) food say that it ought to be prohibited regardless of the risks and benefits (Scott et al., 2016). If many people are truly unwilling to consider risks and benefits in evaluating GE technology, this poses serious problems for scientists and policymakers. In a large demographically-representative German sample (N = 3,025), we investigate consequence-insensitive beliefs about GE crops among GE supporters and opponents, as well as whether these beliefs can be mitigated. We find that a large majority of opponents and a substantial minority of supporters are consequence-insensitive: They say that risks and benefits are irrelevant to their views. At the same time, the responses of consequence-insensitive participants to subsequent belief probes show substantial flexibility. Participants often gave responses inconsistent with the unconditional prohibition or permission of GE crops. These results suggest that professed consequence insensitivity should be taken as an expression of a strong moral belief rather than as literal endorsement of policy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Is it good to feel bad about littering? Conflict between moral beliefs and behaviors for everyday transgressions.

People sometimes do things that they think are morally wrong. We investigate how actors' perceptions of the morality of their own behaviors affects observer evaluations. In Study 1 (n = 302), we presented participants with six different descriptions of actors who routinely engaged in a morally questionable behavior and varied whether the actors thought the behavior was morally wrong. Actors who believed their behavior was wrong were seen as having better moral character, but their behavior was rated as more wrong. In Study 2 (n = 391) we investigated whether perceptions of actor metadesires were responsible for the effects of actor beliefs on character judgments. We used the same stimuli and measures as in Study 1 but added a measure of the actor's perceived desires to engage in the behaviors. As predicted, the effect of actors' moral beliefs on judgments of their moral character was mediated by perceived metadesires. In Study 3 (n = 1092) we replicated these findings in a between-participants design and further found that the effect of actor beliefs on act and character judgments was moderated by participant beliefs about the general acceptability of the behavior.

Arbitrary fairness in reward and punishments.

People have a strong preference for fairness. For many, fairness means equal reward and punishments for equal efforts and offences. However, this belief does not specify the units in which equality should be expressed. We show that people generally fail to take the interchangeability of units into account when judging and assigning fair punishments and reward. Therefore, judgments about and distributions of resources are strongly influenced by arbitrary decisions about which unit to express them in. For example, if points represent different monetary values for different recipients, people attempt to distribute money equally if money is salient but attempt to distribute points equally if points are salient. Because beliefs about fairness are a fundamental principle in many domains, the implications of these findings are broad. Essentially any distribution of outcomes can be made to appear more or less fair by changing the units these outcomes are expressed in. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Worse is bad: Divergent inferences from logically equivalent comparisons.

Comparisons can often be framed in different but equivalent ways. For example, "A is better than B," can also be expressed as "B is worse than A." In 7 studies (and 4 further studies in the Supplemental Materials available in the OSF) we find that logically equivalent comparison frames have divergent effects on judgments and choices for the items being compared as well as other members of the set from which those items were drawn. These effects are asymmetric, affecting inferior items more strongly than superior ones. We propose a "comparison framing" account that draws on theory in linguistics on the markedness of adjectives (Cruse, 1976; Lehrer, 1985) to explain these results. We show that this account fits the data better than 2 previous accounts of attribute framing: automatic valenced associations (Levin et al., 1998) and leakage of information (McKenzie & Nelson, 2003). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Re-examining the spread of moralized rhetoric from political elites: Effects of valence and ideology.

We examine the robustness of previous research finding increased diffusion of Twitter messages ("tweets") containing moral rhetoric. We use a distributed language model to examine the moral language used by U.S. political elites in two corpora of tweets: one from 2016 presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and one from U.S. Members of Congress. Consistent with previous research, we find greater diffusion for tweets containing moral rhetoric, but this is qualified by moral language valence and elite ideology. For both presidential candidates and Members of Congress, negative moral language is associated with increased message diffusion. Positive moral language is not associated with diffusion for presidential candidates and is negatively associated with diffusion for Members of Congress. In both data sets, the relationship between negative moral language and message diffusion is stronger for liberals than conservatives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A matter of taste: Gustatory sensitivity predicts political ideology.

Previous research has shown that political attitudes are highly heritable, but the proximal physiological mechanisms that shape ideology remain largely unknown. Based on work suggesting possible ideological differences in genes related to low-level sensory processing, we predicted that taste (i.e., gustatory) sensitivity would be associated with political ideology. In 4 studies (combined N = 1,639) we test this hypothesis and find robust support for this association. In Studies 1-3, we find that sensitivity to the chemicals PROP and PTC-2 well established measures of taste sensitivity-are associated with greater political conservatism. In Study 4, we find that fungiform papilla density, a proxy for taste bud density, also predicts greater conservatism, and that this association is partially statistically mediated by disgust sensitivity. This work suggests that low-level physiological differences in sensory processing may shape an individual's political attitudes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Subjective status and perceived legitimacy across countries.

The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subjective status and perceived legitimacy was never negative at any levels of eight moderator variables, although the positive association was sometimes reduced. Although not always consistent with hypotheses, group identification, self-esteem, and beliefs in social mobility were all associated with perceived legitimacy among people who have low subjective status. These findings enrich our understanding of the relationship between social status and legitimacy.

Disgust sensitivity predicts intuitive disapproval of gays.

Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust ("disgust sensitivity") is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay men to kiss in public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly-even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed unfavorable automatic associations with gay people as opposed to heterosexuals. Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust ("disgust sensitivity") is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay men to kiss in public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly-even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed unfavorable automatic associations with gay people as opposed to heterosexuals.

Understanding the process of moralization: How eating meat becomes a moral issue.

A large literature demonstrates that moral convictions guide many of our thoughts, behaviors, and social interactions. Yet, we know little about how these moral convictions come to exist. In the present research we explore moralization-the process by which something that was morally neutral takes on moral properties-examining what factors facilitate and deter it. In 3 longitudinal studies participants were presented with morally evocative stimuli about why eating meat should be viewed as a moral issue. Study 1 tracked students over a semester as they took a university course that highlighted the suffering animals endure because of human meat consumption. In Studies 2 and 3 participants took part in a mini-course we developed which presented evocative videos aimed at inducing moralization. In all 3 studies, we assessed participants' beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and cognitions at multiple time points to track moral changes and potential factors responsible for such changes. A variety of factors, both cognitive and affective, predicted participants' moralization or lack thereof. Model testing further pointed to two primary conduits of moralization: the experience of moral emotions (e.g., disgust, guilt) felt when contemplating the issue, and moral piggybacking (connecting the issue at hand with one's existing fundamental moral principles). Moreover, we found individual differences, such as how much one holds their morality as central to their identity, also predicted the moralization process. We discuss the broad theoretical and applied implications of our results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know the least but think they know the most.

There is widespread agreement among scientists that genetically modified foods are safe to consume1,2 and have the potential to provide substantial benefits to humankind3. However, many people still harbour concerns about them or oppose their use4,5. In a nationally representative sample of US adults, we find that as extremity of opposition to and concern about genetically modified foods increases, objective knowledge about science and genetics decreases, but perceived understanding of genetically modified foods increases. Extreme opponents know the least, but think they know the most. Moreover, the relationship between self-assessed and objective knowledge shifts from positive to negative at high levels of opposition. Similar results were obtained in a parallel study with representative samples from the United States, France and Germany, and in a study testing attitudes about a medical application of genetic engineering technology (gene therapy). This pattern did not emerge, however, for attitudes and beliefs about climate change.

Datasets from a research project examining the role of politics in social psychological research.

We present four datasets from a project examining the role of politics in social psychological research. These include thousands of independent raters who coded scientific abstracts for political relevance and for whether conservatives or liberals were treated as targets of explanation and characterized in a negative light. Further included are predictions about the empirical results by scientists participating in a forecasting survey, and coded publication outcomes for unpublished research projects varying in political overtones. Future researchers can leverage this corpus to test further hypotheses regarding political values and scientific research, perceptions of political bias, publication histories, and forecasting accuracy.

Social and economic ideologies differentially predict prejudice across the political spectrum, but social issues are most divisive.

Liberals and conservatives both express prejudice toward ideologically dissimilar others (Brandt et al., 2014). Previous work on ideological prejudice did not take advantage of evidence showing that ideology is multidimensional, with social and economic ideologies representing related but separable belief systems. In 5 studies (total N = 4912), we test 3 competing hypotheses of a multidimensional account of ideological prejudice. The dimension-specific symmetry hypothesis predicts that social and economic ideologies differentially predict prejudice against targets who are perceived to vary on the social and economic political dimensions, respectively. The social primacy hypothesis predicts that such ideological worldview conflict is experienced more strongly along the social than economic dimension. The social-specific asymmetry hypothesis predicts that social conservatives will be more prejudiced than social liberals, with no specific hypotheses for the economic dimension. Using multiple target groups, multiple prejudice measures (e.g., global evaluations, behavior), and multiple social and economic ideology measures (self-placement, issue positions), we found relatively consistent support for the dimension-specific symmetry and social primacy hypotheses, and no support for the social-specific asymmetry hypothesis. These results suggest that worldview conflict and negative intergroup attitudes and behaviors are dimension-specific, but that the social dimension appears to inspire more political conflict than the economic dimension. (PsycINFO Database Record