Moral "foundations" as the product of motivated social cognition: Empathy and other psychological underpinnings of ideological divergence in "individualizing" and "binding" concerns.

According to moral foundations theory, there are five distinct sources of moral intuition on which political liberals and conservatives differ. The present research program seeks to contextualize this taxonomy within the broader research literature on political ideology as motivated social cognition, including the observation that conservative judgments often serve system-justifying functions. In two studies, a combination of regression and path modeling techniques were used to explore the motivational underpinnings of ideological differences in moral intuitions. Consistent with our integrative model, the "binding" foundations (in-group loyalty, respect for authority, and purity) were associated with epistemic and existential needs to reduce uncertainty and threat and system justification tendencies, whereas the so-called "individualizing" foundations (fairness and avoidance of harm) were generally unrelated to epistemic and existential motives and were instead linked to empathic motivation. Taken as a whole, these results are consistent with the position taken by Hatemi, Crabtree, and Smith that moral "foundations" are themselves the product of motivated social cognition.

In Defense of Tradition: Religiosity, Conservatism, and Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage in North America.

Arguments opposing same-sex marriage are often made on religious grounds. In five studies conducted in the United States and Canada (combined N = 1,673), we observed that religious opposition to same-sex marriage was explained, at least in part, by conservative ideology and linked to sexual prejudice. In Studies 1 and 2, we discovered that the relationship between religiosity and opposition to same-sex marriage was mediated by explicit sexual prejudice. In Study 3, we saw that the mediating effect of sexual prejudice was linked to political conservatism. Finally, in Studies 4a and 4b we examined the ideological underpinnings of religious opposition to same-sex marriage in more detail by taking into account two distinct aspects of conservative ideology. Results revealed that resistance to change was more important than opposition to equality in explaining religious opposition to same-sex marriage.

Payoff Information Biases a Fast Guess Process in Perceptual Decision Making under Deadline Pressure: Evidence from Behavior, Evoked Potentials, and Quantitative Model Comparison.

We used electroencephalography (EEG) and behavior to examine the role of payoff bias in a difficult two-alternative perceptual decision under deadline pressure in humans. The findings suggest that a fast guess process, biased by payoff and triggered by stimulus onset, occurred on a subset of trials and raced with an evidence accumulation process informed by stimulus information. On each trial, the participant judged whether a rectangle was shifted to the right or left and responded by squeezing a right- or left-hand dynamometer. The payoff for each alternative (which could be biased or unbiased) was signaled 1.5 s before stimulus onset. The choice response was assigned to the first hand reaching a squeeze force criterion and reaction time was defined as time to criterion. Consistent with a fast guess account, fast responses were strongly biased toward the higher-paying alternative and the EEG exhibited an abrupt rise in the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) on a subset of biased payoff trials contralateral to the higher-paying alternative ∼ 150 ms after stimulus onset and 50 ms before stimulus information influenced the LRP. This rise was associated with poststimulus dynamometer activity favoring the higher-paying alternative and predicted choice and response time. Quantitative modeling supported the fast guess account over accounts of payoff effects supported in other studies. Our findings, taken with previous studies, support the idea that payoff and prior probability manipulations produce flexible adaptations to task structure and do not reflect a fixed policy for the integration of payoff and stimulus information. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Humans and other animals often face situations in which they must make choices based on uncertain sensory information together with information about expected outcomes (gains or losses) about each choice. We investigated how differences in payoffs between available alternatives affect neural activity, overt choice, and the timing of choice responses. In our experiment, in which participants were under strong time pressure, neural and behavioral findings together with model fitting suggested that our human participants often made a fast guess toward the higher reward rather than integrating stimulus and payoff information. Our findings, taken with findings from other studies, support the idea that payoff and prior probability manipulations produce flexible adaptations to task structure and do not reflect a fixed policy.

The "chicken-and-egg" problem in political neuroscience.

A comprehensive review by Hibbing et al. establishes close links between physiological and psychological responses and ideological preferences. However, existing research cannot resolve the "chicken-and-egg problem" in political neuroscience: Which is cause and which is effect? We consider the possibility, which they reject, that general ideological postures, if consistently adopted, could shape psychological and physiological functioning.