What do you know about their moral values? How are they different from yours?
4 September 2023
Moral values are our set of principles of good and evil, which govern our individual behavior and choices. Social psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky suggest that people rely on quick, intuitive thinking as a mental shortcut to navigate the social world. Information cues are given from messages and messengers that people use to quickly assess how they should feel about a particular issue.
An individual’s moral values may be derived from society and government, political party, religion or self philosophy. Moral values help us distinguish between what’s right and wrong, good or bad for you as well as society.
Our moral values are not absolutes. And while we’d like to think we have a global and definitive definition of what is right and wrong, we commonly see things with the same underlying set of facts in very different ways or with different priorities. In conversations surrounding marriage rights, abortion and even child labour, rational people in the same room can come to very different conclusions on those issues depending on their moral values. When we’re telling our stories we need to interrogate whether we are communicating from our moral values and forcing them on others, or are we finding opportunity where our moral values align or even customizing the stories to be framed wholly through our actors’ moral values.
Research on moral values and decision-making suggests that people support issues that resonate with their existing values (positive affect) as compared to those that threaten or challenge these values (negative affect). Researchers have identified five moral values that inform this sort of processing. People who are more conservative tend to value respect for authority, in-group loyalty, and preserving the sacred or pure, while people who are more liberal tend to value fairness and protection from harm. Below is a breakdown of the different motivations for each value based on the work of Haidt, Graham and Nosek (2009):
Protection from harm: Emphasis on protecting someone from harm, suffering, emotional distress, violence. Care for the weak and vulnerable.
Fairness: Emphasis on equality and justice, i.e., people treated differently than others or someone denied his or her rights.
In-group loyalty: Emphasis on loyalty or betrayal to his or her group. Emphasis on protecting the group, even above their own interests.
Respect for authority: Emphasis on respect for tradition and hierarchy and responsibility to fulfill duties of his or her role within society.
Purity/sanctity: Identifying something as unnatural or disgusting, or violating standards of purity and decency. Emphasis on acting in a virtuous way.
An individual’s moral values may be derived from society and government, political party, religion or self philosophy. Moral values help us distinguish between what’s right and wrong, good or bad for you as well as society.
Our moral values are not absolutes. And while we’d like to think we have a global and definitive definition of what is right and wrong, we commonly see things with the same underlying set of facts in very different ways or with different priorities. In conversations surrounding marriage rights, abortion and even child labour, rational people in the same room can come to very different conclusions on those issues depending on their moral values. When we’re telling our stories we need to interrogate whether we are communicating from our moral values and forcing them on others, or are we finding opportunity where our moral values align or even customizing the stories to be framed wholly through our actors’ moral values.
Research on moral values and decision-making suggests that people support issues that resonate with their existing values (positive affect) as compared to those that threaten or challenge these values (negative affect). Researchers have identified five moral values that inform this sort of processing. People who are more conservative tend to value respect for authority, in-group loyalty, and preserving the sacred or pure, while people who are more liberal tend to value fairness and protection from harm. Below is a breakdown of the different motivations for each value based on the work of Haidt, Graham and Nosek (2009):
Protection from harm: Emphasis on protecting someone from harm, suffering, emotional distress, violence. Care for the weak and vulnerable.
Fairness: Emphasis on equality and justice, i.e., people treated differently than others or someone denied his or her rights.
In-group loyalty: Emphasis on loyalty or betrayal to his or her group. Emphasis on protecting the group, even above their own interests.
Respect for authority: Emphasis on respect for tradition and hierarchy and responsibility to fulfill duties of his or her role within society.
Purity/sanctity: Identifying something as unnatural or disgusting, or violating standards of purity and decency. Emphasis on acting in a virtuous way.
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