Expanding the scope and content of morality policy research: lessons from Moral Foundations Theory

Abstract

Scholars have not precisely defined morality policy, and Smith (Policy Stud J 30(3):379–395, 2002) urged an empirical taxonomy be used to identify those policies. We argue that Moral Foundations Theory offers a methodology for empirically identifying issues with moral content. We inventory 15 issues in parliamentary studies of “conscience” voting, 14 morality policies in western democracies compiled by Studlar (in: Mooney (ed) The public clash of private values: the politics of morality policy, Chatham House Publishers, New York, 2001), and then survey MFT empirical studies to identify 22 issues with moral content. Based on this universe of 37 issues, three journals are content analyzed to determine the coverage given them and to outline productive lines for future research.

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REVIEW ARTICLE
Expanding thescope andcontent ofmorality policy research:
lessons fromMoral Foundations Theory
RaymondTatalovich1 · DaneG.Wendell2
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract
Scholars have not precisely defined morality policy, and Smith (Policy Stud J 30(3):379–
395, 2002) urged an empirical taxonomy be used to identify those policies. We argue that
Moral Foundations Theory offers a methodology for empirically identifying issues with
moral content. We inventory 15 issues in parliamentary studies of “conscience” voting, 14
morality policies in western democracies compiled by Studlar (in: Mooney (ed) The public
clash of private values: the politics of morality policy, Chatham House Publishers, New
York, 2001), and then survey MFT empirical studies to identify 22 issues with moral con-
tent. Based on this universe of 37 issues, three journals are content analyzed to determine
the coverage given them and to outline productive lines for future research.
Keywords Morality policy· Comparative· Moral Foundations Theory· Content analysis
This essay reviews the beginnings of what we now call morality policy, argues that Moral
Foundations Theory (MFT) offers a methodology for identifying the moral content of
issues, and outlines some promising avenues for future research. The parameters of moral-
ity policy have yet to be defined with any degree of precision. To us, the state of play
recalls US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart when he struggled to articulate the line
between art and pornography. He declared: “But I know it when I see it.” For morality pol-
icy scholars, the relevant moral issues also seem obvious enough, and yet our difficulty in
defining their content has kept the full scope of our research agenda fuzzy. This point was
forcefully made by Smith (2002; p 379) who argues that the “central difficulty for typolo-
gies is establishing some means to objectively assign policies into conceptually distinct
categories.” He urges that we consider taxonomies that employ empirical criteria to iden-
tify types of policy, especially morality policy. Smith (2002; p 382) recalls that “classifying
constructs such as ideology or culture and connecting them to policy issues and patterns of
political behavior are generally where taxonomic methodologies are used,” which begs the
* Raymond Tatalovich
rtatalo@luc.edu
Dane G. Wendell
dane.wendell@ic.edu
1 Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, USA
2 Illinois College, Jacksonville, IL, USA

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question: “Why not do the same with individual perceptions of policy and use this data as
the raw material of a taxonomy?” The morality policy classification problem is our label
for this evergreen issue: what makes a policy a morality policy?
Here, we meet Smith’s challenge with two related contributions. First, we recom-
mend that morality policy scholars should borrow from Moral Foundations Theory
[MFT] to help develop an empirically based taxonomy for validating the moral con-
tent of issues. Second, through a literature review, we demonstrate that morality policy
researchers have generated insights about deep moral beliefs for decades, an idea fully
compatible with Moral Foundations Theory, and yet our field thus far has underutilized
those insights. We posit that Moral Foundations Theory fits well theoretically with the
assumptions and practices of morality policy researchers, both past and present.
These definitional problems also vexed Advocacy Coalition Framework [ACF] until
recently. ACF is a leading paradigm for policy analysis, and “deep core beliefs” are the
key component that shapes attitudes of each advocacy coalition about public policies
(Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993). In order to provide a “standardized metric for meas-
uring deep core beliefs,” ACF scholars have recently borrowed from Culture Theory
(Ripberger etal. 2014; p 509). Culture Theory [CT] contributes to Advocacy Frame-
work Theory by employing techniques that are “multidimensional, generalizable, and
measurable” (Ripberger etal. 2014; p 509), and those three advantages also pertain to
Moral Foundations Theory. MFT is based on five different foundations of moral intui-
tions, was derived from and has application to different cultural systems of morality
(Graham etal. 2013; pp 92–94), and can be employed in case studies, opinion surveys,
and content analysis. In order to apply Culture Theory to specific policy issues, ana-
lysts have used “12 indicators to measure individual orientations toward each of the
worldviews posited by CT” (Ripberger etal. 2014; p 519). In like fashion, keywords
in the Moral Foundations Dictionary can be used to content analyze any public docu-
ment, including political debates, in order to assess the degree to which a particular
issue qualifies as morality policy (Graham etal. 2013; p 74). Then, analysis can turn to
studying the morality policy process, its policy outputs, and outcomes.
Moral Foundations Theory is based on five psychological foundations: Care/Harm,
Fairness/Reciprocity, In-group/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity (Haidt
and Joseph 2004; Haidt and Graham 2007). A Moral Foundations Questionnaire [MFQ]
was developed to measure the moral relevance of these dimensions and the moral judg-
ments involved when respondents are faced with real-world situations (Graham etal.
2011). The first two pairs comprise individualizing foundations and are more empha-
sized by liberals. They are measured on the MFQ with these following questions. For
Care/Harm: “Compassion for those who are suffering is the most crucial virtue” or
“One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal” or “It can never
be right to kill a human being.” For Fairness/Reciprocity: “When the government makes
laws, the number one principle should be ensuring that everyone is treated fairly” or
“Justice is the most important requirement for a society” or “I think it’s morally wrong
that rich children inherit a lot of money while poor children inherit nothing.” In con-
trast, conservatives are influenced by all five foundations more evenly, although more
so by the remaining three pairs which comprise the binding foundations of MFT (Haidt
and Graham 2007). The Purity/Sanctity foundation seems uniquely important for con-
servatives (see Koleva etal. 2012) and is measured with these MFQ questions: “People
should not do things that are disgusting, even if no one is harmed” or “I would call some
acts wrong on the grounds that they are unnatural” or “Chastity is an important and
valuable virtue.”

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To content analyze textual materials for their moral content, Graham and his associates
developed a Moral Foundations Dictionary (or MFD, at MoralFoundations.org; also see Gra-
ham etal. 2009; pp 1045–1046) of keywords that designate the positive (virtue) or negative
(vice) expressions within each of the five foundations. Table1 gives the number of keywords
for each foundation, illustrations of keywords for each type, and examples of morality policies
where those keywords seem most applicable.
Table 1 MFT, Moral Foundations Dictionary [MFD] and selected morality policies
a Moral rhetoric to support this policy; bmoral rhetoric to oppose this policy
MFT foundation Illustrative MFD Keywords Illustrative
Virtue (words) Vice (words) Morality policies
Care/Harm (16) (35)
Peace War Animal rightsa
Compassion Fight Capital punishmentb
Defend Kill Environmenta
Shelter Cruel Gun controla
Sympathy Exploit Stem-cell researcha
Fairness/Reciprocity (26) (18)
Equal Bias Same-sex marriagea
Justice Bigot Affirmative actiona
Rights Dishonest Women’s rightsa
Tolerant Prejudiced Disability rightsa
Impartial Favoritism Ethnic/racial minoritya
In-group/Loyalty (28) (22)
Nation Foreign Iraq Wara
Homeland Enemy Defense spendinga
Family Imposter Official English lawsa
Patriot Traitor Terrorismb
Member Renegade Immigrationb
Authority/respect (43) (27)
Obey Rebel Voter ID lawsa
Duty Illegal US flag burningb
Law Insurgent Divorceb
Control Unfaithful Punish war criminalsa
Tradition Protest Torturea
Purity/Sanctity (27) (34)
Pious Disgust Prostitutionb
Sacred Sin Pornographyb
Holy Debase Homosexualityb
Wholesome Sick Abortionb
Church Lewd Euthanasiab

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Morality policy research
The term “morality policy” was coined by Meier (1994) in a volume entitled The Poli-
tics of Sin. Meier differentiated between one-sided and two-sided morality policies.
One-sided morality policy is the “politics of sin” because “[e]veryone is opposed to sin”
(Meier 1994; p 247) such that no opposition challenges the dominant view that sinful
behavior, like illicit drug use or murder, should be deterred and punished. Two-sided
morality policies like abortion or gay rights Meier called the “redistribution of values”
because there are two legitimate points of view. That iteration Meier borrowed from
Lowi’s (1964) policy paradigm, which included “redistribution” though Lowi meant the
reallocation of economic resources from wealthier to poorer segments of society. The
core definition of morality policy for Meier involves values, sometimes consensual and
often contentious, though he offered no parameters about the scope of moral conflict.
Morality policy does not require that the political antagonists on both sides employ
moral claims in their policy arguments (Haider-Markel and Meier 1996; p 333). As
Mooney (2001; p 4) explains: “A policy is classified as a morality policy based on the
perceptions of the actors involved and the terms of the debate among them.” Moreover,
“If at least one advocacy coalition involved in the debate defines the issue as threat-
ening one of its core values, its first principles, then we have a morality policy.” And
just as only one side needs to use moral arguments for an issue to be morality policy,
having policies with an economic or instrumental dimension does not preclude them
from also being classified as morality policies. Mooney (2001; p 8) further elaborates:
“All morality policies have certain technical and instrumental questions associated with
them, but the distinction is that nontechnical, controversial moral questions are far more
prominent and primary in the debate over them than they are in the debate over nonmo-
rality policy.” On this point, Knill (2013) would go further and draw a sharp distinction
between “manifest” and “latent” morality policies. The former are based primarily on
values, whereas the latter involve economic concerns as illustrated, he says, by gam-
bling, gun control, and drug regulation.
Moral Foundations Theory can help distinguish between one-sided and two-sided
morality policies by showing which specific moral foundations are connected to each
side of whatever morality policy is being debated. MFT can also identify those cases of
morality policy where one side perceives a policy to be moral, while the other does not.
In addition, MFT also travels well through time and space. Morality polices change over
time as when drinking alcoholic beverages was sinful behavior and codified in Prohibition
(Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution), but later became a two-sided morality
policy when the retailing of beer, wine, and spirits was regulated by subnational govern-
ments in both the USA and Canada (Schwartz and Tatalovich 2018; pp 32–53). This tem-
poral shift could be validated by content analysis of legislative debates at both periods in
both countries. Other contemporary issues had stronger moral content at earlier histori-
cal periods, like smoking (Studlar 2008) or birth control; others like the environment have
gained moral content in recent decades (Feinberg and Willer 2013); and still other issues
like flag burning as political protest excite moral outrage in the USA though not elsewhere
(likely arguably in Germany). McLean (2018) found profound cultural differences in how
the gun enthusiasts “frame” the gun control issue in the USA compared to Canada, but
content analysis of political debate using MFT could further verify that moral claims about
gun ownership are more prevalent in US rhetoric than in Canada. In sum, MFT is a more
sophisticated taxonomy for studying morality politics than any simple typology.

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The operational template that guides most empirical analysis of morality policy was
supplied by Mooney (2001). His inclusion of abortion, capital punishment, gambling,
gay rights, pornography, physician-assisted suicide, and sex education was premised
on three criteria. Like Meier, first and foremost these issues involve debates over “first
principles” that are “no less than legal sanctions of right and wrong, validations of par-
ticular sets of fundamental values” (Mooney 2001; p 3). Second, morality policy “can
be highly salient to the general public” because they “are clear and simple statements
about a polity’s values, not arcane policy instruments.” And third, morality policy “has
a higher than normal level of citizen participation” because “little technical informa-
tion” is needed for people to engage the political process (Mooney 2001; pp 7–8).
To test those attributes, Mooney and Schuldt (2008) asked students to evaluate eight
issues in terms of their moral content, resistance to compromise, salience, and techni-
cal simplicity. Salience proved unreliable, but same-sex marriage and abortion were
judged to be the purest morality policies, followed by capital punishment and casino
gambling which were considered more moralistic than homeland security, national
health insurance, or limits on campaign contributions. Earlier Smith (2002) also used
a student survey to classify 11 policies according to whether they exhibited attributes
of morality policy. Abortion, same-sex marriage, and prostitution ranked highest in his
cluster of morality policy attributes. But again, while survey results bring us closer to
knowing a morality policy when we see it, they do not offer boundary lines that demar-
cate the scope and content of this research agenda.
Arguably the most exhaustive inventory of morality policies across 22 North Amer-
ican and Western European countries was published by Studlar (2001; p 46). He listed
14 issues (see Table2), and only three (alcohol, divorce, and women’s rights) were
not included in any of the MFT studies. Most likely the Purity/Sanctity foundation
galvanizes opposition to alcoholic beverages, and perhaps also divorce (see below),
whereas resistance to women’s rights (like the opposition to women in combat dur-
ing the debate over the Equal Rights Amendment) is grounded in the authority/respect
foundation. Studlar did not offer his own definition of morality policy but instead ref-
erenced Mooney and Lee (1995) to conclude: “its debate is framed in terms of funda-
mental rights and values, often stemming from religious imperatives, by competing
promotional groups whose members have little or no direct economic interest in the
outcome.” In recent years, some of the most innovative work on morality policy has
been published by European scholars (Knill etal. 2015; Hurka et al. 2017), though
they have narrowed the scope of morality policy from what Studlar (2001) originally
had in mind.
Engeli etal. (2012; p 26) would limit morality policies “to fundamental decisions
about death, marriage and reproduction” and thus restricted their case studies to abor-
tion, assisted reproductive technologies (ART), embryo and stem-cell research, eutha-
nasia, and same-sex marriage. Those same issues, as well as capital punishment, were
subjected to an institutional analysis that delineated the morality policy process (Stud-
lar etal. 2013). A fourfold definition by Heichel etal. (2013; p 330) moves the bound-
ary lines outward to encompass life and death issues (abortion, assisted suicide, stem-
cell research), sexual behavior (homosexuality, same-sex recognition, prostitution,
pornography), “addictive behavior or substances” (gambling and drug use) as well as
“all policies defining public limitations on individual self-determination,” for example
gun control. This last category, however, is so elastic that almost any regulation or law
seemingly would apply.

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Table 2 Issues with moral content discussed in four bodies of scholarship
Issues Parliamentary
“Conscience” voting
Morality policy
studies (Studlar 2001)
MFT issues
inventory
Morality policy
issues (2001–2015)a
Abortion X X X 26
Alcohol X 7
Animal rights/hunting X X X 2
Baby outside marriage X
Capital punishment X X X 6
Casual sex X
Cloning X 1
Corporal punishment X
Contraception X 2
Defense spending/Military
spending
X
Disability rights X 13
Divorce X X
Drugs X X 12
Education X 134
English official language X 2
Embryo/stem cellresearch/
testing
X X 2
Environment/globalwarm-
ing/climate change
X 198
Evolution (teaching) X 3
Ethnic/racialminorities X 319
Euthanasia X X 1
Flag burning X
Gambling X 6
Gun control X 5
Health care X 44
Homosexuality/Gay rights/
Same-sex marriage
X X X 33
Immigration X 92
Iraq War X 4
Nuclear power plants X 3
Pornography/obscenity/
censorship
X X 2
Prostitution X
Religion–education/sunday
observance
X X 60
Seat belts (required) X 2
Terrorism X 16
Torture X
Voter ID laws X 2
War criminals (punish) X
Women’s rights X 118
a See footnote 1 for sources and content analysis

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Emotive symbolism, conscience issues, andMFT
MFT also connects the current research on morality policy with value-laden scholarship
from the 1960s and 1970s. What Smith (1975; p 90) called “emotive symbolic” policies
were “types which generate emotional support for deeply held values” such as the death
penalty, public school prayer, homosexuality, abortion, and racial segregation. But Smith
had been influenced by earlier studies on the abolition of capital punishment in Great Brit-
ain by Christoph (1962a, b). If one had to date the beginnings of this research tradition,
in fact, the honors likely would go to Christoph (1962a; p 173), a comparative politics
specialist who observed that the “high moral and emotional content” of capital punishment
caused government leaders to view this issue “as a matter of private conscience” and thus
freed the rank-and-file MPs “from the ordinary claims of party cohesion and discipline.”
Similar parliamentary behavior affected birth control, homosexuality, and prostitution
because they also “plumb deep-seated moral codes.”
Not long after Christoph wrote the so-called Golden Age of Private Member’s Bills
emerged when the governing Labour Party during 1964–1970 stood aside and allowed
their MPs to vote their consciences on issues of morality. That period was scrutinized by
Richards (1970), whose analysis spawned a body of scholarship on un-whipped voting on
a range of morality policies in the UK (Hibbing and Marsh 1987; Marsh and Read 1988;
Plumb and Marsh 2011; Plumb 2013; Plumb and Marsh 2013; Plumb 2015; Read etal.
1994) and elsewhere (Pothier 1979; Overby etal. 1998, 2011; Baumann etal. 2015). For
Richards (1970; p 7), the commonality was that “conscience” issues were “social ques-
tions which have strong moral overtones” but Cowley (1998; p 2), though unable to offer
a definition, nonetheless included an exhaustive listing of 15 UK “conscience” issues (see
Table2).
To their credit, both Richards (1970) and Smith (1975) went beyond life, death, and sex-
uality to expand their scope of inquiry. The three case studies employed by Smith (1975)
included, first, patriotism, which occurred when France in 1954 debated creation of a
multi-national European Defense Community. A second pertained to race, which occurred
when the US Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the third involved what
is now called identity politics when the “Great Flag Debate” of 1964 had to reconcile the
English and French traditions in a new national flag for Canada. Patriotism, race, and iden-
tity politics all directly implicate the In-group/Loyalty foundation of MFT which presum-
ably would provoke more moral argumentation from conservatives than liberals. Thus,
logically morality policy should extend to the more recent controversies over displaying
the flag or symbols of the Confederacy in Southern states (Cooper and Knotts 2006) or the
movement to make English the “official” language of the US states (Tatalovich 1995).
Smith (1975) was the first to recognize that Lowi’s (1964) paradigm did not consider
policy based on contested values. Eventually, Lowi (1988) did acknowledge that moral
rhetoric can “radicalize” conflict over policy ends unlike the debate over instrumental goals
that typify “mainstream” economic policies. Support for this Lowi insight comes from
research on how political elite rhetoric can trigger moralizing by ordinary citizens. As Clif-
ford etal. (2015; p 241) explain: “When it comes to hot-button political topics – climate
change, gun control, fighting terrorism, and the like – the prospects for consensus seem
dim. The present study [of the stem cell debate] suggests that one contributor to polariza-
tion on salient issues is the use of moral rhetoric by elites. Through their appeals to spe-
cific moral foundations, elites are able to ‘moralize’ political issues, facilitating (and rein-
forcing) the connection between people’s moral beliefs and their policy attitudes.” By his

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argument that any issue could be transformed into a moral cause, Lowi inadvertently antic-
ipated recent theoretical developments in Political Psychology: Moral Foundations Theory.
Moral convictions andthescope ofmorality policy
A distinct line of inquiry closely related to MFT is research on “moral conviction,” which
is a more powerful motivator than simply having intense feelings. Attitudes grounded in
moral conviction, or what Skitka etal. (2005) call “moral mandates” (also see Skitka and
Houston 2001; Skitka 2002; Skitka and Mullen 2002), “refer to a strong and absolute belief
that something is right or wrong, moral or immoral.” Moreover, “Attitudes rooted in moral
conviction therefore are perceived as ones that transcend the boundaries of persons and
cultures. They are perceived as terminal absolutes rather than personal preferences and are
felt to apply across persons and contexts” (Skitka etal. 2005; p 896). Moral convictions
“do not require reason or evidence. People at times judge moral and immoral, right and
wrong, on the basis of deeply visceral and intuitive, rather than deliberative, cognitive pro-
cesses that they support with post hoc rather than a priori reasoning” (Skitka and Mullen
2002; p 36).
Moral conviction affects the issue of voter ID laws, for example, which has polarized
political elites though not the mass public. Large majorities in opinion polls, including
both Republicans and Democrats, favor those laws to prevent voter fraud. Democratic
Party leaders belatedly tried to re-frame this issue as “voter suppression” since those laws
serve to reduce turnout among less educated voters and minorities, but Republican lead-
ers preempted the public relations battle by emphasizing the integrity of the ballot against
voter fraud. The Republicans soundly defeated the Democrats because their “voter fraud”
framing of the issue activated a sense of “moral conviction” in people, particularly those
who support voter ID laws (Conover and Miller 2017).
The political behavior that flows from moral conviction largely parallels some attrib-
utes that policy analysts use to categorize morality policy, namely citizen engagement and
resistance to compromise (Mooney 2001). Research shows that moral conviction can pro-
mote civic participation, as Skitka and Bauman (2008; p 52) reported that “people whose
feelings about candidates [Bush or Kerry] or issues [abortion, gay marriage, Iraq War]
were experienced as strong moral convictions were higher in political engagement than
those whose feelings were not.” But there is also a “dark side” to having moral convictions
(Skitka and Houston 2001; Skitka and Mullen 2002; Skitka etal. 2005). Experiments that
selectively employed the issues of abortion, capital punishment, legalization of marijuana,
and building new nuclear power plants in the USA (Skitka etal. 2005; p 914) concluded
that moral conviction is “associated with intolerance” insofar as “people do not want to
live near, be friends with, or even sit too close to someone who does not share their core
moral convictions.” Analysis of policy decisions about abortion, gay marriage, and illegal
immigration also showed that “when people have a moral mandate about an outcome, any
means justifies the mandated end” (Skitka 2002; p 594). Even more serious is the scenario
where people prejudge the guilt of criminal defendants according to their moral mandates
rather than procedural fairness, because “moral mandates could form the foundation and
justification for extreme actions taken in the name of justice, such as civil disobedience,
rioting, and vigilantism” (Skitka and Houston (2001; p 323).
Ryan (2017) tested whether people with moral convictions resist compromise with
respect to a group of putatively moral (stem-cell research; same-sex marriage) and

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nonmoral issues (Social Security reform; collective bargaining rights; US troops in
Afghanistan; corporate taxation; and investment in renewable energy). Ryan (2017; p 409)
found that “moralized attitudes lead citizens to oppose compromises, punish compromising
politicians, and forsake material gains.” For our purposes, however, he did not analyze the
impact of moral convictions on each separate issue, so this study is not conclusive evidence
that Social Security, for example, evokes the same degree of moral conviction as same-sex
marriage. That question was partly addressed in an earlier two-prong study by Ryan (2014).
In the first, (Ryan 2014; p 385) more survey respondents chose gay marriage and stem-cell
research as having moral content rather than collective bargaining rights, Social Security
reform, or the Afghanistan War, but in varying degrees all these issues were viewed in
moralistic terms by some people. In the second, education was viewed by more people as
having moral content, followed by same-sex marriage, health, and abortion, though again
some moral content was also attributed to the economy, environment, Afghanistan War,
immigration, unemployment, and lastly the budget (Ryan 2014; p 389). These results led
Ryan (2014; pp 392–393) to conclude: “Characteristically moral responses are more likely
on some issues than others, but there is considerable variability even within particular
issues, and some issues not widely regarded as moral are moralized for some people.”
MFT andthecontent ofmorality policy
MFT theory is grounded in the claim that humans are evolutionarily driven to have moral
intuitions, and these moral intuitions are expressed differentially between cultures (Graham
etal. 2013). Although originally fashioned for cultural psychology and not political psy-
chology (Graham etal. 2013; p 74), the very first empirical demonstration of Moral Foun-
dations Theory was an application of the empirical tools of MFT to political ideology in
the USA (Haidt and Graham 2007). This early study immediately demonstrated the appeal
of the empirical tools of MFT for studying politics and morality. Graham and colleagues
note the importance of the empirical tools, stating that “[w]hile MFT’s origins were in
anthropology and evolutionary theory, its development has been inextricably linked with
the creation and validation of psychological methods by which to test its claims” (p 72).
The empirical tools were classified by Graham and colleagues into four discrete categories:
self-report surveys, implicit measures, psychophysiological and neuroscience methods, and
textual analysis. It is this empirical bounty, we argue, that makes MFT the tool that moral-
ity policy researchers have been waiting for.
Recently, a critique has been levied against MFT on the grounds that the causal path-
ways by which MFT is said to stabilize political ideology for individuals cannot be empiri-
cally verified (Smith etal. 2017). There is no need for us to engage that debate here, nor
does this criticism diminish the importance of our argument, because we are not employ-
ing MFT to predict ideology or political behavior but to offer guidance about the types
of issues that have moral content. Perhaps a more immediate concern is the criticism that
morality policy debates are simply contested “frames” used by the adversaries for strate-
gic advantage (Mucciaroni 2011). But MFT scholarship is fundamentally at odds with that
claim, given its assumption that people sincerely hold and act upon these morally charged
opinions. While strategic framing may be employed in political debate, counter-frames
must take into account the moral “foundation” that underlies the arguments of your oppo-
nents. Then, efforts at re-framing may be effective.

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A comprehensive discussion of the origins, methods, and findings of MFT research by
Graham etal. (2013) allows us to highlight those studies that most directly engage morality
policy. Liberals and conservatives emphasize different foundations in making their moral
judgments, both at the elite level (Graham etal. 2009; Clifford and Jerit 2013) and at the
mass level (Haidt and Graham 2007; McAdams etal. 2008). It is not easy to bridge that
ideological divide, therefore, unless liberals frame their argument in ways that appeal to
conservatives. Moral discourse over global warming is dominated by the Harm foundation,
which is much preferred by liberals, but appeals to conservatives based on Purity served
to reduce the ideological divide on this issue (Feinberg and Willer 2013). This hypothesis
also was validated with respect to the issues of same-sex marriage, English as the offi-
cial language, universal health care, and increased military spending (Feinberg and Willer
2015). Also with respect to voter ID laws, a study by Wilson and Brewer (2016) showed
that employing a frame that emphasizes “harm” to African Americans, in particular,
reduced support (though not below majority levels).
MFT also explains attitudes toward US foreign policy (Kertzer etal. 2014). Although
liberal idealists are presumed to be more moralistic than realists, the empirical reality is
that both are moralistic though influenced by different moral sentiments. Idealists who
support global cooperation and multilateralism are characterized by the “individualizing”
foundations while realists, who want a muscular foreign policy based on military prepar-
edness, by the “binding’ foundations. These differences are manifested in their attitudes
toward four specific foreign policies. Those scoring high on binding foundations were more
supportive of the Iraq War and the use of military force against a nuclear Iran; those who
scored high on the individualizing foundation supported efforts to renew the Kyoto Proto-
col on climate warming; and both were supportive of the 2011 Libya air strikes, but from
different moral perspectives—the idealists embraced humanitarianism while the realists
defended US strategic interests.
The “culture war” thesis argues that conflict between “orthodox” and “progressive” reli-
gious worldviews lies at the heart of many contemporary moral conflicts (Hunter 1991;
also Haidt and Hersh 2001). That dimension is captured by the Purity/Sanctity foundation,
which is closely related to divinity and religion (Schweder et al. 1997). One MFT study
focused on 13 “culture war” issues (Koleva etal. 2012) but also assessed the moral con-
tent of defense spending, teaching evolution, use of torture, global warming, burning a US
flag, combating terrorism, illegal immigration, and gun control. All these issues had some
kind of moral content, but the Purity/Sanctity foundation was most relevant to the “culture
war” issues. (Koleva etal. 2012; p 192). In contrast, concerns “about ingroup/loyalty held
together views on foreign policy issues, such as defense spending, the use of forced interro-
gation/torture, and confronting terrorism,” whereas the “harm/care foundation appeared to
cast a moral net over the death penalty [opposition], the use of torture [opposition], medi-
cal testing on animals [opposition], gun control [support], and global warming [support for
emissions standards]” (Koleva etal. 2012; p 192).
Abortion and gay rights, in particular, exert a powerful influence on public opinion that
is equivalent to the partisan and religious commitments of Americans. Goren and Chapp
(2017; pp 115 and 124) empirically show that these “culture war opinions are, roughly
speaking, as durable as partisan and religious predispositions” and, moreover, “the cul-
ture war issues-to-party link appears much stronger than the party-to-issues link, and the
culture war issues-to-religious belief pathway seems somewhat stronger than the religious
belief-to-opinion pathway. Put succinctly, culture war issues have power sufficient to alter
the so-called fountainheads in political and religious belief systems.”

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MFT forcontent analysis ofmorality policy
Content analysis of morality policy debates shows the way forward to expand the scope
and content of this research agenda. For examples, Clifford and Jerit (2013) employed the
Moral Foundations Dictionary (or MFD, at MoralFoundations.org; also see Graham etal.
2009; pp 1045–1046) to content analyze rhetoric in the stem-cell research debate. Analysis
of messages on Twitter about same-sex marriage, gun control, and climate change (Brady
etal. 2017) that also used the MFD found that “moral-emotional” words increased diffu-
sion by twenty percent, though primarily among conservatives or liberals, but not across
ideological boundaries. Thus, they concluded that social “communications about morality
are more likely to resemble echo chambers and may exacerbate ideological polarization”
(Brady et al. 2017; p 7317). Much earlier, Haidt and Graham (2007) used a more gen-
eral analysis of content to identify the moral themes of articles published in Social Justice
Research and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (both mostly emphasized
the Care/Harm foundation).
Summary andfuture research
Since research on “moral conviction” is based on a self-reporting measure, we do not know
why respondents perceived a moral quality to issues like education or health. For the mass
public, moreover, this body of research argues that trying to discern the reasons why indi-
viduals perceive moral content in particular issues, or when assessing their vote for candi-
dates (Skitka and Bauman 2008; p 36), poses intractable methodological and conceptual
problems. For elites, however, it was already noted that perceptions are key to determining
whether political antagonists define an issue as moral or nonmoral (Mooney 2001; p 4).
In his analysis of legislative debates over gay rights, Mucciaroni (2011) showed that
opponents were more likely to make instrumental or procedural rather than moralis-
tic arguments. But the use of “sacred” appeals in political rhetoric on gay marriage, the
death penalty, the environment, and gun rights increased political engagement and opinion
intensity though at the expense of meaningful deliberations (Marietta 2012). The greater
use of sacredness by Republicans also suggests that the “conservative advantage may be
grounded in their rhetorical distinction: the emphasis on sacred claims that for many citi-
zens are meaningful and motivational. The consequentialist rhetoric favored by Democrats
has neither the same power to influence the process of reasoning nor the same persuasive
ability to inspire political engagement” (Marietta 2012; p 214). The latest study of a politi-
cal debate over stem-cell research also found that when morality is evoked by one side,
the other side will also respond with moral arguments (Clifford and Jerit 2013). However,
researchers do not know whether political adversaries will employ moral argument when
faced with nonmoral or economic issues.
Which issues previously identified as morality policies have moral content according
to the empirical research on MFT (and “moral conviction”)? One approach is to make
comparisons among categories of morality policies identified in four bodies of scholarship
(see Table2). First, 15 issues were discussed in the studies of “conscience” issues during
the 1960s in Great Britain and its more recent progeny in Canada and elsewhere. Of that
number, only four in Cowley’s (1998; p 2) inventory have not yet been studied in MFT
research, but they would apply. Liberal opposition to capital punishment based on the Care/
Harm foundation would extend to corporal punishment (Hoffmann etal. 2017); the Purity/

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Sanctity foundation likely implicates prostitution as does the authority/respect foundation
with divorce; and the In-group/Loyalty foundation has application beyond the 1940s War
Criminals to include punishing Serbian generals for ethnic cleansing during the 1990s or
the mass murders of the Iraqi regime headed by Saddam Hussein.
Second, Studlar (2001) identified 14 different morality policies across Europe and North
America, and only three (alcohol, divorce, and women’s rights) were not included in any of
the MFT studies. For opponents, the consumption of alcoholic beverages obviously impli-
cates the Purity/Sanctity foundation while divorce, as already noted, would be evaluated
in terms of the authority/respect foundation. On the other hand, supporters would assess
women’s rights based on the Fairness/Reciprocity foundation. Third, 22 issues are identi-
fied in the MFT and “moral conviction” studies as having moral content, and some gained
greater prominence since Studlar (2001) compiled his list: combating terrorism, use of tor-
ture, Iraq War (and more generally a muscular foreign policy, as in Iran and Libya; see
above), global warming and climate change (or more generally the environment). Including
the MFT findings adds a measure of empirical validation to the extant scholarly consensus
and, looking ahead, identifies productive avenues for future research on issues that have
been largely neglected by morality policy analysts and which deserve our attention.
Finally, our inventory of issues given recent coverage in scholarly publications points to
a future research agenda for morality policy insofar as very few issues have dominated that
body of scholarship.1 In this sample of US scholarship, the top five are ethnic/racial minor-
ities, the environment/global warming, education, women’s rights, and immigration (which
together account for 77% of the issues studied in these scholarly journals). So far the envi-
ronment, education, and immigration have been verified by MFT research as having moral
content, so a high priority for any future research agenda is the need to analyze the policy
debates over ethnic/racial minorities and women’s rights in terms of Moral Foundations
Theory. For example, the debate over affirmative action cuts to the heart of many programs
aimed at improving the economic position of racial or ethnic minorities as well as women.
On the other hand, a comparison of this 2001–2015 inventory with the MFT listing offers
empirical confirmation that the conventional understanding of what comprises morality
policy is valid for a large number of issues.
Of that number, the most fruitful lines of inquiry for future research would seem to
be animal rights, drugs, gun control(Hurka 2017), and the use of nuclear power. Animal
rights would recall the parliamentary debate in the UK over abolishing fox hunting and,
in the USA (Oldmixon 2017), the numerous referendum campaigns to outlaw or regulate
certain types of hunting, trapping, and laboratory testing on animals. Drugs would now
engage the current debate over legalizing possession of marijuana for medical or even rec-
reational purposes, just as the gun control debate has intensified in the wake of Supreme
1 This number count of the issues listed in Table2 is based on the articles published during 2001–2015 in
three journals that seem to be favored by morality policy analysts, namely Policy Studies Journal (for its
policy orientation), Social Science Quarterly (for its interdisciplinary scope), and State Politics & Policy
Quarterly (since much morality policy occurs at the subnational level). The content analysis employed only
the wording of the title/subtitle for every article (or, where clarification was necessary, the lists of keywords
and subjects). The issue Women’s Rights includes all articles that mention “women” or “gender;” Envi-
ronment/Global Warming/Climate Control includes natural resource management (forests; fishes), open
spaces and land-use planning; Ethnic/Racial Minorities includes all mentions of specific groups (Hispan-
ics, African Americans) as well as the terms “race/racial, ethnic/ethnicity,” or “minorities/minority groups;”
homosexuality/gay/rights/same-sex marriage is extended to transgender rights; drugs also include specific
substances, like heroin or marijuana; education also includes the terms educational, educating, and schools.

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Court rulings which upheld the right to bear arms for self-defense. In the wake of the
highly publicized accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979, content
analysis might confirm that what had been a two-sided debate between energy advocates
and environmentalists has been transformed into a one-sided morality policy dominated by
the advocacy coalition opposed to any new construction of nuclear power plants.
To conclude, Moral Foundations Theory answers the Smith (2002) appeal for an empir-
ically based taxonomy of morality policy issues. MFT both reaches back to the early schol-
arship on “conscience’ issues and “emotive symbolic” policies and looks ahead to defin-
ing a research agenda for the twenty-first century. As an empirical taxonomy, MFT stands
ready, willing, and able to answer the key questions raised by morality policy researchers,
including the morality policy classification problem. At first glance, voter ID laws would
not seem to be a good candidate for morality policy analysis, but two studies have con-
firmed how Republicans and Democrats deployed differing moral frames with very dif-
ferent effects. The 22 issues thus far identified by MFT research as having moral content
comprise sixty percent of the all-inclusive listing in Table2, and we have argued that the
remaining 15 issues can readily be accommodate by one or more of the five foundations of
Moral Foundations Theory. We began this essay with a quote from Justice Potter Stewart
about how he discerned whether or not material was pornographic. We end with the lesson
learned from the case of voter ID laws, namely that the field of vision gained from Moral
Foundation Theory extends the morality policy agenda far beyond what the naked eye can
see.
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