The main aim of this PhD research was to explore the cultural differences in moral judgment, moral behaviour, moral identity, and cultural values between Saudi Arabia and United Kingdom. Furthermore, I was interested in the psychological factors affecting morality in those two cultures. The first study aimed to achieve the following objectives: to understand people’s moral judgment in Saudi Arabia and the UK, to investigate whether and how personality traits and cultural values affect moral judgment in five moral foundations (harm avoidance, justice, ingroup, authority, purity), and to investigate whether personality traits and cultural values are related differently or similarly across Saudi and UK cultures. The findings of the study revealed that Saudi and British participants differed with regard to their foundation-specific moral judgments. Saudi participants were more likely to endorse moral foundations in the domains of intergroup relations, authority, and purity. However, there were no cross-cultural differences in the domains of harm avoidance and justice. Moreover, the results showed that the effect of personality traits and cultural values on morality varied. Harm and fairness foundations were predicted by personality traits while ingroup, authority, purity foundations were predicted by values. The second study investigated whether foundation-related moral behaviour was affected by moral judgment and people’s moral identity in a cross-cultural context comparing adults from the UK and Saudi Arabia. Findings of this study resulted in no cross-cultural differences between the two samples concerning moral judgment in the care and justice foundations. Furthermore, no cultural differences were found between the two samples concerning moral behaviour in the five foundations. In addition, moral identity mediated the relationship between moral judgment and allocations in the dictator game. The third study investigated the relationship between (dis-) honest behaviour, moral judgment and moral identity in two different cultures, namely Saudi Arabia and the UK. It has been found that there are no statistically significant differences in honest behaviour between Saudi Arabia and the UK. Furthermore, deception was not predicted or correlated significantly with any of the five foundation-specific moral judgments across both cultural samples. However, culture moderated the relationship between deception and moral judgment in harm and authority moral foundations. Additionally, moral sensitivity did not mediate the relationship between moral judgments and dishonesty. The forth study explored the link between moral foundation violations (harm, justice, ingroup, authority, and purity) and anger, disgust, sadness, apathy, guilt, contempt, shame, resentment, and embarrassment emotions. Findings showed that the violations of harm, and justice foundations triggered anger and Violations of purity foundation triggered disgust. The results show no cultural differences in the assignments of the violations made by both samples. Saudi and UK participants’ classifications were in agreement with the original classifications of the 40 violations by Graham et al. (2009). However, we found cross-cultural differences in the relationship between emotions and moral foundation violations.

abstract: Health knowledge alone does not appear to lead to sustained healthy behavior, suggesting the need for alternative methods for improving diet. Recent research shows a possible role of moral contexts of food production on diet related behaviors; however no studies have been conducted to specifically explore the relationship between moral constructs and food consumption. This study examined the relationship between fast food consumption and two measures of morality, Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ), specifically harm/care and purity/sanctity foundations, and the Ethical Concern in food choice (EC) questionnaire, which includes animal welfare, environment protection, political values, and religion subscales. The study also examined the association between the measures of morality. 739 participants, primarily female (71.4%) and non-Hispanic Whites (76.5%), completed an online survey that included the MFQ, the EC questionnaire, and a brief fast food screener. Participant's morality scores in relation to their fast food consumption were examined first using bivariate ANOVA analysis and then using logistic regression to control for covariates. The MFQ foundations were compared with the EC subscales using Pearson correlation coefficient. Significant bivariate relationships were seen between fast food consumption and the MFQ's purity/sanctity foundation and EC's religion subscales (p<0.05). However these significant bivariate relationships did not hold after controlling for gender, race, university education, and religion in the logistic regression analysis. The foundations of the MFQ were positively correlated with the subscales for the EC questionnaire (r values ranging from .233-.613 (p<0.01). MFQ's purity/sanctity foundation and EC's religion subscale were the two most highly correlated (r=.613, p<0.01) showing that moral intuitions may be associated with eating decision making. The study did not find significant associations between MFQ or EC scores and fast food consumption. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Nutrition 2013

abstract: Background: Previous research suggests a healthy eater schema (i.e., identifying yourself as a healthy eater) may be a useful concept to target in interventions. A "stealth" intervention that discussed the moral issues related to food worked better at promoting healthful eating than an intervention focused on the health benefits. No research has explored the relationship between moral foundations, a theoretical model focused on delineating core "foundations" for making a moral decision, and healthy eater self-identity or self-efficacy. Purpose: We explored the relationship between moral foundations (i.e., harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, & purity/sanctity) and health eater self-identity and fruit and vegetable self-efficacy (FVSE). Methods: 542 participants completed an online cross-sectional survey, which included moral foundations (i.e., MFQ), political views, healthy eater self-identity (i.e., HESS), and FVSE measures. Logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between moral foundations between healthy eater self-identity after controlling for age, gender, major, BMI, and political beliefs. OLS regression was used to explore the relationship between self-efficacy and the moral foundations after controlling for the covariates. Results: 75.6% of the sample were college students, with a mean age of 25.27 (SD=8.61). 25.1% of students were nutrition majors. Harm/care, authority/respect, and ingroup/loyalty were significantly associated with healthy eater schema, (i.e., OR=1.7, p<.001, OR=1.5, p=.009, and OR=1.4, p=.027, respectively). Ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity were related to FVSE (p=.006, p=.002, p=.04, respectively). Conclusion: Among college students, harm/care and authority/respect were associated with a healthy eater schema. Future research should explore possible uses of these moral foundations in interventions (e.g., a plant-based diet based on reduced harm to animals or eating fewer processed views based on "traditional" values). / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Nutrition 2013

The aim of the current paper is to examine the association between ideology and disgust sensitivity. Studying disgust offers an to assess how judgments have evolved over time due to a “gut” sense of danger. This emotion also plays a role in moral judgment: individuals label moral wrongdoings as disgusting which elicits a specific facial expression. For this reason, disgust has recently been found to be a plausible emotion involved in political decision-making. Studies indicate that liberals and conservatives rely on respective moral foundations that influence their choices. Haidt et al. (2009) argue that liberals’ views on morality are based primarily on harm/care and fairness/reciprocity, whereas conservatives’ views on morality show a more even distribution across the foundations, including those endorsed by liberals, as well as ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and sanctity. Schnall et al. (2008) suggest a causal relationship between feelings of disgust and moral convictions. People often rely on moral reasoning when they do not have an intuitive response or when their intuition is conflicting. The current study examined this complex relationship by assessing disgust sensitivity while simultaneously manipulating emotional state through the use of emotionally disgusting and neutral pictures. Electroencephalographic (EEG) event related brain potentials (ERPs) were used as the primary index of emotional processing. The results indicated a main effect for electrode site location and for picture image, as expected. Results did not show an interaction between disgust sensitivity and ideology, or any mediating factors, suggesting that there may be no statistically significant differences in disgust sensitivity between liberals and conservatives. These results suggest that the core differences between conservatives and liberals may be exaggerated. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

Sambandet mellan individuell moral och upplevelse av mening i livet samtsökande efter mening är relativt outforskade. Begreppen har diskuterats iforskningslitteraturen men sällan tillsammans. Moraliskt tänkandestuderas ofta i relation till kognitiv utveckling och mening i livet studerasofta med koppling till subjektivt välbefinnande. Denna explorativa studieintegrerar forskningslitteratur om moral och viljan till mening. Syftet medstudien var att utforska om skillnader i moraliskt tänkande hos studenterkan kopplas till skillnader i individuell meningsupplevelse. Det användesen kombination av bekvämlighets- och snöbollsurval och det rekryterades121 unga vuxna studenter. Moral Foundation Questionnaire med 32 frågoranvändes för att mäta fem fundament av moraliskt tänkande. Mening medlivet formuläret innehållandes tio frågor användes för att mäta tvåbegrepp: upplevelse av mening i livet och sökande efter mening. Därefterjämfördes och analyserades resultaten med hjälp av korrelationsanalys,variansanalys och simultan multipel regressionsanalys samt stegvismultipel regressionsanalys. Resultaten visade signifikanta samband mellanmoralfundamentet hänsyn/skada och upplevelse av mening i livet.Dessutom fanns signifikanta samband mellan moralfundamentethelighet/degradering och upplevelse av sökande efter mening.

Increasing stress levels over the past 30 years have reached an all-time high, which has also correlated with an increase in medical insurance costs due to the adverse effects on life expectancy, obesity rates, and non-communicable disease deaths. An additional social problem affecting the U.S. is a 20-year increase in political dichotomy. Research has shown a distinction between liberals and conservatives on a variety of characteristics ranging from sleep patterns, disgust, personality, and even cleanliness. This current study used two other characteristics that correlate with both stress and political orientation, and they are happiness and religiosity. The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between perceived stress, happiness, religiosity, and political orientation. Two theories chosen for this study included System Justification Theory (SJT) and Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). Both theories relate to the differences between liberals and conservatives on happiness, religion, and morality. This study had 201 participants recruited via Amazon's MTurk and used a hierarchical multiple regression model, which includes the following psychometric instruments: Perceived Stress Scale-10, Subjective Happiness Scale, Satisfaction With Life Scale, Religious Orientation Scale (Intrinsic and Extrinsic), and the Modified Wilson-Patterson Inventory. There was a significant effect found between intrinsic religiosity and conservative political orientation. In assisting social and behavioral scientists at better understanding stress differences and how humans cope in unique ways, positive social change is made possible by mitigating stress levels and therefore decreasing healthcare costs.

Despite the existence of multiple scales designed to measure authoritarianism as a personality trait, current research disagrees as to whether current measures reliably measure all three dimensions of authoritarianism: submission, aggression, and traditionalism. This study focused on the development of a new scale in response to methodological and validity concerns of previously-used measures. This new scale was found to be a reliable measure of authoritarian belief in two subsequent studies of college-aged adults. Factor analysis of responses to the items of the new measure also provided evidence of the multidimensionality of authoritarianism as a construct. Further, significant correlations were found between the Graham and Haidt’s Moral Foundations model and the dimensions of authoritarianism as measured by this scale. Analysis also revealed a significant relationship between authoritarianism and measures of social hierarchical belief, as well as salient political variables. These findings reaffirm current theoretical belief in the tridimensional model of authoritarianism and provide a new, reliable measure of the authoritarian personality. This has implications for the creation of a more productive dialogue between politically-divided groups, though further research is needed on the exact nature of authoritarianism itself.

This dissertation explores strategies for addressing identity-related barriers to environmental problem-solving through the lens of two social-psychological theories: self-affirmation theory and moral foundations theory. Through one theoretical review, two online experiments and one in-lab experiment I explore, integrate and test theoretically grounded strategies for reducing the defensive information processing that can exacerbate intergroup divisions in multi-stakeholder settings. The specific objectives of this dissertation are to 1) integrate self-affirmation theory and moral foundations theory into the current knowledge about collaborative conservation (Chapter 2), 2) evaluate ways of tailoring environmental communication to better reach socially and politically diverse audiences (Chapter 3), and 3) experimentally test the effectiveness of an approach, based on self-affirmation theory, to facilitate productive discussion of complex, value-laden issues in group settings. Before presenting the results of this work, I provide a broad overview of the problem of group-based divisions in environmental conflict and the theoretical underpinnings of the dissertation (Chapter 1). Finally, I summarize the results and discuss the broader implications of the research (Chapter 5). The results of this research offer initial insights into how tools grounded in these theories can most effectively be applied to help alleviate identity-based barriers to environmental problem-solving. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation explores strategies for addressing identity-related barriers to environmental problem-solving through the lens of two social-psychological theories: self-affirmation theory and moral foundations theory. Through one theoretical review, two online experiments and one in-lab experiment I explore, integrate and test theoretically grounded strategies for reducing the defensive information processing that can exacerbate intergroup divisions in multi-stakeholder settings. The specific objectives of this dissertation are to 1) integrate self-affirmation theory and moral foundations theory into the current knowledge about collaborative conservation (Chapter 2), 2) evaluate ways of tailoring environmental communication to better reach socially and politically diverse audiences (Chapter 3), and 3) experimentally test the effectiveness of an approach, based on self-affirmation theory, to facilitate productive discussion of complex, value-laden issues in group settings. Before presenting the results of this work, I provide a broad overview of the problem of group-based divisions in environmental conflict and the theoretical underpinnings of the dissertation (Chapter 1). Finally, I summarize the results and discuss the broader implications of the research (Chapter 5). The results of this research offer initial insights into how tools grounded in these theories can most effectively be applied to help alleviate identity-based barriers to environmental problem-solving.

The focus of this study was the organizational working environment and existing partisanship evident in the United States Congress. There has been a reduction in the number of laws passed over the last 30 years from a high of over 1,000 to a low of around 120, with a period of complete government shutdown in 2013. This qualitative research utilized qualitative content analysis to discover the nature of partisan conflict as demonstrated by 6 members of Congress. The conceptual framework for this study was moral foundations theory. Different moral principles held by Democrats and Republicans were studied as a possible explanation for the inability of one end of the political spectrum to identify with, work with, and comprehend the belief systems of the other. Archival video data for each participant was viewed on C-Span and related transcripts were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Emerging themes were then inductively coded in order to understand the nature of the partisan conflict in Congress. Results demonstrate that Republicans and Democrats rely on different sets of moral foundations and that there is limited crossover between those who occupy the extreme ends of the ideological continuum. This lack of crossover essentially leads members with differing ideology and moral foundations to not comprehend the moral message of their opponents. With this knowledge, political strategists can help to develop communication and political approaches that take into consideration the moral foundations of ideological opponents. Social change implications include improved understanding of the ideological stance of members of the opposing party and improved working relationships in Congress, resulting in an organizational working environment that is less conflicted.

The thesis deals with the theme of morality and racist attitudes towards Roms. The theoretical part is focused on describing the development of studying the phenomenon of morality, especially on intuitionistic theory (eg.:. J. Haidt). Next on moral emotions, namely disgust, and their influence on individual judgment in a social situation. And on attitudes to other racial groups. The intention is to refer to theories that assume influence of emotions on moral judgment, as well as the activation of attitudes. In the practical part was examined moral dilemma situations rating among 142 respondents, while their disposition to the perception of disgust and their racist attitudes. By the research was proved that people evaluate the situation as more immoral if there is participant with different ethnicity, depending on their perception of disgust. Direct relationship between evaluation and racist attitudes was not proven. The conclusions are in detail discussed in the thesis.