Moral Foundations, Political Orientation and Religiosity In Italy

Abstract

Background:This study investigates the role of political orientation and religiosity in Italy for moral foundations endorsement, in light of Haidt and Graham’sMoral Foundations Theory. This theory hypothesizes that moral systems are based on five dimensions (i.e.,Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity) that, in turn, can be grouped into two broader dimensions (BindingandIndividualizing).Objective:We aim to explore and extend the moral foundation assumptions to the Italian context predicting greater endorsement of binding values among Italian Right-wingers as compared with Left-wingers. Given that the relations between politics and Catholic Church have always been intertwined in modern Italy, we also extend this line of inquiry by examining the role of religiosity.Method:Two hundred and forty-eight Italian participants filled out a self-report measure including theMoral Foundations Questionnaires.Results: Individuals attach considerable relevance to individualizing moral foundations rather than to binding moral foundations; conservatives and regular religious attenders attach more relevance to binding moral foundations as compared with individuals with a Left-wing political orientation and less religious people.Conclusions:Our results show that the Italians’ political orientation emerges as a significant element in the differential adoption of moral foundations. Furthermore, considering the historical and fundamental role of the Catholic religion in the Italian society and political life, our results confirm that binding values are particularly valued in groups such as practicing Catholic, where institutions, families, and authorities are valued.

The relationship between individual differences in religion, religious primes, and the moral foundations

“…Although there may be other important moral domains beyond the five proposed by moral foundations theory (Graham et al, 2013), the foundations of care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity have been particularly useful in predicting differences in moral judgment between religious and non-religious individuals. Variables such as religious attendance (Di Battista et al, 2018;Koleva et al, 2012;Mooijman et al, 2018) and general religiousness (LaBouff et al, 2017;Piazza & Landy, 2013;Yalçındağ et al, 2019) are positively correlated with binding foundations and less consistently but negatively correlated with individualizing foundations (Koleva et al, 2012;Yalçındağ et al, 2019). This suggests that general religiousness is related to the binding foundations, especially purity.…”

Competence and Benevolence as Dimensions of Trust: Lecturers’ Trustworthiness in the Words of Italian Students

“…In this case, a competent/incompetent lecturer was described as being respectful of others' points of view and professional vs. impolite, absent, or unfair, whereas a benevolent/malevolent lecturer was described as someone who is respectful, polite, and fair vs. someone who has preferences and is biased. In the literature, the concept of morality or integrity is frequently described as one important dimension of human perception, [35,36] and it is sometimes described as one aspect of the "will-do" component of trustworthiness [3,4,15]. Some scholars proposed that benevolence is strictly distinct from integrity, but other evidence suggests these two aspects of trustworthiness are highly related especially for the relatively short-term authority relationships typical of the university context [23].…”

“…Overall, in educational contexts, both dimensions of competence and benevolence contribute to students’ assessment of the educational authorities’ trustworthiness [ 24 ] and are vital for number of positive outcomes, e.g., [ 11 , 21 , 40 ]. Trustworthiness is fundamental in regard to the processes required for the healthy functioning of schools and academies, and it predicts students’ engagement [ 21 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 ]. For instance, Mitchell and colleagues [ 42 ] argued that if students believe that they can trust their teachers, they are more actively engaged with instructional goals and more likely to cooperate for cultivating safe schools.…”

Omission and compromise: The sacredness of moral foundations in political groups in Italy

“…Results also showed that individualizing is weakly related to political orientation, particularly in the dimension of care. Di Battista, Pivetti, and Berti (2018) found that both Italian left and right-wingers attribute higher scores to individualizing moral foundations than to binding ones. Right-wingers give similar evaluations on all five sets of moral foundations, whereas left-wingers…”