Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables—Households, Table H-3, Mean Household Income Received by Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent All Races: 1967 to 2006 (2006 Dollars)

Fortunately, the Knowledge Networks panel study (referred to elsewhere) included an item asking individuals what they felt should be done about the gap. After describing the size of the difference between the top earners and those on the bottom, respondents were asked, “Should this difference be smaller, bigger, or about what it is now?” For the purposes of the analysis that follows, I combined the few respondents that indicated the gap should be bigger (only about 5 percent of the sample) with those who said it should remain the same (about 30 percent).

I ran a statistical model* that predicts the probability that an individual would say that the gap should be smaller (without any specifics about how this would be accomplished, but more on that later). Even after controlling for ideology and party identification, three of the moral foundations are statistically significant and substantively important to the probability of acknowledging the gap as a problem. Increasing the two liberal foundations (Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity) increases the probability of wanting to narrow the gap. Increasing the Ingroup/Loyalty foundation decreases the probability. The effects are shown in the Figure below.

In each panel, I’ve graphed the effect of moving across the range of each foundation on the likelihood of saying that the gap between the rich and poor should be smaller for a hypothetical individual who is a moderate Democrat (in Blue) or Republican (in Red) with income in the $50,000-$85,000 range who has average scores on all of the other moral foundations scores. Within each panel, the individuals are similar in every regard except for their party identification. The figure reveals a persistent partisan gap even after controlling for the moral foundations and ideology, but the gap between partisans with the same scores on the moral foundations is nowhere so large as the gap within each party across the ranges of the foundations listed above. The Authority and Purity foundations were not significantly related to attitudes about the income gap.

We know, however, that the foundations tend to move together (see this discussion for an example). Individuals who score high on Harm also tend to score high on Fairness. The figures above are interesting, but in some ways the “all else equal” assumption that they impose on the relationship between attitudes and the moral foundations is not as straightforward as the clean looking lines suggest. In the table below, I show some more probable combinations of scores. The entries in the table show the predicted change in probability from the baseline case described above. The changes in the foundations are modest (a one point increase or decrease from the baseline case described above for the “high” and “low” figures respectively).

So far, we have seen how increases in the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity foundations serve to increase concern about income inequality, while the Ingroup/Loyalty foundation decreases concern. That the liberal foundations should increase the likelihood of considering large disparities in income is not especially surprising in itself. However, I was surprised that the effects of the moral foundation scores are substantially larger than partisanship and ideology (the prime movers in most political science literature). Earlier work done by Felicia Pratto and her colleagues on the relationship between social dominance orientation and merit-based versus needs-based allocation of resources (see this JSTOR link for more) suggests why these particular foundations might be important (maybe the psychologists can back me up on this…).

Understanding the factors that lead to one acknowledging that income inequality is a problem that should be solved is only part of the bigger question. A much stickier issue is determining a politically feasible way of narrowing that gap. The recent debate over extending the Bush tax cuts illustrates the powerful emotions and interests that are mobilized when real money is on the table. Both sides, it seems to me, attempt to frame the issue as one of harm and fairness. The right argues that tax raises on the wealthy unjustly punish success. The left argues that it is only fair that those who have benefited so much from the system established by government should pay a little more to support it and those who are hurt by it.

The same Knowledge Networks data included an attitude item asking whether the respondent would support raising taxes on those who make more than $200,000 a year. About half of the sample indicated that they would support raising taxes on the wealthy.

The most powerful relationship that emerged between attitudes about taxes and the moral foundations (indeed the only significant relationship) was found in the Harm/Care foundation. The figure below shows this relationship over the range of the Harm foundation. Even after controlling for party identification and ideological self-placement, income, and the other foundations, the tax issue emerged as an issue of caring rather than equity or fairness.

The figure below shows a partisan differential that persists even after controlling for all of the above factors. However the difference between partisans is nowhere as large as the difference between individuals who score highly on the Harm/Care foundation and those who have low score on that foundation.

The Harm/Care foundation appears to be a more important factor in determining one’s support for raising taxes on the wealthy than party identification or ideological self-placement. Indeed, as the figure shows, a Republican who scores highly on the Harm foundation has a higher probability of supporting taxes on the wealthy than a similarly situated Democrat with a low score.

Several interesting questions are suggested by this brief exploration of the relatively limited selection of items touching on income inequality available to us in this dataset. First, what role does issue framing play in activating certain moral considerations over others? Would the conservative frame described briefly above change the relationship between the Harm foundation and attitudes about taxes? What about the liberal frame? This should be easy enough to test once we identify the relevant frames.

Second, how do the moral foundations relate to other potential remedies for economic inequality. The range of policy options is wide, and, depending on the moral prism through which one looks at them, reactions are sure to vary. Estate taxes, minimum wage laws, maximum wage laws, changes to the tax code, and repealing the sales tax on food and other necessities all might be met with different reactions from individuals with who emphasize different moral foundations. This would be a little trickier to test as it would require coming up with neutral descriptions of fairly complex and unfamiliar policies.

Finally, how much does where you stand on the issues of economic inequality depend on where you sit in the relative distribution of wealth? Psychologists don’t seem to talk much about social class and other kinds of vulgar economic considerations, but they surely play a role. The poor and the rich probably diverge in their attitudes about redistributory policies for reasons quite apart from their morality. This might be the most difficult problem to address from the researcher’s standpoint, as it would require collecting data from a broad enough cross-section of the income distribution. We survey researchers generally have the most success in the middle of the distribution with response rates falling off rapidly toward either extreme.

*I ran a logit regression with controls for Democratic party affiliation, Liberal political identification, income terciles, and the moral foundations scores.

Yet there are enough hints of “liberal purity” scattered about that we at Yourmorals are actively trying to measure it. (You might want to take our survey, here, before you read any further. You’ll have to register or sign in along the way). It can be seen in the liberal tendency to moralize food and eating, beyond its nutritive/material aspects. (See this fabulous essay by Mary Eberstadt comparing the way the left moralizes food and the right moralizes sex). It can be seen in the way the left treats environmental issues and the natural world as something sacred, to be cared for above and beyond its consequences for human – or even animal—welfare. So how do we define purity/sanctity in a way that can capture the purity concerns of both left and right?

Consider this famous quote from William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience:

Religion “consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.”

So as long as you act as though there is an unseen order which imposes moral obligations and limitations on human actions above and beyond the consequences that those actions have for other people (or perhaps animals), then we are in the realm of religion or quasi-religion, and potentially in the realm of sanctity and sacred order.

Now consider this famous quote from Leon Kass, widely considered to be a conservative bioethicist (but who in fact is a complex, non-religious intellectual who believes that religions contain useful wisdom):

Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder. [from "The Wisdom of Repugnance," reprinted here]

Kass’s argument is that our feelings of disgust toward cloning and other biomedical technologies should be attended to. They may not be decisive, but disgust is often a warning, a useful brake on the otherwise headlong rush into any sort of technology whose benefits (in a purely utilitarian calculation) outweigh its costs. Kass is an eloquent spokesman for the Purity/sanctity foundation as it is used on the right, even for those who don’t believe in God.

But now consider this quote, from E. O. Wilson:

We descend farther from heaven’s air if we forget how much the natural world means to us.

Might this be the key to understanding how the Left understands environmental issues in part using the Purity/sanctity foundation? Might nature and the natural world provide the “unseen order” that can act as a brake on capitalism, greed, and the headlong rush into consumerism, self-indulgence, and waste that has offended many liberals since the days of Thoreau at Walden pond? See the movie Avatar, to see the ultimate liberal moral fantasy about “Eywa,” the god of nature, actually defeating the evil corporate plunderers (and the U.S. Marines as well). And see this essay by Ross Douthat, on the pantheism of Avatar.

Can anyone understand Avatar who lacks all intuitions of purity/sanctity?

–Jon Haidt

Democrats could learn something from this graph.  Perhaps inspiring empathy in the electorate will motivate liberals to be politically active more than conservatives?  and how exactly might one appeal to empathy?  Perhaps by pushing poverty reduction programs, increases in foreign non-military aid, or putting a human face on health care reform?

btw, empathic concern is measured using Davis’ Interpersonal Reactivity Index which contains questions like “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.”  The next obvious step is to manipulate empathy and see if it has any impact on political behavior, or at least on the intention to engage in political behavior, as there is only so much that can be inferred from this correlation.  Still, it’s a promising research lead with interesting potential applications toward inspiring political interest.

- Ravi Iyer