Moral Intuitions and Political Orientations among Norwegian Voters

Can people’s moral intuitions help understand political and ideological orientations in the population? Researchers from the Institute for Social Research presented Moral Foundations Theory and conducted the first study of MFT's explanatory power in a Norwegian context. They tested the validity of a Norwegian translation of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, the central survey instrument for measuring moral foundations, and found support for a five-factor model that also describes a clear divide between moral universalism (care and fairness) and moral particularism (ingroup loyalty, authority, and sanctity). The researchers further examined how these moral value configurations relate to political left-right orientation, party and party leadership preferences, and views on key political issues such as tax and immigration. They found, like previous research from other countries, that people with a left-wing orientation are high on moral universalism and low on particularism, while those with a right-wing orientation equate universalist and particularist values to a greater extent. Moral foundations explain more of the variation in political orientation than education, indicating that the theory can shed useful light on political behavior.

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

人类的道德直觉能否助力理解群体的政治与意识形态倾向？社会研究所（Institute for Social Research）的研究者们介绍了道德基础理论（Moral Foundations Theory, MFT），并首次在挪威语境下开展了针对该理论解释力的研究。研究者们对用于测量道德基础的核心调查工具——道德基础问卷（Moral Foundations Questionnaire, MFQ）的挪威语译本进行了效度检验，结果验证了五因素模型的合理性，该模型同时清晰划分了道德普遍主义（关怀与公平）与道德特殊主义（群体忠诚、权威与神圣性）的边界。研究者们进一步探究了这些道德价值构型与政治左右倾倾向、政党及政党领袖偏好，以及对税收、移民等核心政治议题的态度之间的关联。与其他国家此前的研究结果一致，他们发现左翼倾向人群的道德普遍主义得分更高，道德特殊主义得分更低；而右翼倾向人群则会在更大程度上兼顾普遍主义与特殊主义价值。相较于受教育程度，道德基础理论能够解释更多政治倾向的个体差异，这表明该理论可为政治行为研究提供极具价值的阐释视角。
本数据集采用知识共享署名4.0国际许可协议（Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International）授权发布。