Sunday 3 June 2012

Testing my morals

I have just encountered a website that claims you can learn about your own morality, ethics, and/or values, while also contributing to scientific research.


You will have to register to have your results recorded, but it is a speedy enough process, at which point you are free to take the following surveys:


Sacredness Survey - What would you do for a million dollars?
Moral Motivation Scale - What motivates you to act morally?
Systems and Feelings - Which kind of understanding do you prefer?
Personal and Social Power - What are your tendencies and preferences when it comes to being in positions of power?
Ethnocentrism Measure - What are your attitudes toward your own ethnic group?
Moral Behavior Assessment - How moral or immoral do you consider a list of behaviours?
Trait ratings - How do you perceive your traits and abilities?
Satisfaction with Life Scale - How happy are you these days?


I shall be publishing my results here as I work through each survey. I should imagine I shall also be making some notes.

Here goes...

1. Sacredness survey

The scale you completed was the "Moral Foundations Sacredness Scale," developed by Jesse Graham and Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia.

The scale is a measure of how much you value each of the five psychological foundations of morality that seem to be found across cultures: 1) Harm/care, 2) Fairness/reciprocity, 3) Ingroup/loyalty, 4) Authority/respect, and 5) Purity/sanctity. We assess your values indirectly here, by asking you how much money it would take for you to commit actions that violate each of these foundations. We are particularly interested in whether you say there is ANY amount of money that would persuade you to do each action.

The idea behind the scale is that different moral foundations may be sacred for some people and not for others. By "sacred" we mean that you would not for any amount of money violate the principles of that foundation. For instance, if ingroup loyalty were a sacred value to you then you would not betray (or perhaps even criticize publicly) your family, social groups or nation, even for a million dollars. In this scale we included a range of minor to severe violations, so it is likely that you did not choose the "never for any amount of money" option all that often. Odds are you have already taken the "Moral Foundations Questionnaire." Your answers on this survey -- about sacredness -- will let us see whether the same general patterns hold across different ways of measuring moral values. In particular, we want to test our prediction that issues related to harm and fairness are more sacred to liberals, whereas issues related to ingroup, authority, and purity are more sacred to conservatives.
The figures below show your average response for each foundation (in green) compared to those of the average Liberal (in blue) and the average Conservative (in red) website visitor. Because we can't treat "never, for any amount of money" as a dollar figure, we just scored your responses on an 8 point scale, where $0 is scored as "1" and "never for any amount of money" is scored as "8". Higher bars indicate that you care about that foundation more strongly.


To truly treat something as sacred means that you would not violate that value for any amount of money. The number of times you chose that response, for each foundation, is shown below (compared to the number of times that liberals and conservatives chose the "never" response.) Numbers here run from 0 (you never chose "never") to 5 (you chose "never" all 5 times, indicating that the foundation is as sacred as could be to you).







For the items in which you responded that you would do something for a certain monetary amount, your "price" is displayed below. (Of course, if you chose "never" one or more times for a foundation, then the price below is meaningless) [Edit - So it would appear that I am more moral than either Reps or Dems in 'Harm' and 'Fairness', but considerably more immoral in 'purity', 'authority' and 'ingroup'. I am an irreverent type, I can live with that.]

* It would take an average of $500 to get you to violate the HARM foundation.
* It would take an average of $50 to get you to violate the FAIRNESS foundation.
* It would take an average of $2020 to get you to violate the INGROUP foundation.
* It would take an average of $20 to get you to violate the AUTHORITY foundation.
* It would take an average of $20222 to get you to violate the PURITY foundation.

2. Moral motivation scale

The scale you completed was the Moral Motivation Scale created by Pete Meindl and Erica Beall at the University of Southern California.

The scale is a measure of the degree to which people are motivated to act morally by internal and external factors. An example of an internal motivational factor is the drive to achieve (or maintain) one's happiness through acting morally. An example of an external motivational factor is the drive to act morally in order to improve (or maintain) relationships.

The idea behind the scale is that people vary on the degree to which they experience internal and external moral motivations. Though we suspect that some people are more internally (rather than externally) motivated to act morally, we suspect that everyone is motivated to act morally by internal and external factors. We expect that internal vs. external motivation might relate to who gives to charity in a more public vs. a more private way or who is more likely to be honest when in a group setting vs. a private setting. As well, some national surveys have shown that women make harsher moral judgments than men, and we expect that that might reflect higher moral motivations.


Your Score (in green):


3. Systems and feelings test

The scale you completed was a combination of the Empathizing and Systemizing scales, created by Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge University. (We took 20 items from each scale.)

The scales measure two abilities or preferences on which human minds differ. Empathizing is "the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion." Systemizing is "the drive to analyze the variables in a system, and to derive the underlying rules that govern the behavior of the system." In short, empathizing is about understanding the social world whereas systemizing is about understanding the world of inanimate objects and nature.

The idea behind the scale is that Baron-Cohen has found large sex differences on both traits. Men tend to score higher than women on systemizing, and lower than women on empathizing. But Baron-Cohen's main interest is not sex differences, it is autism. He has found that people with mild autism or Asperger's syndrome seem to have a kind of "extreme male brain." They love mechanical and classificatory systems, and find it very difficult to get inside people's heads and understand emotional reactions. We are interested in Baron-Cohen's work for political psychology because there are two competing stereotypes about liberals and conservatives. On one hand, conservatives are thought to be a bit more "macho" or masculine than liberals (at least for men), but on the other hand, many political theorists have linked liberalism with a tendency to abstraction, and to thinking about society as a system that can be managed and optimized. We therefore can't predict whether liberals or conservatives will show the more "male" pattern of lower empathy and higher systemizing. Or might liberals score higher on both empathizing and systemizing? Will the story be different for men and women? Let's see!

The figure below shows your average score (in green) on the systemizing items, compared to those made by the average Liberal (in blue) respondent and the average Conservative (in red) respondent. Scores range from 1 to 4, and higher numbers indicate a higher degree of systemizing.



The figure below shows your average score (in green) on the empathizing items, compared to those made by the average Liberal (in blue) respondent and the average Conservative (in red) respondent. Scores range from 1 to 4, and higher numbers indicate a higher degree of empathizing.


4. Personal and social power

The scale you completed was the "Need for Power" scale.

The scale is a measure of how interested people are in gaining and exercising power in social situations, and how much power they feel they have.

The idea behind this scale is that power is psychologically relevant to many aspects of people's lives, especially when it comes to how they interact with others. In psychology, power is often defined socially, meaning that it arises as a result of the way two or more people interact with one another. Some important aspects of social power that have been identified by previous research include: control over other people's access to valuable resources; the ability to influence other people's behavior and ideas; the ability to administer rewards and punishments to others; and being in a position to evaluate or critique other people's work or ideas. Psychologists have shown that in many important ways, individuals with more power in a given situation tend to think and behave differently from people with less power. For example, higher power causes people to focus more on anticipated gains than on risks or potential losses when making decisions. When it comes to ethics, powerful people tend to make moral judgments that are more heavily based on absolute rules rather than on specific consequences. People with higher power are also less likely to take the perspective of the others with whom they interact, and more likely to base their actions on their own subjective experiences and feelings. The questions in this survey are designed to measure people's attitudes about power, particularly the extent to which they tend to want to be in positions of power, and the extent to which they find the exercise of social power to be a gratifying experience.

Your Score  (in green) :


5. Ethnocentrism measure

[Note - I identified myself as a Brythonic Celt]

The scale you completed was the Ethnocentrism scale, developed by Bizumic, B., Duckitt, J., Popadic, D., Dru, V., & Krauss, S. (2009).

The scale measures six dimensions: Group Cohesion, Devotion, Preference, Superiority, Purity, and Exploitativeness. These dimensions are defined as follows:

Group Cohesion
Belief that one's own cultural or ethnic group should be highly integrated, cooperative, and unified.
Vs.
Belief that one should, as much as possible, allow independence, dissent, and individual expression within one's cultural or ethnic group.

Devotion
A strong, ardent, and uncritical dedication and loyalty to one's cultural or ethnic group, and its ways and values, and readiness to suffer any kind of sacrifices for the sake of one's group interests.
Vs.
Lack of strong dedication and uncritical loyalty to one's cultural or ethnic group, and its ways and values, and lack of willingness to sacrifice for the sake of one's group interests.

Preference
A tendency to prefer, like, and trust one's own ethnic or cultural group and its members and their cultural ways over other ethnic or cultural groups and members of other groups.
Vs.
Not preferring one's own culture or ethnic group to others'; liking, trusting people from other groups as much as people from one's own; being as comfortable with people from other cultural or ethnic groups as with people from one's own group.

Superiority
Belief that one's own culture or ethnic group is special and unique, and is objectively better than or superior to others on the dimensions of comparison important to that group.
Vs.
Belief that one's own culture or ethnic group is quite ordinary and average and not better than or superior to other groups.

Purity
A desire to maintain 'purity' of one's cultural or ethnic group, intolerance of cultural diversity, and a desire to maintain social distance from other peoples to the extent that they are culturally different from the ingroup.
Vs.
An expression of the wish to mix, live, work, and interact with people from different cultures and ethnic groups and to appreciate their differences.

Exploitativeness
Belief that one's own cultural or ethnic group interests are always of the first and foremost importance without any respect for the views and positions of human beings in other groups and consequences for their welfare.
Vs.
Belief that one's cultural or ethnic group actions should be carried out with respect for the welfare of human beings from other cultural or ethnic groups, avoiding any negative consequences for them, such as harm, manipulation, or exploitation.

Ethnocentrism is a belief that one's own ethnic or cultural group is of central importance. It can be in a way seen as individual self-esteem/narcissism that is translated to one's ethno-cultural group. It is a widely studied construct in psychology and many social sciences, and is implicated in many important phenomena, such as intergroup conflict, and war. Cross-cultural research in North America, Europe, and Australasia has shown that ethnocentrism consists of four intergroup expressions, which are concerned with the view that one's ethnicity or culture is more important than others (it involves preference for one's own ethnicity over others, belief in the superiority of one's ethnic group, wish for ethnic purity, and approval for exploiting other ethnic groups or cultures) and two intragroup expressions, which are concerned with the view that one's own ethnic or cultural group is more important than its individual members (it involves needs for group cohesion and unconditional devotion to one's ethno-cultural group). Research has shown that ethnocentrism tends to be generally higher in males, religious individuals, and narcissistic individuals, those who approve of nationalism, anthropocentrism, and wars, but lower in those who have open-minded personalities.

The reason why we are interested in this is that we want to disentangle the concept of ethnocentrism from related concepts such as ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity. Further, we would like to examine the antecedents of ethnocentrism from both a values and personality perspective. While ethnocentrism may be associated with negativity toward others, it may also be associated with positive feelings toward one's own group. We would like to examine which aspects of ethnocentrism predict which other aspects of positive and negative feelings toward other groups.

The graph below shows your scores on these scales. The scores range from 1 to 9 and higher scores indicate stronger endorsements. Your score is shown in green (1st bar) . The score of the average Male survey respondent is shown in brown (2nd bar) and that of the average Female respondent is in orange (3rd bar) . 



6. Moral behaviour assessment

The scale you completed was the "Multiple Moral Judgments Scale" created by Pete Meindl.

The scale is a measure of the degree to which people consider violations of honesty, compassion, liberty, and purity to be morally wrong. People of all cultural and ethnic backgrounds seem to consider violations of honesty and compassion to be highly immoral; there seems to be more variability in the degree to which people consider violations of purity and liberty to be morally wrong.

The idea behind the scale is that people's moral judgments of behaviors likely differ according to gender and political orientation, but these differences probably depend on the types of moral principles (e.g., honesty, liberty, purity, compassion) that a behavior violates. For instance, we suspect that conservatives consider violations of liberty and purity to be more morally bad than do liberals.

Below you will find your scores (as well as the average scores for liberals and conservatives) for each type of moral violation. The higher your score, the more permissible you consider that type of moral violation.

Your Score (in green):


7. Trait ratings

The scale you just completed was a survey about self-evaluations, building on past work by David Dunning and colleagues.
We are interested in examining whether liberals and conservatives rate themselves differently across a wide range of traits and abilities. Specifically, we are investigating the proportion of participants who rate themselves as above-average on positive traits, and below-average on negative traits.
The graph below shows your scores separately for self-evaluations on three of the traits: Happy, Laziness, and being a Good driver. The scores range from -2 to +2. Positive scores indicate that you rated yourself as more likely than the average person to possess that kind of trait, and negative scores indicate that you rated yourself as less likely to possess that kind of trait. Your score is shown in green (1st bar). The score of the average liberal respondent is shown in blue and the score of the average conservative is shown in red. (Note, for scores of zero, you will not see a bar at all.)


8. Satisfaction with life scale

The scale you completed on the first page was the "Satisfaction with Life Scale," developed by Ed Diener, the leading researcher on happiness, at the University of Illinois.

The scale is a measure of your general happiness level. Despite its simplicity, the scale has been found to do a good job of measuring people's general state of "subjective well-being." It is widely used, in many nations.
We are interested in measuring happiness on this site because many studies have found that religious people are happier than non-believers, and some have found that politcally conservative people are slightly happier than are political liberals, even after controlling statistically for religiosity. A recent Gallup survey found that religiosity was associated with better mental health for Republicans, but it didn't make a difference for Democrats. We want to investigate these complex relationships among happiness, morality, religion, and ideology.

In the graph below, your score is shown in green. The scores of all people who have taken the scale on our site and who say that they go to religious services never, or just a few times a year, are shown in blue. The scores of all people who have taken the scale on our site and who said (during registration) that they go to religious services a few times a month or more are shown in red. Scores run from 1 (the lowest possible score, least happy) to 7 (the highest possible score, most happy).



In addition, we asked you some questions on the second page about your mental health. That recent Gallup poll showed that conservatives and religious people report having better mental health when asked using a single question ("how would you rate your mental health?"). We want to see if their finding holds up using a more specific scale, so we asked you to report on a variety of symptoms related to depression and anxiety, which are the most common kinds of mental health symptoms that people report. In the graph below, your score is shown in green. High scores mean MORE mental health complaints. Scores run from 1 (the lowest possible score, no symptoms at all) to 5 (the highest possible score, people who responded "extremely" to all items). As before, the blue bar shows the score of the less religious people; the red bar shows the average score of the most religious people.


That, then, is that

I shall come back to this to explain why some of the results turned out as they have. Just not right now.

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