Moral Foundations Theory

Moral foundations theory is a social psychology account of where moral reasoning comes from and why it differs between people and cultures. It holds that morality is not one thing but rests on several innate, modular foundations that human evolution prepared and culture then shapes. It was first proposed in 2004 by Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph, later developed with Jesse Graham, and builds on the cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder and on the idea that moral judgments arise from quick intuitions rather than slow reasoning. It began as a reaction against the stage theory of Lawrence Kohlberg. The foundations are usually listed as care and harm, fairness and cheating, loyalty and betrayal, authority and subversion, and sanctity and degradation, with liberty and oppression added as a sixth. The theory has been used to explain differences between political progressives, conservatives and libertarians. It is contested: some tests have replicated only weakly, and critics question the purity foundation and the reliance on moral values alone.