Moral foundations in chronotypes: morningness predicts conservative morality

ABSTRACT

Recent studies suggest that chronopsychological variables may play an important role in moral behavior. In the present study, we aimed to test whether a person’s chronotype is associated with moral foundations profiles, distinguished in accordance with Haidt’s conceptualization. Morning-oriented people generally tended to rank the importance of the five basic moral foundations – Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity, highest. Moreover, morningness predicted the affiliation to the “conservative” cluster, as opposed to the “liberal” moral foundations profile. However, after conscientiousness was added to the model, the effect of chronotype was no longer significant. Thus, it seems that the more conservative morality of morning people stems mainly from their elevated conscientiousness. In addition to broadening the current knowledge about the morningness-eveningness’ nomological network, the present results may have some practical implications, e.g., for political marketing strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Morningness-eveningness
• chronotype
• moral foundations
• conservatism
• liberalism

Acknowledgements

The present study was supported by a grant no. 2014/13/D/HS6/02951 of the National Science Centre, Poland (awarded to M. Stolarski).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland [2014/13/D/HS6/02951].