The Role of the Ingroup Moral Foundation on Message Responses: Two Experiments on Race and Nationality

Abstract

To address the role of the ingroup loyalty moral foundation, this article reports on two experiments. The first experiment manipulated the race of the beneficiary in an organ donation message. The results showed that White participants with strong ingroup loyalty (vs. weak) did not respond more negatively or positively toward a Black, a Latino, or a White beneficiary on empathic emotions, message evaluation, or attitudes toward organ distribution. The second experiment manipulated the beneficiary’s nationality. The results showed that American participants with strong ingroup loyalty toward the United States (vs. weak) exhibited less favorable message evaluation and less empathic emotions toward a Mexican beneficiary than an American beneficiary. No interaction effects were observed between ingroup loyalty and the American and Canadian beneficiaries. The moral foundation of care predicted message evaluation, empathic emotions, and attitude toward organ distribution in both experiments.

Keywords:

• Care and harm
• cognitive judgment
• emotions
• ingroup loyalty
• moral foundations theory
• organ donation

Notes

1 Means, standard deviations, and Pearson correlations are available from the author.