Moving from is to ought: the relation between primals and moral foundations

ABSTRACT

Primal world beliefs theoretically operate outside of conscious awareness, influencing perception, appraisals of stimuli, and behaviours. Moral foundations theory proposes that intuitions are the primary determinants of moral decisions. Existing research suggests an important role for religiosity in influencing morality. In this online study of 271 Christians, we hypothesised the primals would predict moral foundations above and beyond the variance accounted for by religiosity. Our results indicate that a belief that the world is alive is the primary primal correlate of moral foundations; a belief that the world is enticing was also related to the moral foundations of care and loyalty. Our results also confirmed the important roles of intrinsic religiosity and fundamentalism found in previous studies. This study demonstrates the importance of primal beliefs in predicting moral foundations, even after accounting for the effects of religiosity. We discuss the implications for decreasing polarization and for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Primals
• moral foundations
• fundamentalism
• intrinsic religiosity

Acknowledgements

Our work was funded by New Visions in Theological Anthropology, Follow-on Funding, St. Andrews University, to Jason McMartin and Timothy Pickavance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of St Andrews: [Grant Number N/A].