The brain: Morality is processed differently by liberals and conservatives

India West News Agency

CHRISTMAS BARBARA, CA – A recent study led by René Weber of UC Santa Barbara examined the neurological basis of moral judgments, revealing insights into how the brain processes moral versus non-moral issues and supporting a pluralistic view of morality. Traditionally, philosophers and psychologists have debated whether moral judgments are unified by a single principle, as moral monists claim, or whether they vary across categories, as pluralists claim.

This study used the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), which identifies six universal moral foundations: care/harm, honesty/deception, freedom/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. These foundations are further grouped into ‘individualizing’ foundations (care/harm and fairness/deception), aimed at protecting individual rights, and ‘binding’ foundations (loyalty, authority and sanctity), which emphasize group cohesion.

The study followed 64 participants through brain scans as they rated behavior that violated moral and social norms. The findings showed distinct brain patterns associated with each moral basis, indicating that moral reasoning is complex and recruits multiple neural regions rather than a single “moral center.” For example, moral transgressions, such as deception, activated a network involving the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction—areas associated with understanding the perspectives of others, or “theory of mind.”

Interestingly, brain activity differed depending on the type of moral issue. Transgressions of loyalty, authority, and sanctity led to heightened responses in regions associated with evaluating the actions of others, reinforcing MFT’s division between individual and group-oriented moral foundations. The researchers also observed differences in moral evaluations between liberals and conservatives: liberals responded more strongly to individualizing foundations, while conservatives responded better to binding foundations. This neurological evidence is consistent with survey data suggesting that political preferences shape moral sensitivity to different foundations.

Using a machine learning model, the team was able to predict which moral foundation a participant was evaluating based on their brain activity, highlighting that different moral categories have unique neural signatures. The findings suggest that while moral judgments share a general neurological framework, they are distinguished by specific activations in the brain.

This research sheds light on how moral reasoning works at both the individual and group levels and reflects broader social and political values. By illustrating the brain’s complex involvement in moral judgments, the study underlines that moral values ​​are deeply embedded in our neurological architecture. These insights help explain how different emphases on different moral foundations influence social behavior, group identity, and political polarization, and illustrate that moral reasoning is both universal and different across individuals and groups.