Adult Age, Moral Foundations, and Moral Stereotyping

The main aim of the current study was to investigate the role of adult age in the moral stereotyping of moral foundations. The five core moral foundations of Moral Foundations Theory were measured, including the individualizing foundations of harm and fairness and the binding foundations of ingroup loyalty, authority, and purity.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions: a self-evaluation condition where participants completed the moral questionnaire as themselves, a condition where participants provided ratings as they believed a typical younger adult would answer them, and a condition where participants provided ratings as they believed a typical older adult would answer them. Experiment 1 included younger and older adult participants, and Experiment 2 included participants across adulthood (range 19 to 85).

Older adulthood was associated with higher individualizing foundations ratings (Experiment 1, Experiment 2) and higher binding foundations ratings (Experiment 1). Results found significant moral stereotyping, with participants tending to imagine older adults providing significantly lower ratings on individualizing moral foundations than younger adults but higher ratings on binding moral foundations. Finally, older adults were more accurate in their predictions of the moral foundations ratings of younger adults than vice versa.

The authors suggest that adult age group is a salient factor that people form generalizations about regarding moral foundations, which could then contribute to either real or perceived "generational divides" on various sociocultural issues.