By Kevin Manne

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Everyone shares a similar moral compass about right and wrong, but where liberals and conservatives disagree is about who counts as a victim, according to new research from the University at Buffalo School of Management.

Forthcoming in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the study introduces the concept of “assumptions of vulnerability” — people’s beliefs about who is especially susceptible to harm, mistreatment and victimization — and finds that these assumptions explain why people from the right and left reach such different moral conclusions.

“We all care about protecting the vulnerable from harm, but we make different assumptions about who is especially susceptible to victimization,” says study co-author Daniela Goya-Tocchetto, PhD, assistant professor of organization and human resources in the UB School of Management. “Liberals tend to see the world as split into two clear groups: those who are very vulnerable and those who aren’t vulnerable, while conservatives tend to think everyone is pretty equally at risk of being hurt, no matter what group they belong to.”

To measure people’s beliefs about vulnerability and their connections with political ideology and moral judgment, the researchers conducted 12 studies with more than 6,000 total participants across surveys, experiments, an implicit reaction-time test (a split-second assessment that that reveals hidden beliefs) and real charitable donation choices. 

Their findings show that liberals and conservatives largely agree on protecting groups and ideals who are vulnerable to harm. And the more they believe someone or something is vulnerable, the more they believe it is immoral to inflict real or symbolic harm to them. 

The difference lies in who and what they perceive as vulnerable. Liberals see the environment and minority groups (such as immigrants and racial minorities) as much more vulnerable than powerful people (such as CEOs) or religious principles and representations (such as the bible or a church). Conservatives view all these groups and ideals as equally vulnerable. 

The authors suggest this shared common ground for what is moral or immoral to do could be a practical starting point for fostering debates on divisive issues.

“Because disagreement stems from differing assumptions about who is vulnerable rather than fundamentally different moral values, efforts to reduce political conflict may work better by addressing perceptions of vulnerability directly, rather than trying to change someone’s underlying values — which aren’t that different to begin with,” says Goya-Tocchetto. “Messaging, media framing or education that highlights a target’s vulnerability or invulnerability could meaningfully shift how people judge a given issue or behavior.”

Goya-Tocchetto collaborated on the study with Jake Womick from California State University, Bakersfield; Emily Kubin from the University of Oxford; Nicolas Restrepo Ochoa from the University of California, Davis; Carlos Rebollar, Kyra Kapsaskis and B. Keith Payne from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Samuel Pratt from the University of California, Los Angeles; Helen Devine and Kurt Gray from Ohio State University; and Stephen Vaisey from Duke University.