How do we tell Right from Wrong? By using our Moral Foundations.

Episode 7 of the Building Bridges Series
3-minute read

Picture this: You’re walking down the street and see someone kick a dog. Your immediate reaction isn’t to stop and consider why the person might have been justified, or to think through the philosophical implications—you instantly feel that what you witnessed was wrong. But why? And why might someone else, seeing the same action, have a different emotional response?

The answer to these questions has everything to do with Moral Foundations—the deep, largely unconscious beliefs that shape how we judge right from wrong.

The Fundamental Question

Throughout this blog series, we’ve been exploring variations of a central question: How should we live? And perhaps more importantly, how can we live together peacefully and collaboratively, despite our differences?

We’ve seen how our Lizard and Wizard brains process information differently, how stories shape our reality more than facts, how confirmation bias filters what we’re willing to believe, and how our worldviews act as invisible lenses. All of these insights point toward a crucial truth: our moral judgments—our sense of right and wrong—aren’t based primarily on logic or careful reasoning.

They’re based on something much deeper: our moral foundations.

What Are Moral Foundations?

Moral foundations are our fundamental, intuitive beliefs about how things are supposed to work. Think of them as the bedrock values that sit beneath our conscious thoughts, quietly but powerfully influencing how we judge every situation we encounter.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt‘s Moral Foundations Theory suggests that humans have several innate, universal foundations that guide our moral intuitions. These foundations developed over millions of years of evolution to help groups of humans cooperate and survive together.

Here’s a key insight: these foundations operate largely below our conscious awareness. When you see that person kick the dog, you don’t consciously think, “This violates my care/harm foundation.” You simply feel—instantly and powerfully—that it’s wrong.

The Six Foundations

Research has identified six primary moral foundations that influence human judgment:

Care/Harm: Our sensitivity to suffering and our drive to protect the vulnerable. This foundation makes us value kindness, compassion, and protecting those who can’t protect themselves.

Fairness/Cheating: Our sense of justice and proportionality. This drives our concern with equal treatment, merit-based rewards, and playing by the rules.

Loyalty/Betrayal: Our commitment to our groups and teams. This foundation values solidarity, patriotism, and standing by those who stand by us.

Authority/Subversion: Our respect for hierarchy and legitimate leadership. This includes valuing tradition, respecting institutions, and following proper channels.

Sanctity/Degradation: Our sense of what is sacred or pure versus what is degrading or contaminating. This often shows up in religious contexts but also in secular concerns about dignity and reverence.

Liberty/Oppression: Our resistance to domination and our valuing of individual freedom. This foundation drives our desire for autonomy and our resistance to being controlled by others.

Why People See Morality So Differently

Here’s where it gets interesting: most of us actually share the same basic moral foundations, but we weight them very differently. Some people’s moral worldview is built primarily on care and fairness. Others place heavy emphasis on loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Still others prioritize liberty above almost everything else.

Even when we agree on which foundations matter, we often disagree on how to interpret and apply them to specific situations. Two people who both value fairness might have completely different views on whether equal outcomes or equal opportunities represent “true” fairness.

These differences aren’t random—they’re often shaped by our cultural backgrounds and tribal memberships. Different cultures and communities emphasize different foundations, creating distinct moral frameworks that feel completely natural to insiders and baffling to outsiders.

This explains why moral arguments often feel like people are speaking different languages. When someone who prioritizes care/harm debates someone who prioritizes loyalty/authority, they’re not just disagreeing about policy—they’re operating from completely different moral operating systems.

And here’s the kicker: we almost always feel like WE have the moral high ground. Since our moral foundations operate below conscious awareness, our positions feel obviously right to us while others’ positions seem obviously wrong.

The Political Connection

This framework also helps explain much of our current political polarization. Research suggests that people who identify as politically liberal tend to rely heavily on the care/harm and fairness/cheating foundations, with much less emphasis on the other four. Those who identify as conservative tend to value all six foundations more equally—though they often place particular emphasis on loyalty, authority, and sanctity foundations that liberals tend to underweight.

This difference has real implications for political messaging. Liberal politicians often focus their appeals on reducing harm and increasing fairness, while conservative politicians draw from a broader moral vocabulary that includes themes of loyalty to country, respect for tradition and authority, and protecting what’s sacred or pure.

Neither approach is inherently better—they’re different ways of organizing moral priorities. But when these different moral operating systems clash in the political arena, each side can feel like the other is either missing obvious moral truths or actively promoting immoral positions.

Remember my earlier discussion about worldview filters? Moral foundations are among the most powerful filters we have, determining not just what we pay attention to, but what we consider fundamentally right or wrong.

The Emotional Connection

Like our worldview filters, moral foundations are closely linked to emotional responses rather than rational analysis. When one of our foundations is activated—when we witness something that violates our sense of how things should be—we feel it before we think about it.

Our moral judgments are made intuitively and unconsciously, often in a split second, rather than through careful rational deliberation. This is our Lizard Brain at work again, making rapid judgments about moral situations based on these deep-seated intuitions. Our Wizard Brain then constructs logical-sounding reasons to justify what we already feel to be true.

This process helps explain why moral arguments are so heated and why facts alone rarely change someone’s moral position. We’re not really debating logic—we’re defending our most fundamental beliefs about how the world should work.

Moving Forward

Understanding moral foundations doesn’t mean abandoning your own moral convictions. Instead, it offers a framework for understanding why good, intelligent people can look at the same situation and reach completely different moral conclusions.

As author and dialogue expert Monica Guzman reminds us, “every belief is sacred to that person.” When someone holds a moral position that seems wrong to you, remember that it likely stems from deeply held foundations that feel as obviously right to them as yours do to you.

When you encounter someone whose moral judgment seems baffling to you, try asking: Which moral foundations might be driving their perspective? What do they care about that I might be overlooking?

This awareness won’t eliminate moral disagreements—and it probably shouldn’t. But it might help us disagree with more understanding and less animosity.

Next time you feel that instant moral reaction to something—that immediate sense of right or wrong—pause for a moment and ask: Which of my moral foundations just got activated? And how might someone with different priorities see this same situation?

FOR MORE:
If you’re interested in exploring your own morality, ethics, personality, and political preferences, here’s a link to a thought-provoking questionnaire at YourMorals.org. Check it out!

Also, if you’re the kind of person who learns really well with videos, you’ll probably appreciate this take on Where Does Morality Come From? (8 minutes) from @Adam-Friended. It includes some specific examples of Moral Foundations and some of the ways that they work into our daily lives:

Which moral foundations do you think guide your own judgments the most? Have you ever been surprised to discover that someone you respect has very different moral priorities than you do?

Up Next:
“The Art of Beautiful Questions”