Adolescent Ratings of Moral Violations Moderated by Gender and Political Identity

This brief report assessed adolescents’ (n = 1720, M = 13.87 years old, SD = 2.17) ratings of moral violations under a moral foundations theory (MFT) paradigm. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to control for the nested nature of school groups and explore relationships between gender, political identity, and moral violation ratings. Participants came from schools in predominantly conservative communities in the USA, and results show interaction effects between gender and conservative political identity for the physical harm to animals, physical harm to humans, emotional harm to humans, justice, and sanctity violation ratings. These findings provide a possible starting point for future studies of how sociocultural factors, internalized gender stereotypes, and political identity might influence moral intuition development during adolescence. © 2021, Associação Brasileira de Psicologia.