Five moral foundations as nonmoral residuals. An alternative model for MFQ

Haidt and Joseph’s Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) is one of the most influential theory of morality using the Moral Foundation Questionnaire (MFQ) to map differences in human morality across the cultures and within societies. The theory assumes five module-like moral domains developed in human evolutionary history upon which are culturally different moralities built: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. These domains are embedded in two broad areas of Individualizing and Binding morality. In the former it is an individual at a center of harming and unfair treatment and in the latter, it is the community binding people into mutual relationships under domains of loyalty, authority, and purity in the spotlight. MFQ was mostly used to shed a light on a link between morality and political ideology, but its use is much more diverse including religion. However, in the studies using MFQ, there is usually a poor fit between the five moral domains model and the data indicated by low CFI and TLI indices favoring null model over the five-factor model with five distinct moral domains. The crucial question is why are these indices so low and how to explain this fact? We hypothesized that five-factor model does not correspond the way people think about the moral issues as captured by MFQ. Thus, we tested enhanced and more suitable alternative model based on recent development in the factorial statistics, namely two-tier model and employed more efficient measures of internal reliability (Omega Index, Hierarchical Omega Index and Explained Common Variance). A two-tier model achieved better results than a previously employed five-factor model. Results indicate an overestimation of the five moral domains model in the research as to discern Individualizing and Binding morality seems to be more appropriate. Broader implications of results for MFQ, MFT, and research of morality will be discussed

Orthogonal-compatibility effects confound automatic imitation:implications for measuring self-other distinction

Accurate distinction between self and other representations is fundamental to a range of social cognitive capacities, and understanding individual differences in this ability is an important aim for psychological research. This demands accurate measures of self-other distinction (SOD). The present study examined an experimental paradigm employed frequently to measure SOD in the action domain; specifically, we evaluated the rotated finger-action stimuli used increasingly to measure automatic imitation (AI). To assess the suitability of these stimuli, we compared AI elicited by different action stimuli to the performance on a perspective-taking task believed to measure SOD in the perception domain. In two separate experiments we reveal three important findings: firstly, we demonstrate a strong confounding influence of orthogonal-compatibility effects on AI elicited by certain rotated stimuli. Second, we demonstrate the potential for this confounding influence to mask important relationships between AI and other measures of SOD; we observed a relationship between AI and perspective-taking performance only when the former was measured in isolation of orthogonality compatibility. Thirdly, we observed a relationship between these two performance measures only in a sub-group of individuals exhibiting a pure form of AI. Furthermore, this relationship revealed a self-bias in SOD-reduced AI was associated with increased egocentric misattributions in perspective taking. Together, our findings identify an important methodological consideration for measures of AI and extend previous research by showing an egocentric style of SOD across action and perception domains

Vision after 53 Years of Blindness

Several studies have shown that visual recovery after blindness that occurs early in life is never complete. The current study investigated whether an extremely long period of blindness might also cause a permanent impairment of visual performance, even in a case of adult-onset blindness. We examined KP, a 71-year-old man who underwent a successful sight-restoring operation after 53 years of blindness. A set of psychophysical tests designed to assess KP's face perception, object recognition, and visual space perception abilities were conducted six months and eight months after the surgery. The results demonstrate that regardless of a lengthy period of normal vision and rich pre-accident perceptual experience, KP did not fully integrate this experience, and his visual performance remained greatly compromised. This was particularly evident when the tasks targeted finer levels of perceptual processing. In addition to the decreased robustness of his memory representations, which was hypothesized as the main factor determining visual impairment, other factors that may have affected KP's performance were considered, including compromised visual functions, problems with perceptual organization, deficits in the simultaneous processing of visual information, and reduced cognitive abilities