Exploring Cultural and Individual Differences in the Hierarchy of Moral Concern: Evidence From Student Samples Across 41 Cultural Groups

Abstract

ABSTRACT Many important historical and contemporary ethical debates (e.g., on slavery, abortion and environmental protection) reflect disagreements about what we owe to different groups of individuals. Recent work in moral psychology has uncovered a seemingly replicable hierarchy of moral concern, but these studies were conducted in a few countries from the Anglosphere, raising doubts about cross‐cultural generalizability. Here, we analysed a data set with 6561 university students from 41 cultural groups to explore cultural and individual variation in moral concern. We find that (1) on average, across the 41 cultural groups, 11 of the 13 rankings in the typical hierarchy of moral concern replicated, pointing to substantial cultural similarities; (2) groups that are culturally more similar to the United States showed a pattern that was more similar to the pattern observed in the initial US studies; and (3) cultural differences were most pronounced when examining people's relative concern for non‐human animals and the environment.