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DOI: 10.1177/0956797612449177
2013 24: 56 originally published online 10 December 2012Psychological Science
Matthew Feinberg and Robb Willer
The Moral Roots of Environmental Attitudes
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Psychological Science
24(1) 56­–62
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0956797612449177
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Recent decades have seen ever-increasing polarization on
environmental issues, with liberals positioning themselves as
guardians of the environment and conservatives generally
opposing reforms intended to protect the environment (e.g.,
Dunlap, Xiao, & McCright, 2001; Feygina, Jost, & Goldsmith,
2010; McCright & Dunlap, 2011). One reason for this polarization
may lie in differing perceptions of whether environmental
concern is a moral issue; such views may emerge from
the type of moral rhetoric with which environmental concerns
are typically discussed. In the studies reported here, we investigated
the possibility that liberals, but not conservatives, view
environmental issues in moral terms because of a tendency for
these issues to be discussed in terms of harm- and care-based
morality, moral concerns that resonate more with American
liberals than with American conservatives (Graham, Haidt, &
Nosek, 2009). Furthermore, we explored the possibility that
conservatives are more likely to adopt proenvironmental positions
if these positions are discussed in moral terms that resonate
with their moral commitments.
Morality and Environmental Attitudes
A multidisciplinary body of research attests to the powerful
sway that moral concerns have over individuals’ attitudes and
behavior (Chen, Pillutla, & Yao, 2009; Lakoff, 1996). When a
person’s attitudes are rooted in morality, they become intertwined
with intuition and emotion (Haidt, 2001). The individual
is assured that such an attitude is correct, responding
viscerally to counterattitudinal challenges (Mullen & Skitka,
2006). Morality is especially influential in the formation of
political attitudes. Moral convictions and the emotions they
evoke shape political attitudes (Emler, 2003; Mullen & Skitka,
2006; Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005) and spark increased
political engagement (Marietta, 2008). Past studies have demonstrated
that moral convictions are strong predictors of voting
preferences and turnout in presidential elections for both
liberals and conservatives (Morgan, Skitka, & Wisneski, 2010;
Skitka & Bauman, 2008).
Specific to environmental attitudes, past research suggests
that perceiving environmental issues in moral terms is related
to the valence and strength of individuals’ environmental attitudes
(e.g., Stern, Dietz, Abel, Guagnano, & Kalof, 1999).
Such research, often grounded in the Schwartz norm-activation
model (S. H. Schwartz, 1977), demonstrates that the more
individuals recognize the consequences of environmental
Corresponding Author:
Matthew Feinberg, Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and
Education, Stanford University, 306 Jordan Hall, Stanford, CA 94305
E-mail: mfeinber@stanford.edu
The Moral Roots of Environmental
Attitudes
Matthew Feinberg1
and Robb Willer2
1
Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, Stanford University, and
2
Sociology Department, University of California, Berkeley
Abstract
Americans’ attitudes about the environment are highly polarized, but it is unclear why this is the case. We conducted five
studies to examine this issue. Studies 1a and 1b demonstrated that liberals, but not conservatives, view the environment in
moral terms and that this tendency partially explains the relation between political ideology and environmental attitudes.
Content analyses of newspaper op-eds (Study 2a) and public-service announcements (Study 2b) found that contemporary
environmental discourse is based largely on moral concerns related to harm and care, which are more deeply held by
liberals than by conservatives. However, we found that reframing proenvironmental rhetoric in terms of purity, a moral
value resonating primarily among conservatives, largely eliminated the difference between liberals’ and conservatives’
environmental attitudes (Study 3). These results establish the importance of moralization as a cause of polarization on
environmental attitudes and suggest that reframing environmental discourse in different moral terms can reduce the gap
between liberals and conservatives in environmental concern.
Keywords
morality, policymaking, personal values, scientific communication
Received 12/19/11; Revision accepted 4/17/12
Research Article
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Morality and Environmental Attitudes	 57
degradation and the more they feel personally responsible for
such degradation, the more they view proenvironmental
behavior as moral (e.g., Van Liere & Dunlap, 1978). Additionally,
individuals who score higher on self-transcendent values
(i.e., placing the interests of other people ahead of their own)
are more likely to feel moral obligations toward the environment
(Karp, 1996; Schultz & Zelezny, 1998).
Messaging,Appeals, and Framing
Because morality plays such an influential role in attitude formation,
it is not surprising that moral appeals can be a powerful
tool for persuasion. Studies show that moral appeals
convince individuals to restrain selfishness, for example, by
complying with tax laws (R. D. Schwartz & Orleans, 1967)
and cooperating in social-dilemma situations (Chen et al.,
2009; Martichuski & Bell, 1991). Likewise, moral appeals
increase the likelihood that individuals will donate blood
(Ferrari & Leippe, 1992). In the realm of politics in particular,
moral appeals are a central tool used by political actors on
both sides of the political spectrum to present their positions
more favorably (e.g., Lakoff, 1996).
Furthermore, research on message framing supports the
logic of segmentation, the idea that different groups of people
will be more or less persuaded by different messages. Framing
involves presenting an issue in different ways to alter preferences
or choices (for a review, see Levin, Schneider, & Gaeth,
1998), but how effective a frame is can depend on the characteristics
of the people exposed to the message (e.g., Boote,
1981). Looking at moral suasion in particular, research
shows that moral arguments resonate differently depending on
one’s stage of moral development (Holland, 1976). This past
research suggest that moral appeals about environmental
issues tend to be more successful than nonmoral appeals about
environmental issues, but especially when the moral principles
invoked resonate with the individuals targeted by the
appeal.
Moral Foundations and Political Attitudes
Moral-foundations researchers have investigated the similarities
and differences in morality among individuals across cultures
(Haidt & Josephs, 2004). These researchers have found
evidence for five fundamental domains of human morality,
which they labeled “harm/care” (concerns about the caring for
and protection of other people), “fairness/reciprocity” (concerns
about treating other people fairly and upholding justice),
“in-group/loyalty” (concerns about group membership and
loyalty), “authority/respect” (concerns about hierarchy, obedience,
and duty), and “purity/sanctity” (concerns about preserving
purity and sacredness often characterized by a disgust
reaction).
Recent research has demonstrated that liberals and conservatives
possess different moral profiles regarding the five
moral foundations. Overall, liberals endorse the harm/care and
fairness/reciprocity domains more than conservatives do.
Conversely, conservatives endorse in-group/loyalty, authority/
respect, and purity/sanctity more than liberals do (Graham
et al., 2009). Graham et al. (2009) found robust evidence that
these different moral profiles manifest themselves in the different
moral language used by liberals and conservatives.
The Present Research
In the present research, we applied research on moral foundations
to the study of moral suasion and environmental attitudes.
Drawing on past research on moral appeals and moral
foundations, we hypothesized that liberals express greater levels
of environmental concern than do conservatives in part
because liberals are more likely to view environmental issues
in moral terms. We argue that these differences result from a
tendency for harm- and care-based moral arguments, bases of
moral reasoning that are more compelling to liberals than to
conservatives, to dominate environmental rhetoric. This reasoning
suggests that the association between liberalism and
environmental concern is not a necessary one. Rather, whether
or not individuals embrace proenvironmental attitudes should
be partly determined by the type of moral appeals they are
exposed to. Thus, we hypothesized that exposing conservatives
to proenvironmental appeals based on moral concerns
that uniquely resonate with them will lead them to view the
environment in moral terms and be more supportive of proenvironmental
efforts. We conducted five studies to test these
claims.
Study 1
Although past research has shown that liberalism and perceiving
environmental issues in moral terms are both robust predictors
of proenvironmental attitudes (e.g., McCright &
Dunlap, 2011; Van Liere & Dunlap, 1978), no research has
directly tested the possibility that environmental polarization
is driven in part by a tendency for liberals to perceive environmental
issues in moral terms and for conservatives to view
such issues from a nonmoral perspective. In Studies 1a and 1b,
we tested this possibility.
Study 1a
Method. One hundred eighty-seven participants (61 male,
126 female) were recruited from 15 different U.S. cities via
regional craigslist.org Web sites. Recruitment advertisements
offered a chance to win a $50 gift certificate in exchange for
participation.
After completing a demographic questionnaire that
included a single-item measure of political ideology ranging
from 1 (extremely liberal) to 7 (extremely conservative), M =
2.93, SD = 1.31, participants read one of three vignettes
describing an average day of a target individual. The vignettes
were identical, describing a day’s activities for the target. The
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58		 Feinberg, Willer
one difference was whether or not, after eating his lunch, the
target chose to recycle his plastic water bottle (recycle condition)
or throw it away as garbage (not-recycle condition). In
the control condition, there was no mention of this bottle. Participants
then rated the target on how moral they perceived
him to be overall on a scale from 1 (not moral at all) to 6
(extremely moral).1
Results. We conducted a multiple regression analysis, entering
dummy-coded variables representing experimental condition,
political ideology (continuous), and the interaction of
each dummy-coded variable with political ideology as predictors
of morality ratings. The analysis yielded a significant difference
between the Not-Recycle Condition × Ideology
interaction and both the Control Condition × Ideology, β =
−0.19, p = .05, and the Recycle Condition × Ideology interactions,
β = −0.21, p < .05 (see Fig. 1). Simple-slopes analyses
revealed that more liberal participants (1 SD below the mean)
in the not-recycle condition rated the target as significantly
less moral (M = 3.59) than did their liberal counterparts in
either the recycle condition (M = 4.54), b = 0.95, p < .001, or
the control condition (M = 4.31), b = 0.72, p < .001. We found
no significant differences across conditions for more conservative
participants (1 SD above the mean), ps > .15.
Study 1b
Method. Four hundred seventy-six undergraduate students
(138 male, 338 female) participated in Study 1b for course
credit. As part of an online attitudes survey, participants
reported their political ideology using the same scale as in
Study 1a, M = 3.05, SD = 1.25, and then indicated how important
it was to behave in an environmentally friendly way on a
scale from 1 (not at all) to 6 (extremely). Participants were
then asked to explain their answer by writing two to three sentences
on the topic. Coders blind to study hypotheses coded
participant responses on how much each response involved
“moral reasons” and “perceptions of right and wrong”; these
items were averaged together to form a morality composite
(α = .93).
Results. Correlational analyses yielded a significant association
between liberalism and the morality composite (r = .14, p <
.01), and between liberalism and proenvironmental attitudes
(r = .28, p < .001); these findings parallel the results of past
studies (e.g., Feygina et al., 2010; McCright & Dunlap, 2003).
A mediation analysis (Preacher & Hayes, 2008) revealed that
perception of the environment as a moral issue was a significant
partial mediator of the relationship between liberalism and environmental
attitudes (95% confidence interval = [−0.07, −0.02]).
The findings from Studies 1a and 1b, therefore, support our
claim that liberals but not conservatives view environmental
issues in moral terms and that this helps explain liberals’ stronger
proenvironmental attitudes.
Study 2
Why do liberals but not conservatives perceive environmental
issues in moral terms? We argue that one factor likely driving
this discrepancy is that environmental issues are typically discussed
in terms of harm- and care-based moral concerns—
moral values endorsed more strongly by liberals than by
conservatives. To test this hypothesis, we conducted content
analyses of the types of moral rhetoric used in both recent
public-service announcements (Study 2a) and newspaper opeds
(Study 2b). We explored the extent to which the arguments
made in these media messages employed the five moral foundations,
hypothesizing that harm- and care-based morality
would be the most commonly employed moral domain.
Study 2a
Method. We searched youtube.com for videos that presented
persuasive messages regarding the environment but did not
sell a product or advertise a company. Our search used the
keywords global warming, pollution, climate change, environmentalism,
environment, environmentalist, and all possible
combinations of these words. We then limited our search,
retaining only videos that had a minimum of 10,000 views,
were professionally made, and were no more than 2 min long.
Using these criteria, we collected 66 total videos. Three coders
then indicated whether each video was a persuasive message
(i.e., was clearly intended to influence viewers’ environmental
attitudes), and we retained only the 51 videos that fit this
criterion.
5.0
4.5
4.0
MoralityRating
3.5
3.0
Liberal
2.5
Conservative
Political Ideology
Control Condition
Not-Recycle Condition
Recycle Condition
Fig. 1.  Results from Study 1a: mean morality rating as a function of political
ideology (liberal = 1 SD below the mean; conservative = 1 SD above the
mean) and experimental condition. Error bars represent ±1 SEM.
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Morality and Environmental Attitudes	 59
Five coders blind to study hypotheses coded the 51 videos,
indicating the extent to which each video was grounded in the
five moral domains. Each rating was made on a 7-point scale
ranging from 0 (not at all) to 6 (extremely). We formed composite
scores across coders for each of the five moral domains
(average α = .73).
Results.Arepeated measures analysis of variance in which we
entered scores for all five of the moral domains yielded a significant
omnibus effect, F(4, 200) = 14.00, p < .001. Comparisons
between the harm/care moral domain and the four other
domains yielded significant differences, which reveals that the
content of the videos reflected harm/care moral content (M =
3.66) more than fairness/reciprocity content (M = 2.43),
F(1, 50) = 36.82, p < .001; in-group/loyalty content (M =
2.69), F(1, 50) = 14.67, p < .001; authority/respect content
(M = 2.23), F(1, 50) = 25.57, p < .001; or purity/sanctity content
(M = 2.21), F(1, 50) = 53.90, p < .001.
Study 2b
Method. We identified the 402 newspaper op-eds printed
between January 1, 2009, and March 1, 2011, in the New York
Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today that contained the
keywords environment, climate change, global warming, or
pollution. We then eliminated any articles that were not specifically
relevant to the ecological environment (e.g., articles
that talked about the “political environment”) or were not
designed to persuade readers about some position on an environmental
issue (e.g., energy conservation, climate change,
pollution). This resulted in a total of 232 articles remaining.
Seven coders blind to study hypotheses indicated the extent
to which each of the 232 articles used rhetoric grounded in the
five moral domains. Each rating was made on a 7-point scale
ranging from 0 (not at all) to 6 (extremely). We formed composite
scores across coders for each of the moral domains
(average α = .73).
Results. A repeated measures analysis of variance comparing
scores for all five of the moral domains yielded a significant
omnibus effect, F(4, 924) = 66.45, p < .001. Simple comparisons
showed that the op-eds contained more moral content
related to the harm/care domain (M = 2.47) than to the fairness/reciprocity
domain (M = 2.14), F(1, 231) = 22.54, p <
.001; in-group/loyalty domain (M = 1.44), F(1, 231) = 29.35,
p < .001; authority/respect domain (M = 1.83), F(1, 231) =
91.96, p < .001; or purity/sanctity domain (M = 1.24), F(1,
231) = 352.69, p < .001.
Discussion
Content analyses of environmental rhetoric from both video
and print media revealed that such rhetoric resides primarily
within the harm/care moral domain. This finding is consistent
with our reasoning that contemporary environmental discourse
typically emphasizes moral values that resonate more with liberals
than with conservatives, which suggests one possible
mechanism driving the stronger proenvironmental attitudes of
liberals relative to conservatives. Our findings also suggest
that the tendency for liberals to exhibit higher levels of environmental
concern than conservatives is likely not a necessary
one. Rather, it may be possible to foster proenvironmental attitudes
in conservatives by exposing them to moral rhetoric that
falls within a moral domain that they more strongly endorse
than liberals do. In Study 3, we tested this possibility.
Study 3
Building on the idea that the moral domain invoked in advocating
for an issue shapes who will support it, we tested in Study
3 whether presenting conservative individuals with proenvironmental
messages couched in terms of purity and sanctity,
compared with a similar message based in concerns of harm
and care, would increase their proenvironmental attitudes. We
hypothesized that conservative participants exposed to the
purity message would demonstrate greater environmental concern
than their conservative counterparts exposed to the harm
message or than their counterparts in a neutral condition.
Method
Participants. Three hundred eight participants (82 male, 220
female, 6 did not indicate gender) were recruited for Study 3
using the same recruitment strategy as in Study 1a.
Procedure. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire,
including the political ideology measure from Study
1a, M = 3.06, SD = 1.32. The computer program randomly
assigned each participant to a harm/care-, purity/sanctity-, or
neutral-message condition. Participants in the harm/care and
purity/sanctity conditions read a persuasive message modeled
after a newspaper op-ed. These messages utilized words typical
of their respective moral domains (Graham et al., 2009).
The harm/care message described the harm and destruction
humans are causing to the environment and emphasized how
important it is for people to care about and protect the environment.
Participants in the purity/sanctity condition read about
how polluted and contaminated the environment has become
and how important it is for people to clean and purify the environment.
Additionally, three small pictures were presented
with the persuasive messages. The purity/sanctity pictures
showed a cloud of pollution looming over a city, a person
drinking contaminated water, and a forest covered in garbage.
The harm/care pictures showed a destroyed forest of tree
stumps, a barren coral reef, and cracked land suffering from
drought. Importantly, both messages ended positively, providing
information regarding what people can do to improve the
environment (Feinberg & Willer, 2011). Participants in the
neutral condition read an apolitical message on the history of
neckties.
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60		 Feinberg, Willer
After reading the message, participants indicated how
much they felt five emotions, including disgust. We included
the disgust measure because past research shows that perceptions
of moral violations within the purity/sanctity domain
tend to elicit a disgust response, especially in conservatives,
and because disgust plays an important role in conservative
moral judgments (Horberg, Oveis, Keltner, & Cohen, 2009;
Inbar, Pizarro, & Bloom, 2009). Participants then completed a
3-item measure of proenvironmental attitudes (e.g., “It is
important to protect the environment”; α = .79), a 5-item measure
of support for proenvironmental legislation (e.g., “In general,
I would support government legislation aimed at
protecting the environment”; α = .91), and a 3-item measure of
belief in global warming (e.g., “I believe that humans are causing
global warming”; α = .93).
Results and discussion
Disgust. In line with our hypothesis that the proenvironmental
message in the purity/sanctity condition would elicit disgust,
results showed that participants in this condition felt more disgust
(M = 3.33) than did participants in either the harm/care
condition (M = 2.79), t(305) = 2.13, p < .05, or the neutral
condition (M = 0.80), t(305) = 9.88, p < .001. We also tested
whether the purity/sanctity manipulation induced greater disgust
in conservative participants than in liberal participants.
We conducted a multiple regression analysis looking at participants
in the harm/care and purity/sanctity conditions, entering
experimental condition, political ideology (continuous),
and the interaction of the two as predictors of reported disgust.
This analysis yielded a significant interaction, β = −35,
p < .001.
Simple-slopes analyses examining reported disgust among
more conservative participants (1 SD above the mean) revealed
that these participants in the purity/sanctity condition reported
feeling more disgust than did their counterparts in the harm/
care condition, b = −1.61, p < .001. There was no significant
difference between the two conditions for more liberal participants
(b = 0.49, p = .19). Overall, exposure to our purity/sanctity
message induced greater disgust than did exposure to our
harm/care or neutral messages, and this effect was stronger for
more conservative participants.
Environmental attitudes and policy preferences. To examine
how couching environmental messages in specific moral
domains affected liberal and conservative environmental attitudes,
we conducted a multiple regression analysis, entering
dummy-coded variables representing the neutral and harm/
care conditions, political ideology (continuous), and the interaction
of each dummy-coded variable with political ideology
as predictors of scores on the proenvironmental-attitudes composite.
This analysis revealed a significant difference between
the Purity/Sanctity Condition × Ideology interaction and both
the Harm/Care Condition × Ideology, β = −0.29, p < .001,
and the Neutral Condition × Ideology interactions, β = −0.17,
p < .05 (see Fig. 2).
Simple-slopes analyses comparing more conservative participants’
scores in each condition revealed that conservatives
in the purity/sanctity condition scored significantly higher
than did their counterparts in the harm/care condition, b =
−0.60, p < .001, or in the neutral condition, b = −0.39, p < .01.
Parallel analyses comparing more liberal participants’ (1 SD
below the mean) scores in each condition yielded no significant
differences (all ps > .24). Further analyses comparing
more conservative participants with more liberal participants
within each condition revealed significant differences within
the harm/care condition, b = −0.26, p < .001, and the neutral
condition, b = −0.41, p < .001. However, within the purity/
sanctity condition, there was no significant difference, b =
−0.03, p = .67.
Following the same statistical strategy, we found parallel
results in predicting participants’ support for proenvironmental
legislation. Specifically, more conservative participants in the
purity/sanctity condition reported greater support than did their
counterparts in either the harm/care, b = −0.56, p < .001, or
neutral conditions, b = −0.29, p = .07. Also, there were clear
differences between liberal and conservative participants
within the harm/care, b = 0.51, p < .001, and neutral conditions,
b = −0.33, p < .001, but within the purity/sanctity condition, the
two groups were statistically equivalent, b = −0.10, p = .18.
We found parallel results regarding belief in global warming.
Conservative participants reported greater belief in global
warming when exposed to the purity/sanctity message than to
the harm/care, b = −0.64, p < .001, or neutral message, b =
−0.42, p < .05. However, we found significant differences
ProenvironmentalAttitude
5.0
2.5
4.5
4.0
3.5
3.0
Neutral Harm/Care Purity/Sanctity
* *
Condition
Conservative
Liberal
Fig. 2. Results from Study 3: mean proenvironmental attitude as a
function of moral-messaging condition and political ideology (liberal = 1 SD
below the mean; conservative = 1 SD above the mean). Asterisks indicate
significant differences between groups (p < .001). Error bars represent
±1 SEM.
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Morality and Environmental Attitudes	 61
between liberal and conservative participants within each of
the experimental conditions (harm/care: b = 0.63, p < .001;
neutral: b = −0.45, p < .001; purity/sanctity: b = −0.24, p <
.01), though liberal and conservative participants were clearly
more similar within the purity/sanctity condition.
Disgust mediation. Finally, we tested whether the effects of
the Message × Ideology interaction on environmental attitudes
was due to differences in feelings of disgust. A mediated moderation
analysis (Muller, Judd, & Yzerbyt, 2005) revealed that
disgust responses partially mediated the relationship between
the interaction and each of our dependent variables (Sobel zs >
2.38, ps < .05). This finding suggests that one reason why the
purity/sanctity condition led conservatives to report more proenvironmental
attitudes was because they moralized the issue
more than in the other conditions, as indicated by their greater
reported experience of the moral emotion of disgust in this
condition.
Overall, the results of Study 3 supported our hypothesis
that framing environmental messages in terms of the moral
value of purity fosters an increase in proenvironmental attitudes
in conservatives. Indeed, our findings suggest that
reframing environmental messages in terms of purity and
sanctity can reduce or even eliminate the differences in liberal
and conservative environmental attitudes.
General Discussion
The present research examined the role that moral perceptions
play in driving the differences between liberal and conservative
Americans’ views of environmental issues. Studies 1a and
1b established that liberals view environmental issues in moral
terms, whereas conservatives do not, and this view partly
explains the effect of political ideology on environmental attitudes.
Study 2 supported our claim that moral rhetoric about
the environment is typically grounded in a moral foundation
that liberals endorse more than conservatives do. Study 3
showed that presenting conservatives with proenvironmental
messages couched within a particularly conservative moral
domain led them to adopt more proenvironmental attitudes,
comparable to those of liberals. Exposure to a harm/care message,
on the contrary, did not affect the environmental attitudes
of liberal or conservative participants, which is consistent
with our claim that contemporary messages are already largely
based in this domain. These results suggest that political polarization
around environmental issues is not inevitable but can
be reduced by crafting proenvironmental arguments that resonate
with the values of American conservatives.
Along those lines, our research indicates that different
frames regarding climate change can account for polarization
among Americans on this issue. For instance, Hoffman’s
(2011) content analyses of newspaper editorials found that
believers and deniers of climate change frame the issue so differently
that the two sides talk past each other, which likely
contributes to the growing animosity each side feels toward
the other (Bazerman & Hoffman, 1999; Chambers, Baron, &
Inman, 2006).2
The current research suggests that reframing
environmental issues in different moral terms offers one way
to improve communication between opposing sides. Indeed,
Study 3 fits within a growing body of research demonstrating
the effectiveness of targeted messaging in evoking proenvironmental
attitudes in individuals who would otherwise be
skeptical or apathetic (Feinberg & Willer, 2011; Feygina et al.,
2010).
The current research may also help explain why many
Christian groups, though traditionally conservative, have
become proponents of the environment in recent years
(Wardekker, Petersen, & van der Sluijs, 2008). Many of these
groups perceive environmental degradation as a desecration of
the world God created and a contradiction of moral principles
of purity and sanctity, which motivates adherents to take proenvironmental
stances. More generally, most of the world’s
religions emphasize humanity’s role as stewards of the earth
charged with keeping pure and sacred God’s creation
(Wardekker et al., 2008). Thus, reframing moral rhetoric
around the environment to fit with this religious tenet might be
persuasive to many religious individuals, a possibility that
could be explored in future research.
In addition, although Study 3 provides evidence that moral
reframing can successfully sway environmental attitudes,
future research should investigate further why this reframing
was so effective. It may be that messages based on moral considerations
endorsed by the message’s recipient are more credible
and logical to the recipient than messages based on other
considerations. Alternatively, the reframed message may lead
readers to perceive the source of the message as someone who
is similar to them. The conservative participants in the purity/
sanctity condition of Study 3 may have perceived the source of
the message as a fellow conservative, which made them more
receptive to the message. Overall, then, the current research
provides many avenues for future investigation of the role of
morality and moral suasion as both a cause of and a solution
for environmental polarization.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with
respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Notes
1.  Females tend to be more environmentally concerned and liberal
than males. To ensure gender was not driving our results, we reanalyzed
the data from our studies, controlling for gender, and obtained
statistically equivalent results.
2. In line with Hoffman (2011), the authors of the op-eds we analyzed
in Study 2b utilized different frames depending on whether
they expressed belief or skepticism on the environmental issue.
Those expressing belief were more likely to use a solution-oriented
frame (70%) than a diagnostic frame (30%). Skeptical authors, however,
almost exclusively used a diagnostic frame (88%), with only a
small number (12%) using a solution-oriented frame.
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62		 Feinberg, Willer
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