An explanation of social conflict? social class and moral foundations. Three meta-analysis.

Abstract

Although morality can play an important role in explaining the recent rise of social conflicts inside and outside the Western countries, the study of moral differences between social classes and their possible influence on these social conflicts has been very limited. Thus, this article, which relies on the Moral Foundations Theory, investigates, from a meta-analytic point of view, the relationship of social class (or social ladder, measured as education level, income, and socioeconomic status), and moral foundations, and its possible role as predictor of social conflict. 41 studies (k = 86; N = 285,461), for education level, 26 studies (k = 34; N = 23,889) for income, and 5 studies (k = 16; N = 81,327) for socioeconomic status, were selected. Results showed how all pooled correlations are either statistically not different from zero or of negligible size. Limitations regarding a restrictive range of available data, are discussed.