Moral Foundations as Ethical Codes in a Brazilian Context

Abstract

We present a survey of Brazilians on their adoption of a set of ethical rules, the moral foundations. The aim of the study is to characterize the profiles of a sample of adults in terms of their reliance on moral foundations, under the assumption that each moral  foundation represents an ethical code, considering social variables such as gender, schooling level, and religion. Ethical rules consist in associations of evaluative assessments with systems of practices concerning social relationships, while ethical codes are those rules legitimated by communities’ conventions. We administered an adapted version ofthe Moral Foundations Questionnaire to 936 adults inpublic places. Results from cluster analysis revealedthe existence of two broad response patterns that weinterpreted as ethical codes, a liberal ethic that prioritizes the individual, associated with higher educational levels, and a pluralistic code that values both individual and group relations, linked to lower schooling. Brazil’s history of inequity and authoritarian relationships explains apparent contradictions in the individualizing pattern, the modernization of the pluralistic code, and their ideological conflict. The discussion focuses onpossible interpretations of the identified codes, commenting on the specificity of the study and limitations of usual survey strategies.