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The main aim of this PhD research was to explore the cultural differences in moral judgment, moral behaviour, moral identity, and cultural values between Saudi Arabia and United Kingdom. Furthermore, I was interested in the psychological factors affecting morality in those two cultures. The first study aimed to achieve the following objectives: to understand people’s moral judgment in Saudi Arabia and the UK, to investigate whether and how personality traits and cultural values affect moral judgment in five moral foundations (harm avoidance, justice, ingroup, authority, purity), and to investigate whether personality traits and cultural values are related differently or similarly across Saudi and UK cultures. The findings of the study revealed that Saudi and British participants differed with regard to their foundation-specific moral judgments. Saudi participants were more likely to endorse moral foundations in the domains of intergroup relations, authority, and purity. However, there were no cross-cultural differences in the domains of harm avoidance and justice. Moreover, the results showed that the effect of personality traits and cultural values on morality varied. Harm and fairness foundations were predicted by personality traits while ingroup, authority, purity foundations were predicted by values. The second study investigated whether foundation-related moral behaviour was affected by moral judgment and people’s moral identity in a cross-cultural context comparing adults from the UK and Saudi Arabia. Findings of this study resulted in no cross-cultural differences between the two samples concerning moral judgment in the care and justice foundations. Furthermore, no cultural differences were found between the two samples concerning moral behaviour in the five foundations. In addition, moral identity mediated the relationship between moral judgment and allocations in the dictator game. The third study investigated the relationship between (dis-) honest behaviour, moral judgment and moral identity in two different cultures, namely Saudi Arabia and the UK. It has been found that there are no statistically significant differences in honest behaviour between Saudi Arabia and the UK. Furthermore, deception was not predicted or correlated significantly with any of the five foundation-specific moral judgments across both cultural samples. However, culture moderated the relationship between deception and moral judgment in harm and authority moral foundations. Additionally, moral sensitivity did not mediate the relationship between moral judgments and dishonesty. The forth study explored the link between moral foundation violations (harm, justice, ingroup, authority, and purity) and anger, disgust, sadness, apathy, guilt, contempt, shame, resentment, and embarrassment emotions. Findings showed that the violations of harm, and justice foundations triggered anger and Violations of purity foundation triggered disgust. The results show no cultural differences in the assignments of the violations made by both samples. Saudi and UK participants’ classifications were in agreement with the original classifications of the 40 violations by Graham et al. (2009). However, we found cross-cultural differences in the relationship between emotions and moral foundation violations.

It has been posited that persuasive cues impart Evolution Wars communica-tions with persuasive force extending beyond the merits of their communicated argu-ments. Additionally, it has been observed that the array of cues displayed throughout proevolutionist materials is exceeded in both the number and nuance of Darwin-skeptic persuasion techniques. This study reassesses these findings by exploring how persua-sive cues in the Evolution Wars are being articulated with reference to the Cultural Cognition Thesis and Moral Foundations Theory. Observations of Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis, and the Center for Science and Culture media are reeval-uated. These findings are juxtaposed with data pertaining to Richard Dawkins Foun-dation for Reason and Science, National Center for Science Education, and BioLogos Foundation broadcasts. The outcomes reveal how values claims and morally charged language are concentrated within the works of antievolutionists and New Atheist media makers, who collectively promote some manner of religion-science conflict.

Most popular entertainment media contains content that consumers would consider immoral if it occurred in real life. This study compares two models that explain this phenomenon, the Moral Disengagement Model and the Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars, and tests them in the context of a video game containing a moral dilemma. 208 participants completed an experiment in which they were given the option to kill or spare a virtual agent in a video game. The moral justification for killing was manipulated, and the participants’ moral foundations were measured to determine which model better predicted participant behavior. The results showed that neither model significantly predicted behavior; however, the data do show that people will anthropomorphize virtual agents with very little visual realism in video games, that killing these unrealistic agents still leads to feelings of guilt, and that seemingly simple moral dilemmas might activate several moral foundations.

This dissertation explores the moral argumentation of Hedley Bull and its influence on the English School of International Relations. The English School is an approach to IR theorising that seeks to examine the normative and moral aspects of international relations, engaging in moral arguments as part of its inquiry. However, while there is a wealth of literature on the content of the moral arguments that English School scholars make, the debate between solidarists and pluralists being one example and the tension between order and justice another, there is significantly less literature on moral argumentation, the process of moral argument, in the English School. Further, while Hedley Bull's thought more generally has received significant attention, again, there has been much less focus on Hedley Bull's moral thought and argumentation. This dissertation seeks to rectify this by examining first what Bull's moral argumentation was, and then secondly by articulating the development of moral argumentation from Bull to subsequent generations of English School scholars. It argues that Hedley Bull has made an important contribution to English School moral theorising, but the incomplete nature of his account has been carried over into the post-classical English School literature. The first key analytical contribution that this dissertation makes is that Bull's starting point for moral argumentation is the assumption that morality is socially constructed and moral arguments are characterised by competing moral priorities. The second key analytical contribution is that Bull distinguishes between two kinds of moral argument: moral principles argument, and moral foundations argument. The latter locates the debate at the philosophical foundations that give rise to moral principles, while the former assumes a common foundation and debates the application of moral principles to specific situations. The third analytical contribution is the articulation of the continuities and discontinuities between Bull and later English School scholars, highlighting that while later scholarship seeks to provide a deeper and more systematic account of the place of moral foundations in moral arguments, a number of the flaws have been carried over, demonstrating the need for a more rigorous account.

This study investigated the moral foundations of intercollegiate student-athletes in relation to their athletic identity, specifically with respect to student-development in college. Research has established that prolonged participation in sport contributes to the development of an athletic identity (Brewer & Cornelius, 2001; Brewer, Van Raalte & Linder, 1990; Cieslak, 2004) and countless studies have identified significant categorical differences in moral reasoning tendencies between student-athletes and non-athlete students (Bonfiglio, 2011; Bredemeier & Shields, 2006; Howard-Hamilton & Sina, 2001; Lyons & Turner, 2015; Priest, Krause, & Beach, 1999). Two hundred and thirty-eight NCAA Division I intercollegiate, club sport, and intramural sport student-athletes, possessing varying degrees of athletic identity, served as participants. Athletic Identity was measured with the 7-item, 3-factor abbreviated version of the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (Brewer & Cornelius, 2001), and the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) (Graham, et al., 2011) was used to evaluate the moral foundations on which elite-athletes rely. Regression analyses suggested that athletic identity was significantly related to the Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity foundations of the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) (Graham et al., 2011). ANOVA analyses indicated that female athletes scored higher on Harm/care and Fairness/reciprocity than male athletes and that time (e.g., years of collegiate sporting experience) may contribute to the development of athletes’ moral orientations. The results suggest that maintaining increased degrees of athletic identity may play a role in the moral foundations on which NCAA Division I intercollegiate student-athletes rely.

The political and religious are demonstrably intertwined in American politics and within the preferences of individual citizens. This dissertation has attempted to examine possible theoretical reasons for the overlap and sources of development of these belief systems within individuals and across generations. In sum, different Moral Foundations are associated with different preferences for organizing society and approaching religion; grandparents, parents and children share many political and religious beliefs, though not all Moral Foundations; and genetics influence part of the variance on religious and political preferences and part of their overlap is due to a shared genetic path. Most scholarship exploring the nature of religious and political beliefs divide the world into political liberals and conservatives or religious modernists and traditionalists, but this dissertation suggests there may be an even broader orientation that shapes the lens through which individuals view the world. Whether this orientation is socialized, heritable or a combination of both, understanding that moral decisions and political and religious preferences shape and are shaped by this orientation may help explain the “culture wars” in American society (Hunter 1991). Investigating this psychology behind political and religious ideologies will provide better insight into the reasons people believe and act the way they do as well as understanding the stability of beliefs across generations and, therefore, of the relative intractability of people’s positions on controversial issues. Adviser: Kevin B. Smith