Moral Foundations Theory has become an important strand of social psychology.

The long-term behavioral consequences of moral foundations were at the core of a talk that NET-ROL member Nadia von Jacobi from the Università di Trento held at the annual meeting of the Southern Economic Association at Tampa, Florida. She showed that particular configurations of moral foundations prevalent in narratives of the past impact societal outcomes such as civil conflict even a century later.

In his presentation at the Meetings, NET-ROL member Stefan Voigt (University of Hamburg) showed that values and norms held in the past that are conducive to non-discrimination are an important predictor of rule of law levels even today.

Both projects have in common that they rely on ancient folktales to elicit either historic moral foundations or values and norms. These data will also be used within NET-ROL.

A first paper introducing the historical dataset is available at:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5378791

 

by Stefan Voigt