AUTHOR=Matsuo Akiko , Du Baofa , Sasahara Kazutoshi 

TITLE=Appraisal of the Fairness Moral Foundation Predicts the Language Use Involving Moral Issues on Twitter Among Japanese

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.599024

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.599024

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=One’s moral appraisals are found to be associated with his/her individual differences (e.g., political ideology), and the effects of individual differences on language use have been studied within the framework of the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). However, the relationship between one’s moral concern and use of language involving morality on social media is not self-evident. This exploratory study investigated that relationship using the MFT. Participants’ tweets and self-reported responses to a questionnaire were collected to measure the degree of their appraisals of the five foundations of the MFT. The Japanese version of the Moral Foundations Dictionary (J-MFD) was used to quantify the number of words in one’s tweets relevant to the MFT’s five moral foundations. The results showed that one’s endorsement of the Fairness and Authority foundations predicted word frequency in the J-MFD across all five foundations. The findings suggest that the trade-off relationship between the Fairness and Authority foundations play a key role in online language communication. The implications and future directions for scrutinizing these foundations are discussed.