Cover not available

Article published In: Re/constructing Politics Through Social & Online Media: Discourses, ideologies, and mediated political practices
Edited by Michał Krzyżanowski and Joshua A. Tucker
[Journal of Language and Politics 17:2] 2018
► pp. 195–221

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Moral discourse in the Twitterverse

Effects of ideology and political sophistication on language use among U.S. citizens and members of Congress

 | Department of Psychology and Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
 | Department of Psychology, New York University
Published online: 24 November 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.17034.ste
Abstract
We analyzed Twitter language to explore hypotheses derived from moral foundations theory, which suggests that liberals and conservatives prioritize different values. In Study 1, we captured 11 million tweets from nearly 25,000 U.S. residents and observed that liberals expressed fairness concerns more often than conservatives, whereas conservatives were more likely to express concerns about group loyalty, authority, and purity. Increasing political sophistication exacerbated ideological differences in authority and group loyalty. At low levels of sophistication, liberals used more harm language, but at high levels of sophistication conservatives referenced harm more often. In Study 2, we analyzed 59,000 tweets from 388 members of the U.S. Congress. Liberal legislators used more fairness- and harm-related words, whereas conservative legislators used more authority-related words. Unexpectedly, liberal legislators used more language pertaining to group loyalty and purity. Follow-up analyses suggest that liberals and conservatives in Congress use similar words to emphasize different policy priorities.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Psychological differences between liberals and conservatives
  • 3.The present research program
    • 3.1Measuring moral intuitions through language
    • 3.2Political ideology
    • 3.3Topic-related differences in moral language
  • 4.Study 1: Ordinary citizens
    • 4.1Method
      • 4.1.1Political ideology
      • 4.1.2Political sophistication
      • 4.1.3Coding of political topics
      • 4.1.4Sample generation
      • 4.1.5Statistical modelling
    • 4.2Results and discussion
      • 4.2.1Using political ideology to predict moral themes
      • 4.2.2Moderating role of political sophistication
        • Fairness
        • Harm
        • Group loyalty
        • Authority
        • Purity
    • 4.3Summary
  • 5.Study 2: U.S. Congress members
    • 5.1Methods
      • 5.1.1Language sample
      • 5.1.2Political ideology
      • 5.1.3Structural variables
      • 5.1.4Demographic variables
      • 5.1.5Statistical analysis
    • 5.2Results
      • 5.2.1Exploratory analyses
    • 5.3Discussion
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
References (64)
References
Adorno, Theodor W., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Albaugh, Quinn, Julie Sevenans, Stuart Soroka, and Peter John Loewen. 2013. “The automated coding of policy agendas: A dictionary-based approach.” In 6th Annual Comparative Agendas Conference , Antwerp, Belgium.
Altemeyer, Bob. 1998. “The Other ‘Authoritarian Personality’.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 301: 47–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michał Krzyżanowski, Tony McEnery, and Ruth Wodak. 2008. “A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press.” Discourse and Society 191: 273–306. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barberá, Pablo. 2015. “Birds of the Same Feather Tweet Together. Bayesian Ideal Point Estimation using Twitter Data.” Political Analysis 231: 76–91. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barberá, Pablo, John T. Jost, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua Tucker, and Richard Bonneau. 2015. “Tweeting from Left to Right: Is Online Political Communication More Than an Echo Chamber?” Psychological Science 261: 1531–1542. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barberá, Pablo, Ning Wang, Richard Bonneau, John T. Jost, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua Tucker, and Sandra González-Bailón. 2015. “The Critical Periphery in the Growth of Social Protests”. PLoS ONE, 10(11): e0143611. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Billig, Michael. 1987. Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1991. Ideology and Opinions: Studies in Rhetorical Psychology. London: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Block, Jack, and Jeanne H. Block. 2006. “Nursery School Personality and Political Orientation Two Decades Later.” Journal of Research in Personality 401: 734–749. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brady, William, Julian Wills, John T. Jost, Joshua Tucker, and Jay Van Bavel. 2017. “Emotion Shapes the Diffusion of Moralized Content in Social Networks.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1141: 7313–7318. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cichocka, Aleksandra, Michał Bilewicz, John T. Jost, Natasza Marrouch, and Marta Witkowska. 2016. “On the Grammar of Politics – or Why Conservatives Prefer Nouns.” Political Psychology 371: 799–815. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clifford, Scott, and Jennifer Jerit. 2013. “How Words do the Work of Politics: Moral Foundations Theory and the Debate over Stem Cell Research.” The Journal of Politics 751: 659–671. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carney, Dana R., John T. Jost, Samuel D. Gosling, and Jeff Potter. 2008. “The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles, Interaction Styles, and the Things They Leave Behind.” Political Psychology 291: 807–840. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Condor, Susan, Cristian Tileaga, and Michael Billig. 2013. “Political Rhetoric.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, ed. by Leonie Huddy, David O. Sears, and Jack S. Levy, 262–300. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Conover, Pamela Johnston, and Stanley Feldman. 1981. “The Origins and Meaning of Liberal/Conservative Self-Identifications.” American Journal of Political Science: 617–645. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Durrheim, Kevin, and John Dixon. 2005. “Studying Talk and Embodied Practices: Toward a Psychology of Materiality of ‘Race Relations’.” Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 151: 446–460. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Enelow, James M., and Melvin J. Hinich. 1984. The Spatial Theory of Voting: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, Geoffrey, Anthony Heath, and Mansur Lalljee. 1996. “Measuring Left-Right and Libertarian-Authoritarian Values in the British Electorate.” British Journal of Sociology: 93–112. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman and Ruth Wodak. 1997. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” InDiscourse as Social Interaction, ed. By Teun A. van Dijk, 258–84. London: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Federico, Christopher M., and Paul Goren. 2009. “Motivated Social Cognition and Ideology: Is Attention to Elite Discourse a Prerequisite for Epistemically Motivated Political Affinities.” In Social and Psychological Bases of Ideology and System Justification, ed. by John T. Jost, Aaron C. Kay, and Hulda Thorisdottir, 267–291. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Federico, Christopher M., Christopher R. Weber, Damla Ergun, and Corrie Hunt. 2013. “Mapping the Connections Between Politics and Morality: The Multiple Sociopolitical Orientations Involved in Moral Intuition.” Political Psychology 341: 589–610. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fowler, Roger, and Gunther Kress. 1979. “Critical Linguistics.” In Language and Control, ed. by Roger Fowler, Bob Hodge, Gunther Kress, and Tony Trew, 185–213. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fraley, R. Chris, Brian N. Griffin, Jay Belsky, and Glenn I. Roisman. 2012. “Developmental Antecedents of Political Ideology: A Longitudinal Investigation from Birth to Age 18 Years.” Psychological Science 231: 1425–1431. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Freeden, Michael. 1998. “Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?.” Political Studies 461: 748–765. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, and Shang E. Ha. 2010. “Personality and Political Attitudes: Relationships Across Issue Domains and Political Contexts.” American Political Science Review 1041: 111–133. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Graham, Jesse, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek. 2009. “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 961: 1029–1046. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haidt, Jonathan. 2001. “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment.” Psychological Review 1081, 814–834. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haidt, Jonathan, and Jesse Graham. 2007. “When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals May Not Recognize.” Social Justice Research 201: 98–116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hirsh, Jacob B., Colin G. DeYoung, Xiaowen Xu, and Jordan B. Peterson. 2010. “Compassionate Liberals and Polite Conservatives: Associations of Agreeableness with Political Ideology and Moral Values.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 361: 655–664. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Homer-Dixon, Thomas, Jonathan Leader Maynard, Matto Mildenberger, Manjana Milkoreit, Steven J. Mock, Stephen Quilley, Tobias Schröder, and Paul Thagard. 2013. “A Complex Systems Approach to the Study of Ideology: Cognitive-Affective Structures and the Dynamics of Belief Systems.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology 11: 337–363. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jacobson, Daniel. 2008. “Does Social Intuitionism Flatter Morality or Challenge it.” In Moral Psychology: The Cognitive Science of Morality, ed. by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, 219–232. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jones, Kevin L., Sharareh Noorbaloochi, John T. Jost, Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua A. Tucker. 2017. “Liberal and Conservative Values: What we can Learn from Congressional Tweets.” Political Psychology.
Jost, John T. 2006. “The End of the End of Ideology.” American Psychologist 611: 651–670. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2012. “Left and Right, Right and Wrong.” Science 3371: 525–526. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jost, J. T. 2017. “Ideological Asymmetries and the Essence of Political Psychology.” Political Psychology, 381: 167–208. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jost, John T., Christopher M. Federico, and Jaime L. Napier. 2009. “Political Ideology: Its Structure, Functions, and Elective Affinities.” Annual Review of Psychology 601: 307–337. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “Political Ideologies and Their Social Psychological Functions.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, ed. by Michael Freeden, Lyman Tower Sargent, and Marc Stears, 232–250. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jost, John T., Brian A. Nosek, and Samuel D. Gosling. 2008, “Ideology: Its Resurgence in Social, Personality, and Political Psychology.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 31: 126–136. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kandler, Christian, Wiebke Bleidorn, and Rainer Riemann. 2012. “Left or Right? Sources of Political Orientation: The Roles of Genetic Factors, Cultural Transmission, Assortative Mating, and Personality.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1021: 633–645. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał. 2010. The Discursive Construction of European Identifies. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kugler, Matthew, John T. Jost, and Sharareh Noorbaloochi. 2014. “Another Look at Moral Foundations Theory: Do Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation Explain Liberal-Conservative Differences in “Moral” Intuitions?.” Social Justice Research 271: 413–431. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leone, Luigi, Stefano Livi, and Antonio Chirumbolo. 2015. “Political Involvement Moderates the Impact of Worldviews and Values on SDO and RWA.” European Journal of Social Psychology 41: 418–427.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McAdams, Dan P. 2008. “Life Story.” In The Encyclopedia of Adulthood and Aging.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McAdams, Dan P., Michelle Albaugh, Emily Farber, Jennifer Daniels, Regina L. Logan, and Brad Olson. 2008. “Family Metaphors and Moral Intuitions: How Conservatives and Liberals Narrate their Lives.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 951: 978–990. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Milojev, Petar, Danny Osborne, Lara M. Greaves, Joseph Bulbulia, Marc S. Wilson, Caitlin L. Davies, James H. Liu, and Chris G. Sibley. 2014. “Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation Predict Different Moral Signatures.” Social Justice Research 271: 149–174. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mondak, Jeffery J. 2010. Personality and the Foundations of Political Behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moscovici, Serge. 1988. “Notes Towards a Description of Social Representations.” European Journal of Social Psychology 181: 211–250. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nagel, Thomas. 2012. “The Taste for Being Moral.” New York Review of Books, December 6 issue, 40–42.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Neiman, Jayme L., Frank J. Gonzalez, Kevin Wilkinson, Kevin B. Smith, and John R. Hibbing. 2016a. “Speaking Different Languages or Reading from the Same Script? Word Usage of Democratic and Republican Politicians.” Political Communication 331: 212–240. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016b. “Corrigendum: Speaking Different Languages or Reading from the Same Script? Word usage of Democratic and Republican politicians.” Political Communication 331: 346–349. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Newman, Matthew L., Carla J. Groom, Lori D. Handelman, and James W. Pennebaker. 2008. “Gender Differences in Language Use: An Analysis of 14,000 Text Samples.” Discourse Processes 451: 211–236. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Poole, Keith T., and Howard Rosenthal. 1985. “A Spatial Model for Legislative Roll Call Analysis.” American Journal of Political Science 291: 357–384. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Prims, J. P., Zachary Melton, and Matt Motyl. 2017. “Using Twitter to Understand Moral Differences Underlying Political Preferences in the 2016 US Presidential Primary.” In Why Irrational Politics Appeals: Understanding the Allure of Trump, ed. by M. Fitzduff.
Sidanius, Jim, and Felicia Pratto. 1999. Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sinn, Jeffrey S., and Matthew W. Hayes. 2016. “Replacing the Moral Foundations: An Evolutionary‐Coalitional Theory of Liberal‐Conservative Differences.” Political Psychology. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pennebaker, James W., and Lori D. Stone. 2003. “Words of Wisdom: Language Use Over the Life Span.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 851: 291–301. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Suhler, Christopher L., and Patricia Churchland. 2011. “Can Innate, Modular “Foundations” Explain Morality? Challenges for Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 231: 2103–2116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tomkins, Silvan S. 1965. “Affect and the Psychology of Knowledge.” In Affect, Cognition, and Personality: Empirical Studies, ed. by Silvan S. Solomon and Carroll E. Izard, 72–97. New York: Springer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun A. 2006. “Ideology and Discourse Analysis.” Journal of Political Ideologies 111: 115–140. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wan, Ching, Kim‐Pong Tam, and Chi‐Yue Chiu. 2010. “Intersubjective Cultural Representations Predicting Behaviour: The Case of Political Culture and Voting.” Asian Journal of Social Psychology 131: 260–273. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Webb, Eugene J., Donald Thomas Campbell, Richard D. Schwartz, and Lee Sechrest. 1966. Unobtrusive Measures: Nonreactive Research in the Social Sciences. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Glenn D. 1973. The Psychology of Conservatism. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yu, Bei. 2014. “Language and Gender in Congressional Speech.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 291: 118–13. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (17)

Cited by 17 other publications

Johnston, Christopher D., David J. Ciuk & Jesse Lopez
2025. Competing moral minds? Estimating moral disagreement in American politics. Political Psychology DOI logo
Rao, Ashwin, Nazanin Sabri, Siyi Guo, Louiqa Raschid & Kristina Lerman
2025. Public Health Messaging on Twitter During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Observational Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research 27 ► pp. e63910 ff. DOI logo
Simonsen, Kristina Bakkær & Tobias Widmann
2025. When Do Political Parties Moralize?: A Cross-National Study of the Use of Moral Language in Political Communication on Immigration. British Journal of Political Science 55 DOI logo
Song, Yunya, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Yin Zhang, Ziwei Wang, Y. Connie Yuan, Sheng Zou & Jun Li
2025. Bridging ideologies: analyzing the use of moral language and framing in social media discourse on climate change by U.S. congress members through computational approaches. Climatic Change 178:3 DOI logo
Walker, Alexander C., Jonathan A. Fugelsang & Derek J. Koehler
2025. Partisan language in a polarized world: In-group language provides reputational benefits to speakers while polarizing audiences. Cognition 254 ► pp. 106012 ff. DOI logo
Kraft, Patrick W. & Robert Klemmensen
2024. Lexical Ambiguity in Political Rhetoric: Why Morality Doesn't Fit in a Bag of Words. British Journal of Political Science 54:1 ► pp. 201 ff. DOI logo
Neumann, Dominik & Nancy Rhodes
2024. Morality in social media: A scoping review. New Media & Society 26:2 ► pp. 1096 ff. DOI logo
Wheeler, Melissa A., Samuel G. Wilson, Naomi Baes & Vlad Demsar
2024. A search for commonalities in defining the common good: Using folk theories to unlock shared conceptions. British Journal of Social Psychology 63:2 ► pp. 956 ff. DOI logo
Brisbane, Laura, Whitney Hua & Thomas Jamieson
2023. Morality and the Glass Ceiling: How Elite Rhetoric Reflects Gendered Strategies and Perspectives. Politics & Gender 19:3 ► pp. 806 ff. DOI logo
Gallina, Marta
2023. The Concept of Political Sophistication: Labeling the Unlabeled. Political Studies Review 21:4 ► pp. 836 ff. DOI logo
Bos, Linda & Sophie Minihold
2022. The Ideological Predictors of Moral Appeals by European Political Elites; An Exploration of the Use of Moral Rhetoric in Multiparty Systems. Political Psychology 43:1 ► pp. 45 ff. DOI logo
Brown, Elizabeth K & Jason R Silver
2022. The moral foundations of crime control in American presidential platforms, 1968–2016. Punishment & Society 24:2 ► pp. 196 ff. DOI logo
Czarnek, Gabriela, David Stillwell & Andrea Fronzetti Colladon
2022. Two is better than one: Using a single emotion lexicon can lead to unreliable conclusions. PLOS ONE 17:10 ► pp. e0275910 ff. DOI logo
Gergi-Horgos, Mátyás
2022. Framing COVID-19: Political Discourse of the SNP, ERC and Junts during the 2021 Scottish and Catalan Regional Elections. Scottish Affairs 31:3 ► pp. 281 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Sze-Yuh Nina & Yoel Inbar
2021. Moral-Language Use by U.S. Political Elites. Psychological Science 32:1 ► pp. 14 ff. DOI logo
Brady, William J., M. J. Crockett & Jay J. Van Bavel
2020. The MAD Model of Moral Contagion: The Role of Motivation, Attention, and Design in the Spread of Moralized Content Online. Perspectives on Psychological Science 15:4 ► pp. 978 ff. DOI logo
Jost, John T. & Joanna Sterling
2020. The language of politics: ideological differences in congressional communication on social media and the floor of Congress. Social Influence 15:2-4 ► pp. 80 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue