Limits of rationality? Moral foundations and polarization in attitudes towards diversity in Germany

It will be shown for Germany that polarization in attitudes towards immigration, Islam, claims of minorities, the experience of devaluation of one’s own identity and trust in institutions correspond with differences in moral foundations. According to J. Haidt, differences in moral foundations at least partially explain “why good people are divided by politics and religion.” Moral emotions can severely limit rationality in discourses – and thereby contribute to polarization. Using survey data, these polarizing attitudes will be analyzed as dyadic similarities in a network. Ward clustering and Latent Class Analysis identify two subgroups. Polarization at the group-level is then predicted by using binary logit models of class membership and, as a more direct approach to polarization at the dyadic level, by MRQAP-DSP regressions for valued ties in the similarity network. There are robust negative effects of differences in moral foundations on membership in the ‘open-trusting’ cluster as well as on the similarity in polarizing attitudes, which are robust when controlled for indicators of demography and socio-economic status.