How to be Good: An Exploration of the Moral Circle and its Relationship with Wealth and Individualism

The goal of this project is to explore the relationship between altruistic motivation, wealth, and ideological individualism. It comprises three parts:

Part 1: The Moral Circle
A cross-disciplinary exploration of the underlying motivation to act altruistically in terms of the moral circle (the group we consider worthy of moral consideration).
Aim: to form a logically coherent, empirically supported conception of the moral circle.
RQ: How should the moral circle be understood and measured in altruism research?
Method: A systematic literature search of accessible philosophy and psychology databases for articles and books using keywords like 'moral', 'circle' and 'expansiveness'. Relevant materials will be closely read and critically analysed to arrive at a logically and empirically justified conceptualisation of the moral circle suitable for altruism research.
Part 2: The Social Life of Altruism
A qualitative study using the critical discourse studies (CDS) paradigm to examine the institutional and discursive practices of social science research articles on the relationship between altruism, wealth and individualism.
Aim: To critically examine the ways in which social science research articles on the relationship between altruism, wealth and individualism construct altruism/moral concern, and whether these constructions reproduce and reify neoliberal ideology.
RQ1: How do these articles construct altruism and its correlates, and where do these constructions come from?
RQ2: Are these constructions contributing to reproduction and reification neoliberal ideology, and how?
RQ3: What are the consequences of these constructions for our understanding of what it means to be good to one another?
Method: An information-orientated systematic archival database keywords search to identify articles on the relationship between altruism/moral concern, wealth and individualism. These articles comprise the dataset, and will be analysed according to the principles of the discourse-historical approach (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001) to CDS.

Part 3. Individualism and the Moral Circle
A series of within-subjects survey studies investigating whether moral expansiveness, as measured by the Moral Expansiveness Scale (MES; Crimston et al., 2016), differs when the boundaries of the moral circle are defined in terms of collective as opposed to individual moral concern. I will also explore the relationship between moral concern and individualism on both the original and collective versions of the scale.
Aim: to explore whether moral expansiveness differs when participants are asked to report their personal level of moral concern for different entities vs. the level of moral concern we should have for those entities as a society.
RQ1: Is moral expansiveness greater on the collective version of the MES than the original? Is this the case across all entity groups?

RQ2: Is there a relationship between moral expansiveness on both versions of the MES and individualism? What direction? Does the relationship hold for both the original and collective MES?
RQ3: Do the results found in RQs 1 and 2 hold across both individualist and collectivist cultures?

Method: An opportunity sample of at least 210 participants will be recruited via Prolific or similar (sufficient to detect an effect of d = 0.2 with 80% power in a Wilcoxon signed ranks test). Participants will undertake a within-subjects design survey, completing both conditions (original and collective MES) counterbalanced plus the Individualism-Collectivism Scale (Triandis & Gelfand, 1998). I will model the relationship between scale type and moral expansiveness scores across all entity groups using Bayesian cumulative linear mixed-effects modelling (CLMM). Bayesian CLMM will also be used to explore the relationship between moral expansiveness scores and individualism scores on each version of the scale. This design will be replicated across 2 individualist and 2 collectivist culture countries.