Planet of the Durkheimians, where community, authority, and sacredness are foundations of morality

Most academic efforts to understand morality and ideology come from theorists who limit the domain of morality to issues related to harm and fairness. For such theorists, conservative beliefs are puzzles requiring non-moral explanations. In contrast, we present moral foundations theory, which broadens the moral do-main to match the anthropological literature on morality. We extend the theory by integrating it with a review of the sociological constructs of community, authority, and sacredness, as formulated by Emile Durkheim and others. We present data supporting the theory, which also shows that liberals misunderstand the explicit moral concerns of conservatives more than conservatives misunderstand liber-als. We suggest that what liberals see as a non-moral motivation for system justifi cation may be better described as a moral motivation to protect society, groups, and the structures and constraints that are often (although not always) benefi cial for individuals. Finally, we outline the possible benefi ts of a moral foundations perspective for system justifi cation theory (SJT), including bette