Moral framing of threats: framing socio-economic inequalities
Valmori Alessia, Carraro Luciana, Castelli Luigi
According to one’s political orientation, people tend to perceive threats differently. At the same time, moral re-framing of an issue could lead people to approach the problem if it is described with moral foundations important for the person (i.e., binding foundations for right-wing individuals and individualising foundations for left-wing individuals). The aim of the present study is to morally framing the socio-economic inequalities threat in order to make right-wing participants aware and concerned toward this specific social issue. Results show that, although framing socio-economic inequalities with binding foundations did not lead to an increase in concern about the problem for right-wing participants, it nevertheless causes them to reject socio-economic inequalities even more when the issue was described with individualising foundations. No such effect emerged for left-wing participants. Results demonstrate that how a specific threat is morally described has an impact on how people perceived it. Although previous research suggest that moral framing could be crucial in reaching different audiences, the present study reveal that moral framing causes backlash if it is directed to the wrong target population.
Italiano 
English