Morality as a moderator of the relationship between ingroup identification and ingroup favoritism

The relationship between ingroup identification and ingroup favoritism has been studied for many years. In the Social Identity Theory literature, studies show that the direction and strength of this relationship are shaped under the influence of many different variables. The variables questioned in this topic generally consist of factors that drawn on levels of analysis at intragroup or intergroup levels except for the self-esteem hypothesis. In this study, morality as an evolutionary based intrapersonal and intuitional motivation was investigated in terms of its effects on this relationship. In this thesis, morality was examined from a new theoretical approach, Morality as Cooperation Theory. It was claimed that giving importance to certain moral dimensions will have a moderator effect on the relationship between ingroup identification and ingroup favoritism. Additionally, ideological orientation and core motivations of social conservatism, resistance to change and opposition to equality, were examined as covariate variables due to their associations with different moral dimensions and behaviors towards outgroups in the literature. In this context, one cross-sectional and one experimental study were carried out. In the first study, the pattern of the relationships between morality, ideology, ingroup identification, and ingroup favoritism were explored. It was found that reciprocity dimension of morality has a moderator effect on the relationship between ingroup identification and ingroup favoritism. Considering the results of the first study, in the second study, reciprocity dimension was manipulated, and its moderator role was tested by an experimental design. Consistent with the first study, the results of the second study revealed a significant moderator effect of reciprocity dimension. The findings, contributions, and limitations of the studies were discussed in the context of the relevant literature and suggestions were presented for future studies. Keywords: Morality, morality as cooperation, ideology, identification, favoritism