Abstract

AbstractThis paper introduces moral argument analytics, a technology that provides insights into the use of moral arguments in discourse. We analyse five socio-political corpora of argument annotated data from offline and online discussions, totalling 240k words with 9k arguments, with an average annotation accuracy of 78%. Using a lexicon-based method, we automatically annotate these arguments with moral foundations, achieving an estimated accuracy of 83%. Quantitative analysis allows us to observe statistical patterns and trends in the use of moral arguments, whereas qualitative analysis enables us to understand and explain the communication strategies in the use of moral arguments in different settings. For instance, supporting arguments often rely on Loyalty and Authority, while attacking arguments use Care. We find that online discussions exhibit a greater diversity of moral foundations and a higher negative valence of moral arguments. Online arguers often rely more on Harm rather than Care, Degradation rather than Sanctity. These insights have significant implications for AI applications, particularly in understanding and predicting human and machine moral behaviours. This work contributes to the construction of more convincing messages and the detection of harmful or biased AI-generated synthetic content.

Journal
Argumentation
Published
2024-09-01
DOI
10.1007/s10503-024-09636-x
CompPile
Open Access
OA PDF Hybrid
Topics
Export

Citation context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (69) · 2 in this index

  1. Araque, O., L. Gatti, and K. Kalimeri. 2020. Moral strength: Exploiting a moral lexicon and embedding similar…
    Knowledge-Based Systems  ↗
  2. Asprino, L., L. Bulla, S. De Giorgis, A. Gangemi, L. Marinucci, and M. Mongiovì. 2022. Uncovering values: det…
     ↗
  3. Atari, M., M.R. Mehl, J. Graham, J. Doris, N. Schwarz, A.M. Davani, A. Omrani, B. Kennedy, E. Gonzalez, N. Ja…
    Scientific Reports  ↗
  4. Bench-Capon, T.J.M. 2003. Persuasion in practical argument using value-based argumentation frameworks. Journa…
    Journal of Logic and Computation  ↗
  5. Bench-Capon, T., and K. Atkinson. 2009. Abstract argumentation and values. Argumentation in artificial intell…
     ↗
Show all 69 →
  1. Brady, W.J., J.A. Wills, J.T. Jost, J.A. Tucker, and J.J. Van Bavel. 2017. Emotion shapes the diffusion of mo…
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America  ↗
  2. Budzynska, K., and C. Reed. 2011. Speech acts of argumentation: Inference anchors and peripheral cues in dial…
  3. Budzynska, K., M. Janier, J. Kang, B. Konat, C. Reed, P. Saint Dizier, M. Stede, and O. Yaskorska. 2015. Auto…
  4. Clifford, S., and J. Jerit. 2013. How words do the work of politics: Moral foundations theory and the debate …
    The Journal of Politics  ↗
  5. Duthie, R., and K. Budzynska. 2018. A Deep Modular RNN Approach for Ethos Mining, Proceedings of the Twenty-S…
     ↗
  6. Efstathiadis, I.S., G. Paulino-Passos, and F. Toni. 2022 Explainable patterns for distinction and prediction …
  7. Feinberg, M., and R. Willer. 2015. From gulf to bridge: When do moral arguments facilitate political influenc…
    Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin  ↗
  8. Frank, D.A. 2004. Argumentation studies in the wake of the new rhetoric. Argumentation and Advocacy 40: 267–2…
    Argumentation and Advocacy  ↗
  9. Frimmer, J. 2019. Moral foundations dictionary 2.0. OSF. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/EZN37.
     ↗
  10. Fulgoni, D., J. Carpenter, L. Ungar, and D. Preoţiuc-Pietro. 2016. An empirical exploration of moral foundati…
  11. Garten, J., R. Boghrati, J. Hoover, K.M. Johnson, and M. Dehghani. 2016. Morality between the lines: Detectin…
     ↗
  12. Garten, J., J. Hoover, K.M. Johnson, R. Boghrati, C. Iskiwitch, and M. Dehghani. 2018. Dictionaries and distr…
    Behavior Research Methods  ↗
  13. González-Santos, C., M.A. Vega-Rodríguez, C.J. Pérez, J.M. López-Muñoz, and I. Martínez-Sarriegui. 2023. Auto…
    Knowledge-Based Systems  ↗
  14. Graham, J., J. Haidt, and B.A. Nosek. 2009. Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral founda…
    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology  ↗
  15. Graham, J., B.A. Nosek, J. Haidt, R. Iyer, S. Koleva, and P.H. Ditto. 2011. Mapping the moral domain. Journal…
    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology  ↗
  16. Graham, J., B.A. Nosek, and J. Haidt. 2012. The moral stereotypes of liberals and conservatives: Exaggeration…
    PLoS ONE  ↗
  17. Haidt, J. 2007. The new synthesis in moral psychology. Science 316 (5827): 998–1002. https://doi.org/10.1126/…
    Science  ↗
  18. The righteous mind. Why good people are divided by religion and politics
  19. Haidt, J., and J. Graham. 2007. When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liber…
    Social Justice Research  ↗
  20. Haidt, J., and C. Joseph. 2004. Intuitive ethics: How innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variab…
    Daedalus  ↗
  21. Hansen, H.V., and D.N. Walton. 2013. Argument kinds and argument roles in the Ontario provincial election, 20…
    Journal of Argumentation Context  ↗
  22. Moral thinking
     ↗
  23. Hatemi, P., C. Crabtree, and K. Smith. 2019. Ideology justifies morality: Political beliefs predict moral fou…
    American Journal of Political Science  ↗
  24. Hoover, J., G. Portillo-Wightman, Y. Leigh, S. Havaldar, A.M. Davani, Y. Lin, Kennedy M. Brendanand, Kamel Z.…
    Social Psychological and Personality Science  ↗
  25. Hopp, F.R., J.T. Fisher, D. Cornell, R. Huskey, and R. Weber. 2021. The extended moral foundations dictionary…
    Behavior Research Methods  ↗
  26. Huang, X., A. Wormley, and A. Cohen. 2022. Learning to adapt domain shifts of moral values via instance weigh…
     ↗
  27. Johnson, K., and D. Goldwasser. 2018. Classification of moral foundations in microblog political discourse. I…
     ↗
  28. Johnson, K., and D. Goldwasser. 2019. Modeling behavioral aspects of social media discourse for moral classif…
     ↗
  29. Kaur, R., and K. Sasahara. 2016. Quantifying moral foundations from various topics on twitter conversations. …
     ↗
  30. Koszowy, M., and D. Walton. 2019. Epistemic and deontic authority in the argumentum ad verecundiam. Pragmatic…
    Pragmatics and Society  ↗
  31. Lawrence, J., R. Duthie, K. Budzynska, and C. Reed. 2016. Argument analytics. In Computational models of argu…
     ↗
  32. Lawrence, J., M. Snaith, B. Konat, K. Budzynska, and C. Reed. 2017. Debating technology for dialogical argume…
    ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT)  ↗
  33. Leidner, B., P. Kardos, and E. Castano. 2018. The effects of moral and pragmatic arguments against torture on…
    Political Psychology  ↗
  34. Lin, Y., J. Hoover, G. Portillo-Wightman, C. Park, M. Dehghani, and H. Ji. 2020. Acquiring background knowled…
     ↗
  35. Liscio, E., A. Dondera, A. Geadau, C. Jonker, and P. Murukannaiah. 2022 Cross-domain classification of moral …
     ↗
  36. Luttrell, A., A. Philipp-Muller, and R.E. Petty. 2019. Challenging moral attitudes with moral messages. Psych…
    Psychological Science  ↗
  37. McAdams, D.P., M. Farber, E. Albaugh, J. Daniels, R.L. Logan, and B. Olson. 2008. Family metaphors and moral …
    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology  ↗
  38. Pacheco, M.L., T. Islam, M. Mahajan, A. Shor, M. Yin, L. Ungar, and D. Goldwasser. 2022. A holistic framework…
     ↗
  39. Pavan, M.C., V.G.D. Santos, A.G. Lan, J. Martins, W.R. Santos, C. Deutsch, P.B. Costa, F.C. Hsieh, and I. Par…
    IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing  ↗
  40. Pennebaker, J.W., and M.E. Francis. 1999. Linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC). https://www.liwc.app. Acc…
  41. Justice, law, and argument. Synthese library
     ↗
  42. Rai, T., and A. Fiske. 2011. Moral psychology is relationship regulation: Moral motives for unity, hierarchy,…
    Psychological Review  ↗
  43. Rezapour, R., S.H. Shah, J. Diesner. 2019. Enhancing the measurement of social effects by capturing morality.…
     ↗
  44. Roy, S., M.L. Pacheco, and D. Goldwasser. 2021. Identifying morality frames in political tweets using relatio…
     ↗
  45. Short, E., T. Stanley, M. Baldwin, and G.G. Scott. 2015. Behaving badly online: Establishing norms of unaccep…
    Studies in Media and Communication  ↗
  46. Stewart, B.D., and D.S. Morris. 2021. Moving morality beyond the in-group: Liberals and conservatives show di…
    Frontiers in Psychology  ↗
  47. Stranisci, M., M. De Leonardis, C. Bosco, and V. Patti. 2021. The expression of moral values in the twitter d…
    Italian Journal of Computational Linguistics  ↗
  48. Strimling, P., I. Vartanova, F. Jansson, K. Eriksson, and K. Eriksson. 2019. The connection between moral pos…
    Nature Human Behaviour  ↗
  49. Suler, J. 2005. Contemporary media forum: The online disinhibition effect. International Journal of Applied P…
    International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies  ↗
  50. Sylwester, K., and M. Purver. 2015. Twitter language use reflects psychological differences between democrats…
    PLoS ONE  ↗
  51. Täuber, S., and M. van Zomeren. 2013. Outrage towards whom? Threats to moral group status impede striving to …
    European Journal of Social Psychology  ↗
  52. Teernstra, L., P. van der Putten, N.E. Noordegraaf-Eelens, and F. Verbeek. 2016. The morality machine: Tracki…
     ↗
  53. Trager, J., A.S. Ziabari, A.M. Davani, P. Golazazian, F. Karimi-Malekabadi, A. Omrani, Z. Li, B. Kennedy, N.K…
  54. Van Bavel, J.J., C.E. Robertson, K. del Rosario, J. Rasmussen, and S. Rathje. 2023. Social media and morality…
    Annual Review of Psychology  ↗
  55. Argumentation
  56. Visser, J., B. Konat, R. Duthie, M. Koszowy, K. Budzynska, and C. Reed. 2020. Argumentation in the 2016 US pr…
    Language Resources and Evaluation  ↗
  57. Voelkel, J.G., and M. Feinberg. 2018. Morally reframed arguments can affect support for political candidates.…
    Social Psychological and Personality Science  ↗
  58. Volkova, S., K. Shaffer, J.Y. Jang, N. Hodas. 2017. Separating facts from fiction: Linguistic models to class…
     ↗
  59. Argumentation schemes for presumptive reasoning
  60. Walton, D. 2012. Argument from fairness in judicial reasoning. In Proceedings of argumentation 2012: Internat…
  61. Walton, D., and H. Hansen. 2013. Arguments from fairness and misplaced priorities in political argumentation.…
    Journal of Politics and Law  ↗
  62. Walton, D., and F. Macagno. 2015. A classification system for argumentation schemes. Argument and Computation…
    Argument and Computation  ↗
  63. Argumentation
  64. Argumentation schemes
     ↗