(PS9-C70) Caregiver Moral Foundations and Youth Worry About Political Issues

Most youths worry about at least one major voting issue, with concerns about the environment and gun policy most commonly endorsed (Caporino et al., 2020). Such worry is more severe among youth with (vs. without) clinical levels of generalized anxiety. However, little is known about the influence caregivers may have on the nature and frequency of their child’s worries about political issues. According to Moral Foundations Theory, caregivers differ along dimensions of moral values that have been have linked to political party affiliation (e.g., Graham et al., 2009, 2013): (1) Care/Harm, which concerns compassion for victims; (2) Fairness/Cheating, which relates to equality and justice; (3) Loyalty/Betrayal, regarding in-groups and out-groups; (4) Authority/Subversion, which relates to obedience and deference; and (5) Sanctity/Degradation, which involves emphasis on purity and disgust with the unnatural. We explored the possibility that dimensions of caregiver morality predict the frequency of youth worry about voting issues, beyond the degree to which caregivers educate youth about politics. For example, we hypothesized that caregiver emphasis on Fairness/Cheating would predict the frequency of youth worry about the economy, while emphasis on Loyalty/Betrayal would relate to youth worry about immigration.

Caregivers (N=374; 68% female; 85% non-Hispanic White) of youth aged 6–17 years, recruited via MTurk, completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire and reported their child’s worries about 15 voting issues as well as caregiver-child interactions around political news (Caporino et al., 2020). Regression models, controlling for the degree to which the caregiver educates their child about politics, examined all five moral foundations as predictors of  frequency of worry about the environment (F(6, 319)=7.84, p< 001, Adj R²=.11, p< .001), economy (F(6, 321)=5.61, p< 001, Adj R²=.08, p</em>< .001), gun policy (F(6, 322)=10.92, p< 001, Adj R²=.15, p</em>< .001), immigration (F(6, 318)=8.60, p< 001, Adj R²=.12, p</em>< .001), and treatment of racial/ethnic minority groups (F(6, 321)=14.21, p< 001, Adj R²=.20, p</em>< .001). Fairness/Cheating was the only moral foundation to predict the frequency of worry about the environment (β=.18, p=.006), economy (β=.16, p=.019), and treatment of racial/ethnic minority groups (β=.25, p< .001), whereas only Sanctity/Degradation predicted the frequency of worry about gun policy (β=–.18, p=.016). Only Loyalty/Betrayal significantly predicted frequency of worry about immigration (β=–.15, p=.025). In all models, the degree to which caregivers educated their child about politics was significant (ps < .001), with greater education associated with greater worry. Conceptualizing youth political worry in the context of Moral Foundations Theory may assist clinicians in more sensitively targeting excessive worry in a tense political climate.