Jonathan Haidt goes in depth about it in the book: The Righteous Mind.
First, he makes an argument that our moral judgments are driven by fast, automatic gut feelings. He calls it the "elephant".
Then reasoning and logic, the "rider", comes afterward to justify the gut feeling.
He kinda explains moral dumbfounding, when you feel something is wrong, but struggle to articulate why. Your feeling come first, then the logic second.
Second, he brings forward the 6 main moral foundations:
1. Care/Harm
2. Fairness/Cheating
3. Loyalty/Betrayal
4. Authority/Subversion
5. Sanctity/Degradation
6. Liberty/Oppression
He compares them to taste buds. How genetically, you may be predisposed to having a higher or lower distribution in each of them, but you can expand your pallet.
Some people take a liking to sour foods right away, while others will never enjoy it, but some might develop the taste over time.
Liberals are incredibly high in the care/harm & fairness/cheating moral foundations, medium in liberty, but low in all the others.
Conservatives are high in loyalty, authority and sanctity, then medium for the rest.
Libertarians are high in liberty, medium in fairness, and low in the rest.
When discussing politics, Haidt argues that the trick is finding which moral foundation the person you are addressing is high in, then adjust your argument to fit within that moral framework.
His studies show that liberals are unable to understand conservatives and libertarians' point of views. When testing them on how a conservative or libertarian would answer a question, they aren't able to put themselves into their mindset. However, conservatives are able to. Libertarians are the best at it, able to adjust their answers almost exactly as to how both other groups would.
