What is Moral Sanctity? Sanctity in the Moral Worldviews of U.S. Political Liberals

The moral worldviews of liberals and conservatives in the United States have been extensively studied in the political sphere, revealing the peripheral role of sanctity in the worldviews of liberals. This paper provides a commentary on this previous research and then presents a qualitative study that seeks to explore liberals’ personal meanings of sanctity from a more grounded approach. Liberals’ personal experiences of sanctity involved bodily contamination, interpersonal breaches, and lack of self-control. To further interpret these findings, we situate them in the context of two constructs measured quantitatively, namely, moral perceptions of sanctity violations and transcendental self-concepts. Results suggest that overall, certain forms of sanctity are meaningful within liberals’ moral understandings, but these sanctity concerns may obtain their significance alongside other moral concerns. Findings help to illuminate what moral sanctity means to political liberals in the United States and the multiple ways that sanctity can be moralized by different groups.