ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the moral and political beliefs arise from an intuitive process infused with emotion and thus subject to extraneous affective influences. Our overarching goal is to better understand the psychological factors contributing to the hyper-partisan state of contemporary American politics by situating them within our current scientific understanding of moral reasoning processes. The results of the Brittany S. Liu and Peter H. Ditto (2013) studies illustrate another way that moral coherence processes serve to fortify the differing moral intuitions of political partisans, and help to explain the factual gulf seen between liberals and conservatives in the US Philosopher John Rawls was exceedingly clear about what he thought was required to govern a pluralistic society justly. He argued that when a collection of people includes those of different moral or religious beliefs, political transactions should be restricted to a common intellectual currency that all sides would find persuasive: arguments based on universally-held values, evidence, and reason.
