In Vice, Maggie Puniewska points to the moral foundations theory, according to which liberals and conservatives prioritize different ethics: the former compassion, fairness and liberty, the latter purity, loyalty and obedience to authority.

How to sway the other side: Use their morals against them Willer’s work is based on moral foundations theory. It's the idea that people have stable, gut-level morals that influence their worldview. The liberal moral foundations include equality, fairness, and protection of the vulnerable. Conservative moral foundations are more stalwart: They favor in-group loyalty, moral purity, and respect for authority.

Similarly, the moral foundations theory originally put forth by Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham purports that humans have (in the most common and widely discussed versions of the theory) five innate moral building blocks: care/harm; fairness/cheating; loyalty/betrayal (associated with in-group/out-group consciousness); authority/subversion; and sanctity/degradation (“sanctity” is also often referred to as “purity” in the relevant discussions). Liberals are highly attuned to care/harm and fairness/reciprocity, but conservatives, while valuing care, also emphasize authority and purity, which means that their approach to care/harm will be very different from that of liberals. (In fairness, many on the far Left also emphasize purity and fall into authoritarianism.)