Giving Compass' Take:

• A new study suggests that our politics and political party affiliation may help shape our beliefs and morality.

• Do a person’s morals steer them to one political party over the other, or does identifying with a political party help shape a person’s morals?

• Here's an article on the question of ethics to the global debate on climate change.

After tracking people’s political attitudes and moral foundations—such as fairness and loyalty—over time, researchers found that while morals did not do a good job of predicting a person’s future political attitudes, the opposite was true.

The results may help explain the mental gymnastics some people do to rationalize behavior or actions within their own political party, says coauthor Peter Hatemi, a professor of political science at Penn State.

“There are examples of members of both the political left and right of excusing or explaining away things that on paper should go against their moral compass,” Hatemi says. “We’ll recondition anything, on average, through our ideological lens. If we see something within our political party that may conflict with our morals, we will often say ‘no, it’s moral because of this,’ or ‘no, it really is fair because of that.’ We tailor what we find acceptable to our politics.”

Read the full article on politics and morality by Katie Bohn at Futurity.