I'm always somewhat wary of TED talks but this is interesting. I shall largely withhold my own commentary for now and give a short summary (it's 20 minutes long).
Haidt describes liberals as those who are essentially open to new experiences and enjoy change, whereas conservatives are more closed and enjoy things which are familiar, dependable and safe[1]. Liberals prefer a society which is changing whereas conservatives prefer traditional right-wing values[2]. He suggests that to understand why the different groups prefer such different things requires us to step outside of our "moral matrix" and examine morality dispassionately.
[1] I'm an introverted liberal with a strong conservative (small c) streak, so I enjoy new things as long as they're in familiar environments and not too much all at once.
[2] Would be interesting to see how that works in Eastern Europe where conservatism is associated with the far left...
Haidt says that the brain isn't a blank slate from birth. It's wired with a "first draft" social world view (or at least, I suppose, a predisposition towards one) which is subject to revision by experience but is nevertheless present - built-in but malleable. He says that our basic morality by can be described by five key values, which individuals can weight differently (though not entirely independently) like the sliders on a music equaliser. These attributes are :
1) Harm/care - compassion for others who have been harmed, anger towards those who inflict harm
2) Fairness/reciprocity - what it sounds like
3) Ingroup/loyalty - Haidt says that human groups are unique in the way that non-related individuals cooperate with each other and against other groups
4) Authority/respect - again unlike animals, human deference can be more voluntary than in animals and even arises out of love
5) Purity/sanctity - while the religious right may view this from the perspective of sexuality, Haidt notes that lefties also value what sort of foods they put in their bodies
Haidt and his colleague Jesse Graham made a questionnaire[3] to measure how strongly people value these different aspects. A remarkably uniform, global trend emerges : liberals place most weight in 1 and 2, and very little in 3, 4 and 5; conservatives weight them all more equally. Liberals, Haidt says, value change and progress at the risk of chaos, whereas conservatives value order at the expense of harming those at the bottom.
[3] http://www.yourmorals.org/
Doesn't work inside the EU because of GDPR, which is feckin' stupid, but can easily be cured with a VPN. I haven't tried this yet.
Haidt claims that all of these five attributes are legitimate aspects of morality (his point being that his liberal TED audience shouldn't immediately dismiss authoritarianism, for example), and that a common theme of order degenerating into moral chaos isn't just the product of Christian imaginings. He cites a study on the "tragedy of the commons", wherein participants were allowed to put money into a pot which would then be distributed to everyone. Initially high cooperation rapidly degenerated... until punishments were imposed, at which point order was restored. Haidt says that punishments can be remarkably effective in social ordering. He cites religion as one of the key developments in social ordering that may have led to civilisation itself[4]. He concludes by saying that if we could all just try and understand how these different moral parameters a bit more and recognise their value, the world would be happier place.
[4] See comments here : https://plus.google.com/u/0/+WinchellChung/posts/4vQ4zct2HWf
https://youtu.be/8SOQduoLgRw
I was just reading up on this work last night. The guy seems fairly smart about things.
ReplyDeleteHe's got two or three ideas going, the most important of which, imo, is his emphasis on emotional dimension of cognition (which is a follow up to Daniel Kahneman's fast and slow systems ideas and other behavioral economics ideas.
The 5 moral dimensions aspect is speculative but quite interesting. I'd like to see some corroborating research though. That one chart showing how liberals and conservatives differ is appealing but i suspect it needs more research.
He seems to more recently been focusing on the "new atheism" which doesn't do much for me.
I was wondering what connection there might be to the big five personality traits, but so far haven't found much discussion.
Here's a couple articles examining his ideas if anyone want to casually follow up on these ideas:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201201/jonathan-haidts-moral-political-psychology
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/jonathan-haidt-the-moral-matrix-breaking-out-of-our-righteous-minds/
web.archive.org - YourMorals.Org
ReplyDeleteOne of the things to keep carefully in mind when examining political labels: they are deliberately inconsistent.
ReplyDeleteEven comparing within a country, both Eisenhower and Reagan were considered "moderate conservatives", yet how different their actual policies were!
Bill Brayman Very nice links. New Atheism is a pet hate of mine, but I'll use one of Dawkin's quotes here : it is possible for one side simply to be wrong. That's my biggest criticism. Someone studying moral psychology ought to do exactly what Haidt does by trying to avoid bias from their own morality as much as possible. But ultimately, most of the rest of us still have to make morally-informed decisions - we do have to decide that some options are wrong. A related point is that this kind of analysis is extremely helpful when dealing with complex choices, but maybe less so with simple ones. It's really hard to see some choices as being different moral judgements and not simply due to wanton malevolence. I have to think about it a lot more...
ReplyDeleteDaniel Taylor That's interesting. I would guess two factors might be at work : the more complex nature of the five parameters considered by Haidt than the traditional labels, and the relative standards as a function of the time (what is considered to be moderate at one time can eventually be seen as an extreme position).
ReplyDeletePlus also intelligence, particularly emotional intelligence. Someone who's emotionally stupid won't understand their own values are act in accordance with them. But also the regular kind of intelligence, because policy differences must arise simply because of their perceived and predicted outcome. Hence people with the same values can favour different policies whilst sometimes people with different values can favour the same policies.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor also the political expedience of appealing to particular voters by virtue of the label you run under. Lots of people are too busy getting by to actually check that you are being consistent.
ReplyDeleteWhat I have seen is that there are actual leaders, and people actually follow them even if it means accepting ideas as certain that they would have rejected as ridiculous previously.
Group identity is one hell of a drug, it would appear.
Daniel Taylor While there are plenty of tests to judge which party agrees most closely with a voter's preferred policies, AFAIK there aren't any that try and match moral values. The proposed system here might be one, if it's simple enough (I've not tried it yet).
ReplyDeleteSome time ago I proposed a list of criteria on which to judge who to vote for based on closest match to policies : idealism, policies, ability, trust, behaviour, evidence and respect. Each could be weighted differently by each voter. The idea was to do a self-analysis and try and dig down into the real reasons for voting a bit more than the usual sort of tribalism (http://astrorhysy.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-political-drake-equation.html with my own overtly biased example).
An objective morality (idealism) test would be interesting in this context. On the one hand, people seem curiously vulnerable to quite crude manipulation. On the other, sometimes they seem hell-bent on self-destructive stubbornness. What makes them behave in one way or the other is something I haven't figured out.