Morality EQ
Posted on Friday, September 19, 2008
Jonathan Haidt on “What Makes People Vote Republican?”:
Psychologists have done extensive research on the moral mechanisms that are presupposed in a Millian society, and there are two that appear to be partly innate. First, people in all cultures are emotionally responsive to suffering and harm, particularly violent harm, and so nearly all cultures have norms or laws to protect individuals and to encourage care for the most vulnerable. Second, people in all cultures are emotionally responsive to issues of fairness and reciprocity, which often expand into notions of rights and justice. Philosophical efforts to justify liberal democracies and egalitarian social contracts invariably rely heavily on intuitions about fairness and reciprocity.
[…]
My recent research shows that social conservatives do indeed rely upon those two foundations, but they also value virtues related to three additional psychological systems: ingroup/loyalty (involving mechanisms that evolved during the long human history of tribalism), authority/respect (involving ancient primate mechanisms for managing social rank, tempered by the obligation of superiors to protect and provide for subordinates), and purity/sanctity (a relatively new part of the moral mind, related to the evolution of disgust, that makes us see carnality as degrading and renunciation as noble).
[…]
We think of the moral mind as being like an audio equalizer, with five slider switches for different parts of the moral spectrum. Democrats generally use a much smaller part of the spectrum than do Republicans. The resulting music may sound beautiful to other Democrats, but it sounds thin and incomplete to many of the swing voters that left the party in the 1980s, and whom the Democrats must recapture if they want to produce a lasting political realignment.
Note: emphasis added
I tend to agree with Jose at ThickCulture that this is an incomplete analysis: much of Republican success is due to a self-centered “Why should I pay taxes?” attitude and Democrats use “in-group” and “purity/sanctity” framing (Jose’s examples: buy local movements and the environmental movement respectively). Additionally, it’s important to note the ugly foundation behind Republican “in-group” framing that is becoming especially pronounced in this election: racism and xenophobia.
That’s a disagreement about specifics though: I think the “EQ Analogy” where Morality consists of configurations of “5 Moral Sliders” is very interesting. I also think tying together a social level account of culture with an individual level account of personality (and individual differences—some people clearly respond to in-group appeals more than others, for instance) is the future of this kind of research. It’s no coincidence that Haidt’s drawing on Durkheim, a sociologist to make his argument.
Perhaps Haidt will also displace Lakoff as the go-to liberal psychology guru. That’d be a good trade, I think.