The righteous mind:
Why good people are divided by
politics and religion
Sage Lecture #2
Nov. 17, 2008
Jonathan Haidt
University of Virginia
6 Lectures on Morality
11/10: What is morality and how does it work?
11/17: The righteous mind: Why good people are divided
by politics and religion
11/24: The positive moral emotions: Elevation, awe,
admiration, and gratitude
12/1: Hive psychology, group selection, and leadership
12/8: The dark side: Why moral psychology is the greatest
source of evil
12/15: The light side: How to pursue happiness using
ancient wisdom and modern psychology
Magic trick #2
Where did Max’s morality
come from?
1. Put into Max from outside
(empiricism)
2. Was in Max all along
(nativism)
3. Was constructed in Max,
by Max (constructivism)
2. Nativism
Nature provides a first draft,
which experience then revises…
‘Built-in' does not mean
unmalleable; it means
organized in advance of
experience.“
(Marcus, 2004)
The New Synthesis in Moral Psych
1) Intuitive primacy (but not dictatorship)
2) Moral thinking is for social doing
3) Morality binds and builds
4) Morality is about more than harm and
fairness
The Social Intuitionist Model (Haidt, 2001)
6
A’s Intuition
1
A’s Judgment
2
A’s Reasoning
5
4
B’s Reasoning
B’s Judgment
3
B’s Intuition
Four main processes:
1) the intuitive judgment link
Two rare processes:
2) the post-hoc reasoning link
5) the reasoned judgment link
3) the reasoned persuasion link
6) the private reflection link
4) the social persuasion link
Intuition tilts the table
The New Synthesis in Moral Psych
1) Intuitive primacy (but not dictatorship)
2) Moral thinking is for social doing
3) Morality binds and builds
4) Morality is about more than harm and
fairness
The New Synthesis in Moral Psych
1) Intuitive primacy (but not dictatorship)
2) Moral thinking is for social doing
3) Morality binds and builds
4) Morality is about more than harm and
fairness
3) Morality binds and builds
3) Morality binds and builds
The New Synthesis in Moral Psych
1) Intuitive primacy (but not dictatorship)
2) Moral thinking is for social doing
3) Morality binds and builds
4) Morality is about more than harm and
fairness
Morality as harm reduction:
“Morality is an informal public system applying to all
rational persons, governing behavior that affects
others, and has the lessening of evil or harm as its
goal.” (Gert, Stanford Encycl. of Phil.)
“If, as I believe, morality is a system of thinking
about (and maximizing) the well being of conscious
creatures like ourselves, many people's moral
concerns are frankly immoral.” (Harris, 2008)
Morality is.....
“prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and
welfare pertaining to how people ought to
relate to each other.” (Turiel, 1983)
Harm/
Care
Fairness/
Justice
Morality is.....
“prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and
welfare pertaining to how people ought to
relate to each other.” (Turiel, 1983)
Harm/
Care
Fairness/
Justice
Looking for moral “dark matter”
Survey of five sources, by one judge. What appraisals of
the social world trigger an evaluative response?
Designed to capture universals:
1) De Waal (1996) Good Natured
2) Fiske (1992) Structures of Social Life
3) Brown (1991) Human Universals
Designed to capture cultural variation:
4) Shweder et al. (1996) “The Big Three…”
5) Schwartz (1992) Value Survey
And the winners are…….
Harm/care (5)
Authority/respect (5)
Fairness/reciprocity (5)
The “first draft” of the moral mind is “organized in
advance of experience” either to have certain intuitions,
or to be “prepared” to learn some moral content easily.
Needed 2 more:
Ingroup/loyalty (4)
Purity/sanctity (3)
1. Harm/care
1. Harm/care
--Attachment system is pan-mammalian (Bowlby)
--Psychopaths lack a “Violence Inhibition
Mechanism” (Blair)
--Mirror neurons and empathy (Rizzolatti; Decety)
--Infants detect helping and hurting...
1. Harm/care
1. Harm/care
These findings “indicate that humans engage in
social evaluation far earlier in development than
previously thought, and support the view that the
capacity to evaluate individuals on the basis of
their social interactions is universal and
unlearned” (Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007,
Nature).
[i.e., “structured in advance of experience”]
2. Fairness/reciprocity
2. Fairness/reciprocity
--Reciprocity is a human universal (Brown)
--Reciprocal altruism (Trivers)
--People want punishment to fit crime, not to
prevent future harm (Darley & Carlsmith)
--Concepts of fairness not clear until age 7, but
emotional sensitivity to unfairness emerges much
earlier...
When getting something good is bad...
(Lobue, Nishida, Chiong, DeLoache, & Haidt, under review
Design: 72 pairs of preschoolers, ages 3:0 to 5:10
--Pre-test: “can you give me 4/2/3 fish?”
--Free play
--Cleanup
--Reward for cleanup: stickers
--Distribution: 2 for Disadvantaged, 4 for Advantaged
--Wait, observe
--Go on to next task
--Find 2 more stickers, ask what should be done?
--Equalize distribution
Clear D.I.A., with sulking
Pair 17, disadvantaged = 5 yrs, 4 mo; advantaged = 4 yrs 9 mo
On implicit measures, early emergence, tiny age
trend (n.s.)!
Advantaged
Disadvantaged
Percentage of Children who Responded "Yes"
On explicit measures: late emergence, clear age trend.
Learned concepts catch up with early intuitive emotional
response (structured in advance of experience)
100
80
60
40
20
0
Disadvantaged
3-year-olds
Advantaged
4-year-olds
5-year-olds
3. Ingroup/loyalty
3. Ingroup/loyalty
--Minimal Groups Paradigm (Tajfel)
--Early preference for local accent (Kinzler, Dupoux,
& Spelke, 2007)
--Tribalism and initiation rites emerge even when
not culturally supported (e.g., street gangs and
fraternities)
4. Authority/respect
4. Authority/respect
--Hierarchy is culturally widespread; egalitarianism
is not the default, it is maintained effortfully
(Boehm)
--Displays of appeasement (Keltner; Fessler)
--Brown, Pronouns of Power: tu/vous distinction is
recreated even when language doesn’t mark it:
Bob/Mr.-Smith
5. Purity/sanctity
5. Purity/sanctity
--Disgust is universally present, extended into social
world (Rozin, Haidt)
--Purity & pollution practices are widespread in
traditional societies, many similarities (Douglas)
--Purity and pollution practices emerge even in modern
societies......
Cooties
A game learned from older kids by a general learning
system?
or
A game that emerges from the 7-year-old-mind as the
purity module matures?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6ylxWcwkUM
Web survey of 271 UVA Int’l Students
In the United States, children in many schools say that
certain children have “cooties.” If a child has cooties
then other children try to avoid coming near or
touching that child. Sometimes there are special ways
of getting rid of cooties, or of protecting oneself from
catching cooties. Kids talk about cooties for just a few
years, and it seems to disappear. Do you know what
cooties are? (It might have been called something else
in your country or school)
Web survey of 271 UVA Int’l Students
107 said they recognized it, continued the study
75 finished the study
26 thought cooties was just head lice (with some social
entailments)
43 said they were related to boy/girl germs/avoidance,
or other mainly social issues
--18 of these spent most of ages 7-11 in an English
speaking country, or had English as native language
--19 did not
Cooties exists elsewhere
Japan: ___-kin (person’s name-germs)
Who had it: (1) Anyone who touched a dirty thing, who were being
stupid, or who were bad at something. (2)Elementary school
kids… would point out and tease kids who were fat, below
average academically, and/or unathletic.
How do you catch it: (1) By touching something dirty, or making
some mistakes in class, (2) Imaginary germs that can transfer by
touching others
How to protect self: (1) If you are not the first person, then you can
say 'engaccho' to protect you. (2) The initial reaction was to
pretend they were flicking it off, as if it were dust and they would
joke, 'I'll just have to take shower when I get home.'
What properties affect likelihood of cooties?
Opp. sex - Same
3.00
Dirty - clean
popular - unpop
attractive - deformed
intelligent - dumb
Being opposite sex, dirty
(un)popular,
(un)attractive.
2.00
Mean
1.00
Intelligence doesn’t
matter much
0.00
-1.00
-2.00
In U.S. or
Commonwealth
n=18
0
Not
n=19
1
The First Draft....
Harm
Fairness
Ingroup
Authority
Purity
Structured in advance of experience, in multiple ways
(e.g., emotions, learning modules, likes/dislikes)
Openness to Experience
“Open individuals have an affinity for liberal,
progressive, left-wing political views, whereas
closed individuals prefer conservative,
traditional, right wing views”(McCrae, 1996)
The 5-channel
Moral Equalizer
Check your settings at
www.YourMorals.org
Moral Foundations Questionnaire
Moral Relevance: When you decide whether something is right or
wrong, to what extent are the following considerations relevant to
your thinking?
(6-point scale, not at all relevant to extremely relevant)
Whether or not...
• someone cared for someone weak or vulnerable [Harm]
• some people were treated differently than others [Fairness]
• someone showed a lack of loyalty [Ingroup]
• someone conformed to the traditions of society [Authority]
• someone did something disgusting [Purity]
(Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, under review)
Moral Relevance Ratings
YourMorals.org participants (N=26,464)
Harm
Fairness
Ingroup
Authority
Purity
Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5
Endorsement
Harm
Fairness
Authority
Ingroup
Purity
Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5
Endorsement
Harm
Fairness
Authority
Ingroup
Purity
Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5
Endorsement
Harm
Fairness
Authority
Ingroup
Purity
Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5
Endorsement
Harm
Fairness
Authority
Ingroup
Purity
Endorsement
Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5
Harm
Fairness
Authority
Ingroup
Purity
Endorsement
Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5
Harm
Fairness
Ingroup
Authority
Purity
Endorsement
Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5
Harm
Fairness
Ingroup
Authority
Purity
Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5
Endorsement
Harm
Fairness
Ingroup
Authority
Purity
Endorsement
Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5
Harm
Fairness
Ingroup
Authority
Purity
Endorsement
Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5
Harm
Fairness
Ingroup
Authority
Purity
Moral Sacredness and Taboo Trade-offs
Try to imagine actually doing the following things, and indicate how much money
someone would have to pay you (anonymously and secretly) to be willing to do
each thing. For each action, assume that nothing bad would happen to you
afterwards. Also assume that you cannot use the money to make up for your
action.
Scale: $0 (I’d do it for free), $10, $100, $1,000, $10,000,
$100,000, A million dollars, Never for any amount of money
• Kick a dog in the head, hard [Harm]
• Sign a secret-but-binding pledge to only hire people of your
race in your company [Fairness]
• Publicly bet against your favorite sports team [Ingroup]
• Curse your parents, to their face [Authority]
• Get a blood transfusion of 1 pint of disease-free, compatible
blood from a convicted child molester [Purity]
(Tetlock, 2003; Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, under review)
Moral Sacredness
YourMorals.org participants (N=8,004)
Never
$1M
$100K
$10K
$1K
$100
Fairness
Harm
Purity
Ingroup
Authority
Liberal Response:
Explain conservatism psychologically
“Conservative opinions acquire coherence by virtue of
the fact that they minimize uncertainty and threat
while pursuing continuity with the past (i.e., status
quo) and rationalizing inequality in society. Basic social,
cognitive, and motivational differences may also
explain why extreme right wing movements are
typically obsessed with purity, cleanliness, hygiene,
structure, and order - things that would otherwise have
little to do with political positions per se...”
(Jost et al., 2003)
Liberals are often anti-I,A,P
Science writers John Horgan & George Johnson, talking
about 5 foundations on bloggingheads.tv
Engaging the moral imagination:
what makes I, A, & P MORAL?
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Percent Contributed
Cooperation decays without punishment
Fehr & Gachter,
Nature, 2002
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11 12
Fundamentalist churches and village life
“Though a life of mutual dependence within a family
circle was commonplace among members of SR and
other new right activists I met, it was foreign to
people I knew in academia and the New Left... Most
of us were prepared, from the moment we left home
for college, to leave family dependencies behind and
learn to live as self-governing individuals. This left us
free to move from one city to another...”
(Ault, Spirit and Flesh, 2005)
Cosmopolitan liberals live in Atom-World, created
by post-enlightenment forces of modernity
You can do what you want,
just don’t HARM anyone,
and be FAIR to other individuals.
But people traditionally lived in Lattice-World
Groups/institutions exist and are primary.
Morality is broader, includes foundations of:
• Ingroup/loyalty
• Authority/respect
• Purity/sanctity
But people traditionally lived in Lattice-World
Groups/institutions exist and are primary.
Morality is broader, includes foundations of
• Ingroup/loyalty
• Authority/respect
• Purity/sanctity
Social capital: social networks and the associated
norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness
Moral-communal capital: Social capital, plus
institutions, traditions, and norms that guarantee that
contributions and hard work will be rewarded, and that
free-riders, exploiters, and criminals will be punished.
Factors that increase MCC:
--Group is fundamental source of value
--Emphasize similarity, shared traditions
--Authoritarian or Authoritative parenting
--Moral imperative to punish
--Religiosity
--Emphasis on duties, not rights
--Ethos of support for authority and
local institutions
Factors that undermine MCC:
--Individual is fundamental source of value
--Celebrate diversity, tolerance
--Permissive parenting
--Reluctance to punish
--Secularism
--Emphasis on rights, not duties
--Question authority & institutions
--Hi mobility, hi immigration,
low stability
Traditional Morality: Uses every tool in the
toolbox to increase MCC
Liberal Morality: Rejects I, A, P
The Magic Trick: E Pluribus Unum
Liberals are seen to be
obstacles, care only
about pluribus:
--Immigration
--Bilinguilism
--Diversity
--Civil liberties
“Liberalism is, in essence, the
HIV virus because it weakens
the defense cells of a nation."
Liberals speak for the weak and
oppressed; want change and
justice, even at risk of chaos
"The restraints on men, as well
as their liberties, are to be
reckoned among their rights.“
--Burke
Conservatives speak for institutions
and traditions; want order even at
cost to those at the bottom
Cons and Libs as Yin and Yang?
Vishnu the
Preserver
(stability)
Shiva the
Destroyer
(change)
The righteous mind: Why good people are divided
by politics and religion