The dark side: Why moral psychology
is the greatest source of evil
Sage Lecture #5
Dec. 8, 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
ppt files available at www.JonathanHaidt.com, at bottom
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 re-defined:
“Moral systems are interlocking sets of values,
virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions,
technologies, and evolved psychological
mechanisms that work together to suppress or
regulate selfishness and make social life
possible” (Haidt, in press, Handbook of social
psych)
Keeping together in time, fascist
Three Models of Human Nature
Cynic
Rationalist
Intuitionist
We are
selfish
We strive for
truth and
justice
(imperfectly)
Plato, Mill,
Kant, Kohlberg,
Turiel
We have a lot of evolved
automatic stuff that
makes us contingently
selfish and cooperative
Hume, Darwin,
E.O. Wilson, De Waal
Machiavelli
Freud,
Dawkins
The Cynical View
Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a
society in which individuals cooperate generously
and unselfishly towards a common good, you can
expect little help from biological nature. Let us try
to teach generosity and altruism, because we are
born selfish.
--Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
The Rationalist View
At the heart of this tradition is a twofold intuition
about human beings: namely, that all, just by
being human, are of equal dignity and worth... ,
and that the primary source of this worth is a
power of moral choice within them, a power that
consists in the ability to plan a life in accordance
with one's own evaluation of ends... [Political
theory should be based on] the conception of
human beings as essentially rational agents.
---Nussbaum, 1999, p. 57
The Intuitionist View
Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction
of the whole world to the scratching of my
finger.... (Hume, Treatise)
The ultimate ends of human actions can never, in
any case, be accounted for by reason, but
recommend themselves entirely to the sentiments
and affections of mankind. (Hume, Enquiry)
Three Models of Human Nature
Cynic
Rationalist
Intuitionist
We are
selfish
We strive for
truth and
justice
(imperfectly)
Plato, Mill,
Kant, Kohlberg,
Turiel
We have a lot of evolved
automatic stuff that
makes us contingently
selfish and cooperative
Hume, Darwin,
E.O. Wilson, De Waal
Machiavelli
Freud,
Dawkins
Three Models of Human Nature
Cynic
Rationalist
Intuitionist
We are
selfish
We strive for
truth and
justice
(imperfectly)
Plato, Mill,
Kant, Kohlberg,
Turiel
Expects too
much
We have a lot of evolved
automatic stuff that
makes us contingently
selfish and cooperative
Hume, Darwin,
E.O. Wilson, De Waal
Machiavelli
Freud,
Dawkins
Expects too
little
Expects complexity,
extremity, inconsistency
The Intuitionist view
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
Sympathy
...sympathy...forms an essential part of the social
instinct, and is indeed its foundation-stone.
--Darwin, Descent
The play of sympathy and antipathy is a sufficient
cause for practical reason to become conscious of
reciprocity.
--Piaget, Moral Judgment of the Child
Psychic Numbing (Slovic)
How should we value lives?
How should we value lives?
How might we value lives?
How DO we value lives?
The collapse of compassion
Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2006
Identifiable Lives Condition:
Rokia, a 7-year-old girl from Mali, Africa, is
desperately poor and faces a threat of severe
hunger or even starvation. Her life will be
changed for the better as a result of your
financial gift. With your support, and the
support of other caring sponsors, Save the
Children will work with Rokia’s family and
other members of the community to help
feed her, provide her with education,
as well as basic medical care and hygiene
education.
The collapse of compassion
Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2006
Statistical Lives Condition:
• Food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than 3
million children.
• In Zambia, severe rainfall deficits have resulted in a
42% drop in maize production from 2000. As a
result, an estimated 3 million Zambians face hunger.
• Four million Angolans — one third of the population—
have been forced to flee their homes.
• More than 11 million people in Ethiopia need
immediate food assistance.
The collapse of compassion
Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2006
The collapse of compassion
Kogut & Ritov, 2005
Mean contributions to help 1 sick child, or to help
the whole group of 8 sick children
The collapse of compassion
Vastfjall, Peters, & Slovic, in prep
Compassion and charity decline at 2!
It is a terrible thing to admit, but the more
information we consume about Darfur, the less
shocking each piece of new information seems.
And surely that is a part of the problem.
Ignorance is not the only ally of indifference;
sometimes knowledge, too, blunts the heart and
the will.
--Richard Just, 2008, review of books about Darfur
If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at one,
I will. –Mother Teresa.
Three Models of Human Nature
Cynic
Rationalist
Intuitionist
We are
selfish
We strive for
truth and
justice
(imperfectly)
Plato, Mill,
Kant, Kohlberg,
Turiel
Expects too
much
We have a lot of evolved
automatic stuff that
makes us contingently
selfish and cooperative
Hume, Darwin,
E.O. Wilson, De Waal
Machiavelli
Freud,
Dawkins
Expects too
little
Expects complexity,
extremity, inconsistency
The Intuitionist view
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
A) Hypocrisy
--How can you say to your brother, "Let me remove the
speck from your eye”; and look, a plank is in your own
eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own
eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck
from your brother's eye. (Jesus)
--Clean your finger before you point at my spots. (Ben
Franklin)
--Though you see the seven defects of others, we do
not see our own ten defects (Japanese Proverb)
--A he-goat doesn’t realize that he smells. (Nigerian
Proverb)
Functionalisms
Moral thinking is done in order to...
1. Feel good. (Intrapsychic functionalism: Freud,
Cialdini)
2. Find the truth. (Epistemic functionalism: Plato,
Kohlberg, rationalists)
3. Succeed socially. (Social-functionalism: Darwin,
Tooby, Cosmides, Dunbar)
--the “interpreter module” (Gazzaniga, 1985)
--the intuitive politician (Tetlock) and the ubiquity
of hypocrisy (Batson)
Real politicians
B) Rationalization
Rationalization may be defined as self-deception
by reasoning. --Karen Horney
The Most Dangerous Rationalization
“Russians may be hungry and short of clothes and
comfort, but you can’t make an omelette without
breaking eggs”
--Walter Duranty, 1932, in
the New York Times
The road to hell:
The ends justify the means
Example: Lazar Kaganovich
Rationalization of evil
You must think of humanity as one great body, but one
that requires constant surgery. Need I remind you that
surgery cannot be performed without cutting
membranes, without destroying tissues, without the
spilling of blood? Thus we must destroy whatever is
superfluous. These are unpleasant acts, granted, but we
do not find any of this immoral. You see, all acts that
further history and socialism are moral acts.
--Lazar Kaganovich, letter to his American nephew
The Intuitionist view
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 6 Ultrasocial Animals
Hymenoptera: Bees
wasps
and ants
Reproduce only
through queen;
OFA-AFO
Also: termites…
and naked mole rats…
The 6th Ultrasocial:
Not kinship; Massive ingroup cooperation for the
purpose of cross-group
competition. Held together
by norms and emotions.
The Myth of Pure Evil (Baumeister, 1997)
1) The evil one is purely evil; has no intelligible motive,
beyond an enjoyment of harming, or a lust for power.
2) The victim is purely good, and did nothing to bring
about victimization.
3) The Evil one is an outsider, not part of our group.
4) Evil is the antithesis of order, peace, stability
5) Anyone who raises doubts about the purity of either
side is in league with evil (e.g., dissent is treason)
Cartoon evil, 1950s
Parody of cartoon evil, 1990s
Manichaeism: the world is an eternal battle
between the forces of darkness and the forces of
light
Kids are natural manichaeans
Natural Born Manichaean
"When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world,
and you knew exactly who they were. It was us
vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today,
we are not so sure who the they are, but we
know they're there.“
--GWB, January 21 2000
Mirrored Manichaeans:
"You're either
with us or
against us in
the fight against terror....
This is an evil man that
we’re dealing with”
"Those who believe,
fight in the Cause of
Allah, and those who
disbelieve, fight in the
cause of Satan”
The Myth of Pure Evil (Baumeister, 1997)
1) The evil one is purely evil; has no intelligible motive,
beyond an enjoyment of harming, or a lust for power.
2) The victim is purely good, and did nothing to bring
about victimization.
3) The Evil one is an outsider, not part of our group.
4) Evil is the antithesis of order, peace, stability
5) Anyone who raises doubts about the purity of either
side is in league with evil (e.g., dissent is treason)
A) The Causes of Terrorism
Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They
hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a
democratically elected government. Their leaders
are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our
freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our
freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with
each other.
--G. W. Bush, Address to Congress, 9/20/01
Many people, many motives (Victoroff, 2005)
Sometimes
crazy and/or
blinded by
hate
Many people, many motives (Victoroff, 2005)
Rarely crazy
or blinded by
hate
Traditional Psychological Approaches
A) Psychopathology? [No]
B) Rational choice? [for govt. yes; bomber no]
C) Psychoanalytic theories, [little support]
D) Sociological theories? e.g., Social learning,
Frustration-aggression, Relative deprivation,
Oppression [little support]
E) Group Process theories: T is the product of
“group psych within idiosyncratic subcultures that
coalesce in reaction to circumstances they
perceive as intolerable” [yes]
Morality binds, builds, & kills
“In too simple terms, terrorists kill for the same reasons
that groups have killed other groups for centuries.
They kill for cause and comrades, that is, with a
combination of ideology and intense small-group
dynamics.” --McCauley (2002)
--9/11 hijackers were not motivated by hate
--Atta’s manual has no hate
--Anger is background of intergroup conflict, within
which martyrdom becomes a moral ideal
--Men on martyrdom mission are (encouraged to be)
holy minded and tightly bonded
Robert Pape, Dying to Win
“Few suicide attackers are social misfits... most fit a
nearly opposite profile… They see themselves as
sacrificing their lives for the nation’s good.”
“The bottom line, then, is that suicide terrorism is mainly
a response to foreign occupation…. Modern suicide
terrorism is best understood as an extreme strategy for
national liberation against democracies with troops
that pose an imminent threat to control the territory
the terrorists view as their homeland.”
Suicide Terrorism is a form of altruistic suicide, like bees
stinging a fist punched into the hive
B) Fascism
Making the nation a hive
“Fascism:”
Term coined by
Mussolini, from “fasces”,
Roman symbol of civic
authority illustrating
strength through unity
Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism”
“Fascism sees in the world not only those superficial,
material aspects in which man appears as an individual,
standing by himself, self-centered, subject to natural law,
which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish
momentary pleasure; it sees not only the individual but the
nation and the country; individuals and generations bound
together by a moral law, with common traditions and a
mission which suppressing the instinct for life closed in a
brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on
duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in
which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation of
self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely
spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.”
Morality re-defined:
“Moral systems are interlocking sets of values,
virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions,
technologies, and evolved psychological
mechanisms that work together to suppress or
regulate selfishness and make social life possible”
(Haidt, in press, Handbook of social psych)
The Intuitionist view
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
Racism as moral judgment
Naive racism and anti-racism
--The world is full of good people and bad people
--Shared hatred of evil binds us together
--Group X is evil
--Group X = Jews, Blacks, Communists, Gays,
Child-abductors, Drug-dealers/users, Muslims
--For liberals, group X = racists, who are responsible
for racism; our hatred of them binds us together
Prejudice as non-moral error
A) Displaced aggression
B) Authoritarian personality
C) Cognitive errors/biases, illusory correlations
D) Implicit associations, picked up from the media
E) Ingroup-outgroup dynamics (Jane Elliot’s blueeyes and brown-eyes)
F) Stereotype accuracy?
Racist Jeopardy Round 1
A: These people are cheap, greedy, pushy, clannish,
wealthy
Q: Who are the Chinese (in Indonesia), the Indians
(in East Africa), the Copts (in Egypt)?
More generally: “Middlemen” or trading subcultures (including Jews in Europe)
Racist Jeopardy Round 2
A: These people are lazy, violent, superstitious,
unintelligent, musical, and religious, and they
speak colorfully
Q: Who are the Irish? (in Boston, c.1840)
More generally: Impoverished peasant sub-cultures
(including rural Southern Blacks)
How liberalism became a dirty word
--Jews and Italians of Brooklyn flee
old neighborhoods
--1972, threat of forced busing of
Brownsville Blacks into Canarsie;
Canarsians derided as racist for
resisting
--Rieder: Canarsians were racist, but
that is not a full explanation
-- “Black crime and family
breakdown was real; the high life
was so highly visible...”
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
Ghetto culture violates all 5, for Canarsians
Racism is (in part) a moral judgment that
liberalism condemns as the greatest possible sin
-- “Law and order is not as simple as a code word for
racism; it is a cry as things begin to break up, for
stability, for stopping history in mid dissolution.”
--”For Canarsians, [Liberalism] had become associated
with profligacy, spinelessness, malevolence,
masochism, elitism, fantasy, anarchy, idealism,
softness, irresponsibility, and sanctimoniousness.”
Racism and the Myth of Pure Evil
1) The racist is purely evil; has no intelligible motive,
beyond an enjoyment of harming, or a lust for power.
2) The victim is purely good, and did nothing to bring
about victimization.
3) The racist is an outsider, not part of our group.
4) Racism is the antithesis of order, peace, stability
5) Anyone who raises doubts about the purity of either
side is in league with evil (e.g., justifying racism is
treason)
The Moral Psych Alternative:
Racism/Prejudice almost invariably involve moral
judgments, mostly based on the Ingroup,
Authority, and Purity foundations
Social Group Attitudes
Jerry Falwell on homosexuals:
“Any sex outside of the marriage bond between a man and a
woman is violating God's law. Christians, like slaves and soldiers,
ask no questions...I truly cannot imagine men with men, women
with women, doing what they were not physically created to do,
without abnormal stress and misbehavior...We will see a
breakdown of the family and family values if we decide to
approve same-sex marriage, and if we decide to establish
homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.”
Social Group Attitudes
Jerry Falwell on homosexuals:
“Any sex outside of the marriage bond between a man and a
woman is violating God's law. Christians, like slaves and soldiers,
ask no questions...I truly cannot imagine men with men, women
with women, doing what they were not physically created to do,
without abnormal stress and misbehavior...We will see a
breakdown of the family and family values if we decide to
approve same-sex marriage, and if we decide to establish
homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.”
Ingroup
Social Group Attitudes
Jerry Falwell on homosexuals:
“Any sex outside of the marriage bond between a man and a
woman is violating God's law. Christians, like slaves and soldiers,
ask no questions...I truly cannot imagine men with men, women
with women, doing what they were not physically created to do,
without abnormal stress and misbehavior...We will see a
breakdown of the family and family values if we decide to
approve same-sex marriage, and if we decide to establish
homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.”
Authority
Social Group Attitudes
Jerry Falwell on homosexuals:
“Any sex outside of the marriage bond between a man and a
woman is violating God's law. Christians, like slaves and soldiers,
ask no questions...I truly cannot imagine men with men, women
with women, doing what they were not physically created to do,
without abnormal stress and misbehavior...We will see a
breakdown of the family and family values if we decide to
approve same-sex marriage, and if we decide to establish
homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.”
Purity
Social Group Attitudes
White Supremacist Groups (National Vanguard, National
Alliance)
Social Group Attitudes
White Supremacist Groups (National Vanguard, National
Alliance)
“Our civilization is in obvious decline...Crime is becoming
pervasive, and citizens in our major metropolitan areas have
become inured to the multiple daily murders, assaults, robberies,
and rapes, and regard them with little surprise...there is only one
solution for this chaos. Eugenics, or racial hygiene, says that we
can so arrange our society so as to reverse this degenerative
process, so that the best elements of our population will have the
most children...We need blood-based nations and natural racial
communities, and an end to the racial mixing that amounts to
genocide of the White race.” –Kevin Strom
Social Group Attitudes
White Supremacist Groups (National Vanguard, National
Alliance)
“Our civilization is in obvious decline...Crime is becoming
pervasive, and citizens in our major metropolitan areas have
become inured to the multiple daily murders, assaults, robberies,
and rapes, and regard them with little surprise. There is only one
solution for this chaos. Eugenics, or racial hygiene, says that we
can so arrange our society so as to reverse this degenerative
process, so that the best elements of our population will have the
most children...We need blood-based nations and natural racial
communities, and an end to the racial mixing that amounts to
genocide of the White race.” –Kevin Strom
Ingroup
Social Group Attitudes
White Supremacist Groups (National Vanguard, National
Alliance)
“Our civilization is in obvious decline...Crime is becoming
pervasive, and citizens in our major metropolitan areas have
become inured to the multiple daily murders, assaults, robberies,
and rapes, and regard them with little surprise. There is only one
solution for this chaos. Eugenics, or racial hygiene, says that we
can so arrange our society so as to reverse this degenerative
process, so that the best elements of our population will have the
most children...We need blood-based nations and natural racial
communities, and an end to the racial mixing that amounts to
genocide of the White race.” –Kevin Strom
Authority
Social Group Attitudes
White Supremacist Groups (National Vanguard, National
Alliance)
“Our civilization is in obvious decline...Crime is becoming
pervasive, and citizens in our major metropolitan areas have
become inured to the multiple daily murders, assaults, robberies,
and rapes, and regard them with little surprise. There is only one
solution for this chaos. Eugenics, or racial hygiene, says that we
can so arrange our society so as to reverse this degenerative
process, so that the best elements of our population will have the
most children...We need blood-based nations and natural racial
communities, and an end to the racial mixing that amounts to
genocide of the White race.” –Kevin Strom
Purity
The Intuitionist view
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
Conclusions/implications
“One of this book’s aims is to replace
the thin, mechanical psychology of
the enlightenment with something
more complex, something closer to
reality. A consequence of this is to
produce a darker account. But another
aim of the book is to defend the
enlightenment hope of a world that is
more peaceful and more humane, the
hope that by understanding more
about ourselves we can do something
to create a world with less misery.
--Glover, p. 7
Three Models of Human Nature
Cynic
Rationalist
Intuitionist
We are
selfish
We strive for
truth and
justice
(imperfectly)
Plato, Mill,
Kant, Kohlberg,
Turiel
Expects too
much
We have a lot of evolved
automatic stuff that
makes us contingently
selfish and cooperative
Hume, Darwin,
E.O. Wilson, De Waal
Machiavelli
Freud,
Dawkins
Expects too
little
Expects complexity,
extremity, inconsistency
The Perfect Way is only difficult
for those who pick and choose;
Do not like, do not dislike;
all will then be clear.
Make a hairbreadth difference,
and Heaven and Earth are set apart;
If you want the truth to stand clear
before you, never be for or against.
The struggle between "for" and "against“
is the mind's worst disease.
--Sent-ts’an, c. 700 C.E.