The moral palette of political ideology

Original Biopolitics and Bionews post: August 30, 2016

 In his book, The Righteous Mind, Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion, Johnathan Haidt (pronounced 'height') described the Moral Foundations Theory. The theory is an anthropology-based hypothesis that Haidt and another psychologist, Craig Joseph, developed to explain differences in moral reasoning and beliefs between liberals, conservatives and others. The theory posits that there's more to morality than just harm and fairness. It posits that six moral concepts or foundations shape our beliefs, reason and behaviors in politics and other areas of life. The foundations and their associated intuitions-emotions are (1) harm-care (compassion or lack thereof), (2) fairness-unfairness (anger, gratitude, guilt), (3) loyalty-betrayal (group pride, rage at traitors), (4) authority-subversion (respect, fear), (5) sanctity-degradation (disgust) and (6) liberty-oppression (resentment or hatred at domination).

 The six foundations presumably evolved as response triggers to threats or adaptive challenges our ancestors faced. Modern triggers can differ from what our ancestors faced, e.g., loyalty to a nation or sports team can trigger the loyalty-betrayal moral in some or most people in different ways. Haidt analogizes moral foundations to taste receptors: “. . . . morality is like cuisine: it’s a cultural construction, influenced by accidents of environment and history, but it’s not so flexible that anything goes. . . . . Cuisines vary, but they all must please tongues equipped with the same five taste receptors. Moral matrices vary, but they all must please righteous minds equipped with the same six social receptors.”

 Large surveys led to the observation that in going from a spectrum of people from politically very liberal to moderate to very conservative, the importance of the care and fairness morals decreased in most people, while the loyalty, authority and sanctity morals increased. The harm-care and fairness-unfairness morals significantly shapes liberal thinking and belief, while the loyalty-betrayal authority- subversion and sanctity-degradation morals significantly shapes conservative minds. Haidt observes that the moral palettes of liberals and conservatives are such that you can usually tell one from the other by asking what qualities they would want in their dog or other questions that are intended to elicit a response by a specific moral foundation.* This kind of morals-based thinking and preference appears to significantly shape thinking and belief related to issues in politics.

 * For example, how much would you need to be paid to stick a tiny, harmless sterile hypodermic needle into (i) your own arm, and (ii) the arm of a child you don't know. For people to whom it matters, that question pair triggers the harm-care moral response and the answers generally correlate with the influence of the harm-care moral on a person’s politics and beliefs. 

  Libertarians & the cerebral style: In one large survey study, Haidt examined the moral foundations that libertarians displayed. Haidt's group reported this: “Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S. politics . . . . Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences.” Iyer R, Koleva S, Graham J, Ditto P, Haidt J (2012) Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of Self-Identified Libertarians. PLoS ONE 7(8):e42366. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0042366

 Morals-based politics is another avenue to begin to understand innate, intractable differences between adherents of differing ideologies. What is interesting and important about this study, are the observations that (i) libertarians are an increasingly prominent group, and (ii) “a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style.” Both are evidence that groups of Americans can and do adopt a new political ideology and can apply conscious reason, i.e., “Haidt’s rider” (conscious or cerebral reasoning) to their politics to a measurably higher degree relative to other groups that operate under a more “emotional cognitive style” or cognition more dominated by unconscious intuition (Haidt's elephant).

  Questions: How convincing is the argument that libertarians use a relatively cerebral (conscious reason) style compared to liberals and/or conservatives who are asserted to employ a more “emotional cognitive style” (unconscious intuition) in thinking about politics? Would a more cerebral style necessarily be better? Is the moral foundations theory persuasive or is it still only an academic hypothesis with little real world relevance?