Liberal vs. conservative morality

From a NY Times article about the research of Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia:

[P]eople who identified themselves as liberals attached great weight to the two moral systems protective of individuals — those of not harming others and of doing as you would be done by. But liberals assigned much less importance to the three moral systems that protect the group, those of loyalty, respect for authority and purity.

The take is surprisingly sympathetic to conservatives:

Extreme liberals, Dr. Haidt argues, attach almost no importance to the moral systems that protect the group. Because conservatives do give some weight to individual protections, they often have a better understanding of liberal views than liberals do of conservative attitudes, in his view.

Dr. Haidt, who describes himself as a moderate liberal, says that societies need people with both types of personality. “A liberal morality will encourage much greater creativity but will weaken social structure and deplete social capital,” he said. “I am really glad we have New York and San Francisco — most of our creativity comes out of cities like these. But a nation that was just New York and San Francisco could not survive very long. Conservatives give more to charity and tend to be more supportive of essential institutions like the military and law enforcement.”

This explains why extreme liberals hate the idea of team sports, because they promote group loyalty, both amongst members of the team as well as their fans. Anyone who roots for the home team isn't an extreme liberal.

Comments

[superdestroyer]

I love how studies recently have used the term liberal and conservative when looking at reading, personality, and interactions with society. What all of resaerchers do is use a definition of liberal that automatically excludes blacks and hispanics. They like doing t-test were they compare upper middle class white liberals with everyone else.

[Robert Hume]

This isn't exactly new news.

Darwin in "The Descent of Man", Chapter 5 "On the development of the intellectual and moral faculties during primeval and civilised times"

subtopics

"Advancement of the intellectual powers through natural selection - Importance of imitation - Social and moral faculties - their development within the limits of the same tribe - natural selection as affecting civilised nations - Evidence that civilised nations were once barbarous."

Darwin wants to show that man evolved in all respects from lower beings. So he traces our moral faculties to those of animals and suggests the ways in which they have developed since man split from apes.

It is a tour-de-force when read with modern eyes by all of us who understand genes, as Darwin did not. He compares interestingly, for instance, the social instincts of ants with those of humans.

I am impressed again with how we have ignored Darwin and the scientists he cites. It's all being discovered again, with great pain, due to PC. There are hundreds of PhD theses in this book.

I wonder if Haidt cites Darwin. I'm sure Putnam has never read Darwin, but his recent polls showing that diversity engenders alienation could be easily predicted by reading Darwin.

[The Engineer]

Did you take that survey? I started it, but quickly gave up. It's too vauge! I felt myself thinking more about how I SHOULD answer than how I really felt about the question.

I think "moral psychology" is a few beakers short of being a real science. That survey was bunk.

More ground breaking research:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070918/sc_livescience/eyescantresistbeautifulpeople

Who knew? Water is wet and the sun comes up in the morning! People get paid for this shit!?

My favorite bit of "research": http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29565

[Peter]

Back when I was in college, many moons ago, people used to call psychology "Nuts and Sluts."

There is a far longer discussion of Jonathan Haidt's work at edge.org. (hat tip: econlog).

Ultimately, Jonathan Haidt seems to make an hidden assumption that religion is the only route to the three "conservative systems". It should be noted that those who claim this kind of moral authority are in a position to manipulate believers for personal purposes. In this view, liberals' distrust for such attitudes may well be justified.

Another issue with Haidt's work is that reported life satisfaction is in fact lower in societies which stress group loyalty over individualism (e.g. Japan vs. the U.S.). Thus, the effect of religious beliefs on lfe satisfaction may be unrelated to such moral intuitions.

[TGGP]

I have a post on that here and a post on the reduction in trust caused by diversity (and why it might be a good thing) here.

[SFG]

Took the test. Scored below-average on all five foundations, though my profile resembles the liberal profile more. I tend to click low numbers on this sort of test, though.

[SFG]

HS, you would enjoy this paper. It actually proves social journals are biased against the conservative moral virtues!

[Turambar]

HS, you might check out this as an example of
a. a horrible jumble of illogic passing as academic study
b. fluffing up some pseudo-scientific research to attack your political opponents as dangerous "acronyms" [no offense to SCA's] with diseased brains.

[Gil]

That's bull. Conservatives and Libertarians are well known for their suspicion/hatred of large government and welfare whilst promoting the virtues of the Rugged Individual.

[DML]

So Greenspan criticizes Bush's reckless spending and you give us worthless "news stories" about liberal vs conservative morality?

Come on, you can do better than this! :)

[Jody]

Gil: Two things,

1) There's more to society than individuals and government. Think "little platoons."

The fact that you overlooked those makes me think the paper is right.

2) Libertarian != Conservative

Libertarians place far greater emphasis on the individual than the conservative does. Your caricature more closely comports to a libertarian mindset than a conservative one.

[SFG]

This is why I'd like to see HS take the test. It'd be fun to see how a libertarian stacks up.

[Jody]

SFG: I'm a conservative libertarian (read as personally conservative but think a libertarian approach is ideal for govt) and I scored:

3.8 on harm and fairness
2.0 on loyalty
2.2 on authority
1.6 on purity

I think that's counter the stereotype assumed by my conservative leanings. However, I do identify with the positions espoused by conservatives as listed in the survey's post discussion.

[SFG]

Hmmm...fits the liberal pattern. I always wondered if libertarians were natural liberals born in conservative areas, or natural conservatives born in liberal areas, or something else entirely...?

[ron purewal]

I always wondered if libertarians were natural liberals born in conservative areas, or natural conservatives born in liberal areas, or something else entirely...?

Uh, did it ever occur to you that political leanings might not fit neatly onto a one-dimensional continuum?