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Jonathan Haidt - morality across cultures

Jon Haidt's Home Page



Why you should listen to him:

Haidt is a social psychologist whose research on morality across cultures led up to his much-quoted 2008 TED talk on the psychological roots of the American culture war. He asks, "Can't we all disagree more constructively?" In September 2009, Jonathan Haidt spoke to the TED Blog  about the moral psychology behind the healthcare debate in the United States.
He's also active in the study of positive psychology and human flourishing.

At TED2012 he’s combining his work on morality with his work on happiness to talk about “hive psychology” – the ability that humans have to lose themselves in groups pursuing larger projects, almost like bees in a hive. This hivish ability Is crucial, he argues, for understanding the origins of morality, politics, and religion. These are ideas that Haidt develops at greater length in his new book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Learn more about his drive for a more productive and civil politics on his website CivilPolitics.org. And take an eye-opening quiz about your own morals at YourMorals.org.
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Quotes by Jonathan Haidt

  • “If our goal is to understand the world, to seek a deeper understanding of the world, our general lack of moral diversity here is going to make it harder. Because when people all share values, when people all share morals, they become a team.” Watch this talk »
  • “The initial organization of the brain does not depend that much on experience. Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises.” — quoting scientist Gary Marcus Watch this talk »
  • “Sports is to war as pornography is to sex. We get to exercise some ancient, ancient drives.” Watch this talk »
  • “Purity’s not just about suppressing female sexuality. It’s about any kind of ideology, any kind of idea that tells you that you can attain virtue by controlling what you do with your body, by controlling what you put into your body.” Watch this talk »
  • “While the political right may moralize sex, the political left is doing it with food. Food is becoming extremely moralized nowadays, and a lot of it is ideas about purity, about what you’re willing to touch, or put into your body.” Watch this talk »
  • “The great conservative insight is that order is really hard to achieve. It’s really precious, and it’s really easy to lose.” Watch this talk »
  • “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.” — quoting Zen master Seng-ts’an Watch this talk »
  • “The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation — a force for construction and destruction.” Watch this talk »
  • “It's a basic fact about being human that sometimes the self seems to just melt away.” Watch this talk »
  • “[Politics is] about the eternal struggle between good and evil, and we all believe we're on the good team.” Watch this talk »

Jonathan Haidt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jonathan Haidt

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jonathan Haidt
Fields psychology
Institutions University of Virginia (professor)
Known for positive psychology, political psychology, ethics and morality, attitudes and beliefs
Jonathan Haidt is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on the psychological bases of morality across different cultures and political ideology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. He was awarded the Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology in 2001.[1] His book The Happiness Hypothesis examines ten "great ideas" dating from antiquity and their continued relevance to the happy life. A certain portion of his research has been focused on the emotion of elevation.

Contents

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[edit] Moral Foundations Theory

Haidt is best known for what he dubs "Moral Foundations Theory", which has been reported in publications such as The Atlantic,[2] Boston Globe[3], and The Huffington Post.[4] It is also the basis of his talk given at TED.

Moral Foundations Theory looks at the way morality varies between cultures and identifies five fundamental moral values shared to a greater or lesser degree by different societies and individuals.[5] These are:
  1. Care for others, protecting them from harm. (He also referred to this dimension as Harm.)
  2. Fairness, Justice, treating others equally.
  3. Loyalty to your group, family, nation. (He also referred to this dimension as Ingroup.)
  4. Respect for tradition and legitimate authority. (He also referred to this dimension as Authority.)
  5. Purity or Sanctity, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions.
Haidt has recently added a sixth fundamental value, Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty.[6]

Haidt found that Americans who identified as liberals tend to value care and fairness considerably higher than loyalty, respect, and purity. Self-identified conservative Americans value all five values more equally, though at a lower level across the five than the liberal concern for care and fairness. Both groups gave care the highest over-all weighting, but conservatives valued fairness the lowest, whereas liberals valued purity the lowest. Similar results were found across the political spectrum in other countries.[7]

[edit] Criticism

Haidt has been criticized at times for being both simplistic and too lenient toward moral beliefs that have historically led to grave injustices. In a response to Haidt's suggestion that atheists "pollute the scientific study of religion,"[8] author Sam Harris writes, "Even if Haidt's reading of the literature on morality were correct, and all this manufactured bewilderment proves to be useful in getting certain people to donate time, money, and blood to their neighbors—so what? Is science now in the business of nurturing useful delusions? Surely we can grow in altruism, and refine our ethical intuitions, and even explore the furthest reaches of human happiness, without lying to ourselves about the nature of the universe"[9]
Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof, author of "A Gospel for Liberals," gave a public response to Haidt during his February 26, 2012 sermon at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane[10], stating; "I believe this naïve position is the result of his simplistic misunderstanding and misappropriation of Eastern philosophy and religion. As I had predicted, by the end of his lecture, his argument becomes entirely dualistic, to the point that he even begins comparing these two moral perspectives [liberal and conservative] to Daoism’s most pervasive symbol. '…Yin and Yang aren’t enemies,' he says, 'Yin and Yang don’t hate each other. Yin and Yang are both necessary, like night and day, for the functioning of the world.' This perspective may not be Manichean to the extent that Haidt doesn’t consider one side right and the other wrong, but I do believe it is to the extent that he views both positions as proportionate halves of a whole.[11]

Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York, has also criticized Haidt on his blog[12], for his "contention that the Academy discriminates against conservatives (I rather think it is many conservatives who are not attracted to the academy — with all that open inquiry and low salaries)". But conservative and libertarian academics like Duke University political scientist Michael Munger reject Pigliucci's claim as ridiculous and simplistic.[13]

[edit] Books

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/people/expert/jonathan-haidt-phd
  2. ^ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/02/studies-conservatives-are-from-mars-liberals-are-from-venus/252416/
  3. ^ "Irreconcilable differences links". The Boston Globe.
  4. ^ "Conservatives vs. Liberals: More Than Politics". Huffington Post. 2012-02-09.
  5. ^ Haidt, Jonathan; Jesse Graham (2007). "When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions That Liberals May Not Recognize" (PDF). Social Justice Research 20 (1): 98–116. doi:10.1007/s11211-007-0034-z. Retrieved 2011-02-24.
  6. ^ http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mft/index.php
  7. ^ TED Talks: Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives at TED in 2008
  8. ^ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html
  9. ^ http://richarddawkins.net/articles/1631
  10. ^ http://www.uuspokane.org Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane
  11. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NRZFu6Yrrk&list=FLS0gXDxy_38XGhmCIR0Bd3Q&index=1&feature=plpp_video
  12. ^ http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2011/05/jonathan-haidt-does-it-again.html Rationally Speaking
  13. ^ http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2302

[edit] External links

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