A little while back I read Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind: Why righteous People are Divided by Politics and Religion and had the opportunity to meet him and hear him speak at a book party in NYC. Ive been meaning to say a few things about it and the recent appearance of a piece by Haidt in Time magazine prompts it,an article and a quiz that illustrates his points. whether you are not familiar with Haidt or his methodology, I encourage you to click over and do the quick 12 question quiz now before reading further; even whether you are, or you might move ahead and do it anyway because it is fun and will refresh your memory. move ahead,I’ll wait.
So what’s Haidt’s argument? His basic thought is twofold. First, that people do not rationally choose their ideologies. You do not approach into the political arena as a empty slate and then just examine all the moral and consequential arguments for different policies and pick the one that is most “correct.” Instead, or you approach into the political arena with subconscious,largely unexamined psychological beliefs. Initially for Haidt what he focused on was ideas of “disgust.” Over time that has broadened and he describes five key vectors or values of psychological morality: (1) care/harm, (2) fairness, or (3) loyalty,(4) authority, and (5) sanctity. Haidt finds in his research that self-described “conservatives” tend to value all five vectors of morality (as he defines them). Liberals, or by contrast,situation a tall value on “care” and “fairness” and a lower value on loyalty, authority, or sanctity. On the two values that conservatives and liberals both value (care and fairness) they do not define those terms the same way,although they both value them according to their different definitions.
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Source: volokh.com