Jonathan Haidt University of Virginia

1. The righteous mind:Why good people are divided by politics and religionSage Lecture #2Nov. 17, 2008 Jonathan Haidt University of Virginia

2. 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

3. Magic trick #2 Where did Max’s morality come from? 1. Put into Max from outside (empiricism) 2. Was in Max all along (nativism) 3. Was constructed in Max, by Max (constructivism)

4. 2. Nativism Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises… ‘Built-in' does not mean unmalleable; it means organized in advance of experience.“ (Marcus, 2004)

5. The New Synthesis in Moral Psych 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

6. The Social Intuitionist Model (Haidt, 2001) 6 A’s Intuition A’s Judgment 2 A’s Reasoning 1 5 4 3 B’s Reasoning B’s Judgment B’s Intuition Four main processes: 1) the intuitive judgment link 2) the post-hoc reasoning link 3) the reasoned persuasion link 4) the social persuasion link Two rare processes: 5) the reasoned judgment link 6) the private reflection link

7. Intuition tilts the table

8. The New Synthesis in Moral Psych 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

9. The New Synthesis in Moral Psych 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

10. 3) Morality binds and builds

11. 3) Morality binds and builds

12. The New Synthesis in Moral Psych 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

14. 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)

15. Morality is..... “prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other.” (Turiel, 1983) Fairness/ Justice Harm/Care

16. Morality is..... “prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other.” (Turiel, 1983) Fairness/ Justice Harm/Care

18. Looking for moral “dark matter” • Survey of five sources, by one judge. What appraisals of the social world trigger an evaluative response? • Designed to capture universals: • 1) De Waal (1996) Good Natured • 2) Fiske (1992) Structures of Social Life • 3) Brown (1991) Human Universals • Designed to capture cultural variation: • 4) Shweder et al. (1996) “The Big Three…” • 5) Schwartz (1992) Value Survey

19. And the winners are……. Harm/care (5) Authority/respect (5) Fairness/reciprocity (5) The “first draft” of the moral mind is “organized in advance of experience” either to have certain intuitions, or to be “prepared” to learn some moral content easily. Needed 2 more: Ingroup/loyalty (4) Purity/sanctity (3)

20. 1. Harm/care

21. 1. Harm/care --Attachment system is pan-mammalian (Bowlby) --Psychopaths lack a “Violence Inhibition Mechanism” (Blair) --Mirror neurons and empathy (Rizzolatti; Decety) --Infants detect helping and hurting...

22. 1. Harm/care

23. 1. Harm/care These findings “indicate that humans engage in social evaluation far earlier in development than previously thought, and support the view that the capacity to evaluate individuals on the basis of their social interactions is universal and unlearned” (Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007, Nature). [i.e., “structured in advance of experience”]

24. 2. Fairness/reciprocity

25. 2. Fairness/reciprocity --Reciprocity is a human universal (Brown) --Reciprocal altruism (Trivers) --People want punishment to fit crime, not to prevent future harm (Darley & Carlsmith) --Concepts of fairness not clear until age 7, but emotional sensitivity to unfairness emerges much earlier...

26. When getting something good is bad... • (Lobue, Nishida, Chiong, DeLoache, & Haidt, under review • Design: 72 pairs of preschoolers, ages 3:0 to 5:10--Pre-test: “can you give me 4/2/3 fish?”--Free play--Cleanup--Reward for cleanup: stickers--Distribution: 2 for Disadvantaged, 4 for Advantaged • --Wait, observe--Go on to next task--Find 2 more stickers, ask what should be done?--Equalize distribution

27. Clear D.I.A., with sulking Pair 17, disadvantaged = 5 yrs, 4 mo; advantaged = 4 yrs 9 mo

28. On implicit measures, early emergence, tiny age trend (n.s.)! Advantaged Disadvantaged

29. On explicit measures: late emergence, clear age trend. Learned concepts catch up with early intuitive emotional response (structured in advance of experience)

30. 3. Ingroup/loyalty

31. 3. Ingroup/loyalty --Minimal Groups Paradigm (Tajfel) --Early preference for local accent (Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007) --Tribalism and initiation rites emerge even when not culturally supported (e.g., street gangs and fraternities)

32. 4. Authority/respect

33. 4. Authority/respect --Hierarchy is culturally widespread; egalitarianism is not the default, it is maintained effortfully (Boehm) --Displays of appeasement (Keltner; Fessler) --Brown, Pronouns of Power: tu/vous distinction is recreated even when language doesn’t mark it: Bob/Mr.-Smith

34. 5. Purity/sanctity

35. 5. Purity/sanctity • --Disgust is universally present, extended into social world (Rozin, Haidt) • --Purity & pollution practices are widespread in traditional societies, many similarities (Douglas) • --Purity and pollution practices emerge even in modern societies......

36. Cooties • A game learned from older kids by a general learning system? • or • A game that emerges from the 7-year-old-mind as the purity module matures? • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6ylxWcwkUM

37. Web survey of 271 UVA Int’l Students • In the United States, children in many schools say that certain children have “cooties.” If a child has cooties then other children try to avoid coming near or touching that child. Sometimes there are special ways of getting rid of cooties, or of protecting oneself from catching cooties. Kids talk about cooties for just a few years, and it seems to disappear. Do you know what cooties are? (It might have been called something else in your country or school)

38. Web survey of 271 UVA Int’l Students • 107 said they recognized it, continued the study • 75 finished the study • 26 thought cooties was just head lice (with some social entailments) • 43 said they were related to boy/girl germs/avoidance, or other mainly social issues • --18 of these spent most of ages 7-11 in an English speaking country, or had English as native language • --19 did not

39. Cooties exists elsewhere • Japan: ___-kin (person’s name-germs) • Who had it: (1) Anyone who touched a dirty thing, who were being stupid, or who were bad at something. (2)Elementary school kids… would point out and tease kids who were fat, below average academically, and/or unathletic. • How do you catch it: (1) By touching something dirty, or making some mistakes in class, (2) Imaginary germs that can transfer by touching others • How to protect self: (1) If you are not the first person, then you can say 'engaccho' to protect you. (2) The initial reaction was to pretend they were flicking it off, as if it were dust and they would joke, 'I'll just have to take shower when I get home.'

40. What properties affect likelihood of cooties? Being opposite sex, dirty (un)popular, (un)attractive. Intelligence doesn’t matter much In U.S. or Common-wealth n=18 Not n=19

41. The First Draft.... HarmFairnessIngroupAuthorityPurity Structured in advance of experience, in multiple ways (e.g., emotions, learning modules, likes/dislikes)

42. Openness to Experience “Open individuals have an affinity for liberal, progressive, left-wing political views, whereas closed individuals prefer conservative, traditional, right wing views”(McCrae, 1996)

43. The 5-channel Moral Equalizer Check your settings at www.YourMorals.org

44. Moral Foundations Questionnaire Moral Relevance: When you decide whether something is right or wrong, to what extent are the following considerations relevant to your thinking? (6-point scale, not at all relevant to extremely relevant) Whether or not... • someone cared for someone weak or vulnerable [Harm] • some people were treated differently than others [Fairness] • someone showed a lack of loyalty [Ingroup] • someone conformed to the traditions of society [Authority] • someone did something disgusting [Purity] (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, under review)

45. Moral Relevance RatingsYourMorals.org participants (N=26,464) Harm Fairness Ingroup Authority Purity

46. Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5 Harm Fairness Endorsement Authority Ingroup Purity

47. Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5 Harm Fairness Endorsement Authority Ingroup Purity

48. Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5 Harm Fairness Endorsement Authority Ingroup Purity

49. Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5 Harm Fairness Endorsement Authority Ingroup Purity

50. Liberals 2 channels, Conservatives 5 Harm Fairness Endorsement Authority Ingroup Purity