Can Moral Foundations Theory Be Applied To Politics?

This week Bill Moyers guest was Jonathan Haidt, a spiritually-oriented social psychology professor at the University of Virginia, and author, most recently, of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. He's no Chris Mooney when it comes to understanding the way the Republican brain works and he's no Robin Corey when it comes to putting the shortcomings of reactionary mindset into historical context, but his work, what he calls "Moral Foundations Theory," is worth taking a look at anyway. He's certainly not wrong when he points out that “When it gets so that your opponents are not just people you disagree with, but… the mental state in which I am fighting for good, and you are fighting for evil, it’s very difficult to compromise... Compromise becomes a dirty word.” It's a central problem our country's politics is in the throes of right now.

JONATHAN HAIDT: Suppose that two American friends are traveling together in Italy. They go to see Michelangelo’s David. And when they finally come face to face with the statue, they both freeze dead in their tracks. The first guy, we’ll call him Adam, is transfixed by the beauty of the perfect human form. The second guy, we’ll call him Bill, is transfixed by embarrassment of staring at the thing there in the center. So here’s my question for you: which one of these two guys was more likely to have voted for George Bush? Which for Al Gore? I don’t need a show of hands because we all have the same political stereotypes, we all know that it’s Bill. And in this case the stereotype corresponds to a reality. It really is a fact that liberals are much higher than conservatives on a major personality trait called “openness to experience.” People who are high on openness to experience just crave novelty, variety, diversity, new ideas, travel. People low on it like things that are familiar, that are safe and dependable.

If you know about this trait you can understand a lot of puzzles about human behavior. You can understand why artists are so different from accountants, you can actually predict what kinds of books they like to read, what kinds of places they like to travel to and what kinds of foods they like to eat. Once you understand this trait you can understand why anybody would eat at Applebee’s, but not anybody that you know.

...BILL MOYERS: When I saw the title of your book, The Righteous Mind, I thought, "Well, that's interesting." Because you point out that the derivative, the root of the word righteous is an old English world that does mean just, upright and virtuous. Then it gets picked up and used in Hebrew to translate the word describing people who act in accordance with God's wishes, and it becomes an attribute of God, and of God's judgment on people. So the righteous mind becomes a harsh judge.

JONATHAN HAIDT: That's right. I chose that title in part because we all think, you know, morality is a good thing, justice, ethics. And I wanted to get across the sense that, let's just look with open eyes at human nature. And right, morality is part of our nature. And morality is, makes us do things that we think are good, but it also makes us do things that we often think are bad. It's all part of our groupish, tribal, judgmental, hyper-judgmental, hypocritical nature. We are all born to be hypocrites. That's part of the design.

BILL MOYERS: Born to be hypocrites.

JONATHAN HAIDT: Born to be hypocrites. That's right.

BILL MOYERS: How so?

JONATHAN HAIDT: Our minds evolved not just to help us find the truth about how things work. If you're navigating through a landscape, sure, you need to know, you know, where the dangers are, where the opportunities are. But in the social world, our minds are not designed to figure out who really did what to whom. They are finely tuned navigational machines to work through a complicated social network, in which you've got to maintain your alliances, and your reputation.

And as Machiavelli told us long ago, it matters far more what people think of you than what the reality is. And we are experts at manipulating our self-presentation. So, we're so good at it, that we actually believe the nonsense that we say to other people.

BILL MOYERS: So, take the subtitle. "Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion." Why are they? And what does the righteous mind have to do with it?

JONATHAN HAIDT: Politics has always been about coalitions and teams fighting each other. But those teams, those teams were never evenly divided on morality. Now, well, basically it all started, as you well know, on the day Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. You tell me what he said on that day. I think I heard you say this once.

BILL MOYERS: He actually said to me that evening, "I think we've just turned the South over to the Republican Party for the rest of my life, and yours."

JONATHAN HAIDT: Yeah. And he was prescient, that's exactly what happened. So there was this anomaly for the 20th Century that both parties were coalitions of different regions, and interest groups. But there were liberal Republicans, there were conservative Democrats. So the two teams, they had, they were people whose moralities could meet up. Even though they were playing on different teams.
And once Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, and the South, which had been Democrat, because Lincoln had been a Republican, so once they all moved over to the Republican party, and then the moderate Republicans began to lose office in the '80s, and '90s, and the last ones going just recently, for the first time we have an ideologically pure division of the parties.

And now, this groupish tribalism, which is usually not so destructive, we can usually, you know, when you leave the playing field, you can still meet up, and be friends. But now that it truly is a moral division, now the other side is evil. And there's nobody, there aren't really pairs of people who can match up, and say, well, come on. We all agree on this, let's work together.

...JONATHAN HAIDT: The Republicans can hang together better. And part of it is, they're better at drawing bright lines and saying, ‘I will not go over this line.’

BILL MOYERS: But governing is all about brokering compromise.

JONATHAN HAIDT: Yes, absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: You cannot in a pluralistic, multicultural society with all the different beliefs, have a mantra that unites us all. You've got to broker compromise.

JONATHAN HAIDT: Well, it depends what perspective you're taking. If you're looking at the good of the nation, you're absolutely right. But for competition within the nation, taking this hard lined position is working out pretty well for them. So, sure. You can have a hard line against compromise. And especially if the other side can't get as tough, can't threaten to break legs, you end up winning.
And I think Democrats are a little weaker here. And certainly Obama took a lot of flack for that, in his negotiation strategy with the Republicans, as far as I can see, he's never really presented a credible threat. So, they've been better off walking away from the table.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah, but the country suffers, doesn't it, when-

JONATHAN HAIDT: Yes. Absolutely-

BILL MOYERS: Boehner and the Republicans think it's immoral to compromise, and Obama thinks it's immoral not to compromise?

JONATHAN HAIDT: Well, that's true. I would say Obama could've done a much better job with his negotiating strategy.

BILL MOYERS: By?

JONATHAN HAIDT: Obama is such a great orator and wowed so many of us in the campaign. But then, once he was elected, you know, he's been focusing on the terrific, terrible problems that he's had to deal with. But I think he has not made the moral case that would back up the arguments from the politicians in Washington.

I think the Democrats need to be developing a credible argument about fairness, capitalism, American history. They need to be developing this master narrative so that when they then have an argument on a particular issue, it'll resonate with people. And they're not doing that. But the Republicans have.

BILL MOYERS: So the Greatest Generation disappears. The Boomers come along. The Civil Rights fight divides the country. And the third one?

JONATHAN HAIDT: The third is that America has gone from being a nation with localities that were diverse by class, in particular, let's say. You had rich people, and poor people living together.

It's become, in the post-war world, gradually a nation of lifestyle enclaves, where people chose to self-segregate. If people are concentrating just with people who are like them, then they're not exposed to the ideas from the other side, from people that they can actually like and respect. If you get all your ideas about the other side from the internet, where there's no human connection, it's just so easy, and automatic to reject it, and demonize it. So once we've sorted ourselves into homogeneous moral communities, it becomes a lot harder to work together.

That just scratches the surface of their discussion. If it sounds interesting, let me suggest you watch the whole hour segment above. Just keep in mind that Haidt is generally criticized for insisting that even the most historically heinous positions-- say fascism for example-- be part of the discussion. It's as though there's something missing from his worldview that allows him to see the big picture but makes it impossible for him to see the even bigger picture. So... when ypu're done watching Moyers and Haidt, watch Rev. Dr, Todd Eklof of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane respond to some of the naïvety of Haidt's ideas.