Liberals don’t understand conservative values. And they can’t recognize this failing, because they’re so convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment.
From Willian Saletan’s review of a new book by psychologist Jonathan Haidt.
Haidt’s previous book, The Happiness Hypothesis, was a fantastic introduction to the psychology of behavior and morality. And I think the basic message of the new book rings true. So I am inclined to recommend it.
My impression from the last book: Haidt has a very slight tendency to hyperbole, and it’s a shame he doesn’t distinguish between the weak and strong evidence. He’s a skilful writer and his own research looks clever, and so I think he could fix this without making his books boring.
I’m curious, though. Readers who actually know something about cognitive psychology: what’s Haidt’s street cred?
8 Responses
Correction: 2001 Psych Review article, not JPSP.
Correction: 2001 Psych Science article, not JPSP.
I don’t have a problem understanding why many low-income voters like Republican candidates – candidate preferences are multi-dimensional, so it’s perfectly rational not to vote only for one’s economic interests. As for trying to preserve traditional values: change is scary, and uncertainty is prevalent in the modern world. On top of that, the relative status of white men in particular has declined over the past decades as women and minorities advanced. Furthermore, about two billion people joined the global labor force over that period. So yes, if you used to be a steel worker in Pittsburgh, life isn’t as great anymore, and maybe looking out for the people “at home” just sounds right.
But isn’t that why the steel worker from Pittsburgh is not in charge of economic policy? Certainly as economists we can think of many instances where intuition is wrong. That’s why we have theory (or reason). I don’t think the problem, particularly in our economic policy (but certainly beyond as well), is with politicians following theory over intuition.
I don’t think anyone is disputing that you can win elections by appealing to intuitions. The question is whether the local church is a proper substitute for welfare services. Someone ought to at least propose why the former would be (at least) equally effective – not just in rural communities, but also in cities with weaker local social ties. It certainly doesn’t seem to work with health care, for example.
I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’m pretty sure that any attempt to rationally justify a moral belief is a wild goose chase. Dialogue will be much more productive if we can simply agree that certain moral stances are a given, and then proceed logically from those.
That said, bashing some particular set of political views seems like an awfully petty use for such an important idea. Like buying the world’s last Rembrandt to cover up a hole in your drywall.
This is why I (a moderate liberal) go to an evangelical church every Sunday.
I just finished reading this. There’s a fair amount of interesting take-aways for self-described liberals. My youth was peppered with conservatism of all sorts, segueing into an embarassing (though short lived) bout of Objectivism. I find claims to using Reason as a guide to be hilarious; but I only laugh on the inside. This may seem a hell of a place to start for political discourse, but I suspect it’s more honest. But what do I know?
Thanks for the pointer.
I understand conservative values just fine — they hate everything good or beautiful in human existence. From widespread prosperity to freedom from disease to the opportunity to explore what it means to be a human being, conservatives are agin’ it. They want slavery, dominance, illness, and ignorance.
His street cred is generally quite high. His basic insight (dating back to a 2001 JPSP paper) that moral judgments are driven by intuition and not deductive cognition is now more or less common wisdom, I think. His more recent work on specifying a finite number of moral dimensions (as described in the book) has some detractors — more along the lines of “Is this the right way to conceive things theoretically?” than “I don’t believe the data.” For people who are somewhat critical of the more recent work while being (I think) generally favorable toward Haidt’s research program as a whole, see Robert Kurzban and Peter DeScioli’s work. Especially their 2009 piece in Cognition, title Mysteries of Morality — an excellent and super provocative article.