The moral roots of liberals and conservatives Jonathan Haidt

suppose the 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

second guy we’ll call him bill is

transfixed by embarrassment it’s staring

at the

thing there in the in the center so

here’s my question for you

which one of these two guys was more

likely to voted for george bush which

for al gore

i don’t need to show of hands because we

all have the same political stereotypes

we all know that it’s uh that it’s bill

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 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 that are

uh 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

uh what kinds of books they like to read

what kinds of places they like to travel

to

and what kinds of food 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

this trade also tells us a lot about

politics the the main researcher of this

trait robert mcrae

says that open individuals have an

affinity for liberal progressive

left-wing political views

they like a society which is open and

changing whereas closed individuals

prefer conservative traditional

right-wing views this trade also tells

us a lot about the kinds of groups

people join

so here’s the description of a group i

found on the web what kinds of people

would join a global community welcoming

people from every discipline and culture

who seek a deeper understanding of the

world and who hope to turn that

understanding

into a better future for us all this is

from some guy named ted

well let’s see now if openness predicts

who becomes liberal

and openness predicts who becomes a

tedster then might we predict that most

tipsters are liberal

let’s find out i’m going to ask you to

raise your hand uh whether you are

liberal left of center on social issues

we’re talking about primarily

or conservative and i’ll give a third

option because i know the number of

libertarians in the audience

so right now please raise your hand down

in the simulcast rooms too let’s

let everybody see who’s here please

raise your hand if you would say that

you are liberal or left of center

please raise your hand high right now

okay

please raise your hand if you say you’re

libertarian okay

about a two dozen and please raise your

hand if you say you are right of center

or conservative

one two three four five about eight or

ten

okay this is a bit of a problem

because 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 and once you engage

the psychology of teams

it shuts down open-minded thinking

we when the liberal team loses

as it did in 2004 and as it almost did

in 2000

we comfort ourselves we try to explain

why half of america voted for the other

team

we think they must be blinded by

religion uh or

by simple stupidity

so so if you think

if you think that half of america votes

republican

because they are blinded in this way

then my message to you is that you’re

trapped in

a moral matrix in a particular moral

matrix and by the matrix i mean

literally the matrix like the movie

the matrix but i’m here today to give

you a choice

you can either take the blue pill and

stick to your comforting

delusions or you can take the red pill

learn some moral psychology and step

outside the moral matrix

now because i know

okay i assume that answers my question i

was going to ask you which one you

picked but

no need you’re all high in openness to

experience and besides it looks like it

might even taste good and you’re all

epicurus so anyway let’s go with the red

pill let’s take let’s study some moral

psychology and see where it takes us

let’s start at the beginning what is

morality and where does it come from the

worst idea in all of psychology

is the idea that the mind is a blank

slate at birth developmental psychology

has

shown that kids come into the world

already knowing so much about the

physical and social worlds

and programmed to make it uh really easy

for them to learn certain things and

hard to learn

others the best definition of innateness

i’ve ever seen this just clarifies so

many things for me

it’s from the brain scientist gary

marcus he says the initial organization

of the brain

does not depend that much on experience

nature provides a first draft which

experience then revises

built-in doesn’t mean unmalleable it

means organized in advance of experience

okay so what’s on the first draft of the

moral mind to find out

um my my colleague craig joseph and i

read through the literature on

anthropology

on cultural variation and morality and

also on evolutionary psychology

looking for matches what are the sorts

of things that people talk about across

disciplines that you find across

cultures and even across species

we found five five best matches which we

call the found the five foundations of

morality the first one is harm care

we’re all mammals here we all have a lot

of neural and hormonal programming that

makes us

really bond with others care for others

feel compassion for others especially

the weak and vulnerable

gives us very strong feelings about

those who cause harm

this moral foundation underlies about 70

percent of the moral statements i’ve

heard

here at ted the second foundation is

fairness reciprocity

uh there’s actually ambiguous evidence

as to whether you find reciprocity in

other animals but the evidence for

people could not be clearer

this norman rockwell painting is called

the golden rule and we heard about this

from karen armstrong of course is the

foundation of so many

uh religions that second foundation

underlies the other 30 percent of the

moral statements i’ve heard

uh here at ted third foundation is in

group loyalty you do find groups uh in

the animal kingdom you do find

cooperative groups but these groups are

always either very small

or they’re all siblings it’s only among

humans that you find very large groups

of people who are able to cooperate

join together into groups but in this

case groups that are united to

fight other groups this probably comes

from our long history of tribal

living a tribal psychology um and this

tribal psychology is so deeply

pleasurable that even when we don’t have

tribes

we’d go ahead and make them because it’s

fun

um

sports is to war as pornography is to

sex we get to exercise

uh are some ancient ancient drives uh

the the fourth foundation is authority

respect here you see submissive gestures

from two members of very closely related

species

but authority in humans is is not so

closely based on on power and brutality

as it is in other primates

it’s based on more voluntary deference

and even elements of love at times

the fifth foundation is purity sanctity

this painting is called the allegory of

chastity

but purity is 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 and while the political

right may moralize sex much more the

political left is

really doing a lot of 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 i believe these

are the five

best candidates for what’s written on

the first draft of the moral mind

i think this is what we come with is a

preparedness to learn all of these

things

but as my son max grows up in a liberal

college town

how is this first draft going to get

revised and how will it end up being

different

from a kid born 60 miles south of us in

lynchburg virginia

to think about culture variation let’s

try a different metaphor if there really

are five systems at work in the mind

five sources of intuitions and emotions

then we can think of the moral mind as

being like one of those audio equalizers

that has five channels where you can set

it to a different setting on every

channel

and my colleagues brian nozick and jesse

graham and i

made a questionnaire which we put up on

the web at uh www.yourmorals.org

and so far 30 000 people have taken have

taken this questionnaire and you can too

here are the results hear the results

from about 23

000 uh american citizens on the left

i’ve plotted the scores for liberals on

the right those for conservatives in the

middle of the moderates

the blue line shows you people’s

responses on the average of all the harm

questions

so as you see people care about harm and

care issues they give high endorsement

of these sorts of statements all across

the board but as you also see

liberals care about a little more than

conservatives the line slopes down

same story for fairness but look at the

other three lines

for liberals the scores are very low

liberals are basically saying no this is

not morality in group authority

this stuff has nothing to do with

morality i reject it but as people get

more conservative the values rise

we could say that liberals have a kind

of a two channel or two foundation

morality

uh conservatives have more of a five

foundation or five channel

morality we find this in every country

we look at here’s the data for 1100

canadians i’ll just flip through a few

other slides the uk

australia new zealand western europe

eastern europe latin america

the middle east the east asia and south

asia

notice also that on all these graphs the

slope is steeper

on in group authority purity which shows

that within any country

the disagreement isn’t over harm in

fairness everybody i mean we debate over

what’s fair but everybody

agrees that harm and fairness matter

moral

moral arguments within cultures are

especially about issues of in-group

authority

purity this effect is so robust uh that

we find it no matter how we ask the

question

in one recent study we asked people to

suppose you’re about to get a dog you

picked a particular breed

you learn some new information about the

breed suppose you learn that this

particular breed is independent-minded

relates to its owner as a friend and an

equal

well if you’re a liberal you say hey

that’s great because liberals like to

say fetch

please

but if you’re conservative that’s not so

attractive

if you’re conservative and you learn

that a dog is extremely loyal to its

home and family and doesn’t warm up

quickly to strangers for conservative

well loyalty is good dogs ought to be

loyal but to a liberal it sounds like

this dog is running for the republican

nomination

so you might say okay there are these

differences between liberals and

conservatives but what makes

those three other foundations moral

aren’t those just the foundations of

xenophobia and authoritarianism and

puritanism what makes them moral the

answer i think is contained

in this incredible triptych from

hieronymus bosch the garden of earthly

delights

in the first panel we see the moment of

creation

it all is ordered all is beautiful all

the people and animals are doing what

they’re supposed to be doing where

they’re supposed

to be but then given the way of the

world

things change we get every person doing

whatever he wants with every aperture of

every other person every other animal

some of you might recognize this as the

60s

but the 60s inevitably gives way uh

to the 70s where uh the uh cuttings of

the apertures hurt a little bit more of

course bosch called this hell

um so this this triptych these three

panels

portray the timeless truth that uh order

tends to decay

the truth of social entropy but lest you

think this is just

some part of the christian imagination

where christians have this weird problem

with pleasure

here’s the same story the same

progression uh told in a paper that was

published in nature a few years ago

in which uh ernst fair and simon gacter

had people play

a commons dilemma a game in which you

give people money uh and then on each

round of the game

they can put money into a common pot and

then the experimenter doubles what’s in

there and then it’s all divided

among the players so it’s a really nice

analog for all sorts of environmental

issues

where we’re asking people to make a

sacrifice and they themselves don’t

really benefit from their own sacrifice

but you really want everybody else to

sacrifice

but everybody has a temptation to free

ride and what happens

uh is that at first people start off

reasonably cooperative and this all

played anonymously

on the first round people give about

half of the money that they can

but they quickly see you know what other

people aren’t doing so much so i don’t

want to be a sucker i’m not going to

cooperate

and so cooperation quickly decays from

reasonably good down to close to zero

but then and here’s the trick farron

gacter said on the seventh round they

told people

you know what new rule if you want to

give some of your own money to punish

people who aren’t contributing you can

do that

and as soon as people heard about the

punishment issue going on

cooperation shoots up it shoots up and

it keeps going up there’s a lot of

research showing

that to solve cooperative problems it

really helps it’s not enough to just

appeal to people’s good motives it

really helps to have some sort of

punishment

even if it’s just shame or embarrassment

or gossip you need some sort of

punishment to bring people when they’re

in large groups to cooperate

there’s even some recent research

suggesting that religion uh

priming god making people think about

god often in some situations leads to

more cooperative more pro-social

behavior

um some people think that religion is an

adaptation evolved both by cultural and

biological evolution

to make groups cohere in part for the

purpose of trusting each other and then

being more effective at competing with

other groups

i think that’s probably right although

this is a controversial issue um

but i’m particularly interested in

religion in the origin of religion

and what it does to us and for us

because i think that the greatest wonder

in the world

is not the grand canyon the grand canyon

is really simple it’s just a lot of rock

and then a lot of

water and wind and a lot of time and you

get the grand canyon it’s not that

complicated this is what’s really

complicated that there were people

living in places like the grand canyon

cooperating with each other or on the

savannahs of africa or on the frozen

shores of alaska and then some of these

villages

grew into the mighty cities of babylon

and rome and tenochtitlan how did this

happen this is an

absolute miracle much harder to explain

than the grand canyon the answer i think

is that they used every tool in the

toolbox it took all of our moral

psychology to create these cooperative

groups yes you do need

to be concerned about harm you do need a

psychology justice but it really helps

to organize a group

if you can have subgroups and if those

subgroups have some internal structure

and if you have some ideology that tells

people to suppress their carnality to

pursue higher nobler

ends and now we get to the crux of the

disagreement between liberals and

conservatives

because liberals reject three of these

foundations they say no let’s celebrate

diversity not common in group membership

they say let’s question authority

and they say keep your laws off my body

liberals have very noble motives for

doing this traditional authority

traditional morality can be quite

repressive and restrictive to those at

the bottom to women to people who don’t

fit in

so liberals speak for the weak and

oppressed they want change and justice

even at the risk of chaos as this guy’s

shirt says stop bitching start a

revolution if you’re high on openness to

experience revolution is good it’s

change it’s fun

conservatives on the other hand speak

for institutions and traditions they

want order even at some cost to those at

the bottom

the great conservative insight is that

order is really hard to achieve it’s

really precious

and it’s really easy to lose so as

edmund burke said the restraints on men

as well as their liberties are to be

reckoned among their rights this was

after the chaos of the french revolution

so once you see this once you see that

liberals and conservatives both have

something to contribute that

they form a balance on on change versus

stability

then i think the way is open to step

outside the moral matrix

this is the great insight that all the

asian religions have

attained think about yin and yang yin

and yang aren’t enemies

yin and yang don’t hate each other yin

and yang are both necessary

like night and day for the functioning

of the world you find the same thing in

hinduism

uh there are many high gods in hinduism

two of them are vishnu the preserver

shiva the destroyer

this image actually is both of those

gods sharing the same body

you have the markings of vishnu on the

left so we could think of vishnu as the

conservative god

you have the markings of shiva on the

right shiv is the liberal god

and they work together you find the same

thing in buddhism these two stanzas

contain i think the deepest insights

that have ever been attained

into moral psychology from the zen

master sensan

if you want the truth to stand clear

before you never before or against the

struggle between for and against

is the mind’s worst disease now

unfortunately

it’s a disease that has been caught by

many of the world’s leaders but before

you feel superior to george bush before

you

throw a stone ask yourself do you accept

this

do you accept stepping out of the battle

of good and evil

can you be not for or against anything

so what’s the point what should you do

well

if you take the greatest insights from

ancient asian philosophies and religions

and you combine them with the latest

research on moral psychology

i think you’ve come to these conclusions

that our righteous minds were designed

uh by evolution to unite us into teams

to divide us against other teams and

then to blind us to the truth

so what should you do am i telling you

to not strive

am i telling you to embrace sensan and

stop stop with this struggle

uh uh for and against no absolutely not

i’m not saying that

this is an amazing group of people who

are doing so much

using so much of their of their talent

their brilliance their energy their

money

to make the world a better place to

fight to fight wrongs uh to solve

problems

but as we learned from samantha power in

her in her

story about sergio uh viet de mayo

you can’t just go charging in saying

you’re wrong and i’m right

because as we just heard everybody

thinks they are right

a lot of the problems we have to solve

are problems that requires to change

other people

and if you want to change other people a

much better way to do it is to first

understand who we are

understand our moral psychology

understand that we all think we’re right

and then step out even if it’s just for

a moment step

out check in with censon step out of the

moral matrix

just try to see it as a struggle playing

out in which everybody does think

they’re right and everybody at least has

some reasons even if you disagree with

them everybody has some reasons for what

they’re doing

step out if you do that that’s the

essential move to cultivate moral

humility

to get yourself out of this

self-righteousness which is the normal

human condition

think about the dalai lama think about

the enormous moral authority

of the dalai lama and it comes from his

moral humility

so i think the point the point of of my

talk and i think the point of

the point of ted is that this is a group

that is passionately engaged

in the pursuit of changing the world for

the better people here are

passionately engaged in trying to make

the world a better place

but there is also a passionate

commitment to the truth

so i think that the answer is to use

that passionate commitment for

to the truth uh to try to turn it into a

better future for us all

thank you