The Psychological Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives

by: Daniel De Groot

Thu Jan 01, 2009 at 22:31


(Direct link)  Psychology professor Jonathan Haidt discusses his research into the moral and psychological foundations of liberalism and conservativism.  See and take the tests he describes at yourmorals.org.

The main thing I'd ask you to take from this is that conservativism and liberalism exist at a  fundamental level of human brain function.  They are facets of ingrained human psychology and not pure constructs of thought and rationality.  You cannot discuss the roots of these two ideologies (separate from others IMO) without looking at human evolutionary psychology.  
Daniel De Groot :: The Psychological Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives
In criticism of what he's discussing, I had a couple thoughts:

1) Adding additional priorities is not such a trivial moral difference as Haidt seems to think.  If I value both preventing harm and ingroup loyalty, the conflict between the two means one will win and the other lose.  

2) Having additional priorities to your moral calculus doesn't preclude your decisions from actually being immoral.  Just because it made moral sense to your value system doesn't mean we should all just agree to disagree.  Conservatives, according to Haidt's test results place a higher value on authority than fairness or avoiding harm.  So they'd rather not weaken a strong President who engages in torture.  Perhaps that result is internally consistent with their values, but it is still immoral, if the word is to have any meaning at all.

3) If conservatives value all 5 moral concepts Haidt identifies almost equally, that conversely means they value nothing.  If everything is priority one, then nothing is.

I will accept Haidt's admonishment to foster greater understanding of and with conservatives.  However I don't accept his conclusion that they're just as moral when their policies lead to such abhorrent results and they as a group are so reluctant to adjust their thinking.  It's all well and good to say "I value authority more than fairness", but you have to be able to empirically defend the results of those moral calculations.  I contend conservatives cannot successfully do this, at which point failing to adjust your moral formula becomes itself immoral.

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The Psychological Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives | 64 comments
my guess ... (4.00 / 1)
... based on some conservatives I know, is that they'd say something to the effect that deference to authority is fair if the leader obtained power fairly.  They just aren't going to cop to any inconsistency in their values, and probably wouldn't admit that they "value authority more than fairness".

Oh, and of course any argument that makes their side look bad is seen by them as an unfair argument, since they think that they win any fair dispute.  Thus Fox is "fair and balanced".

perhaps (0.00 / 0)
But that's what Haidt's research has been doing - asking them what they value.  4400 self-described conservatives gave authority a 3.3 and fairness a 3.0 out of 5.

Go take the test at yourmorals.org and you'll see what I mean.  

[ Parent ]
careful (4.00 / 4)
It is not at all clear that the 5 scales can be considered commensurable. That is, numbers from different scales should probably not be compared.

It can be inferred from the surface features of the test that it measures whether liberals care more/less than conservatives about any particular one of the five facets being measured. However, there is no explicit note made that a numerical value from one scale means the same thing as that same numerical value on another scale, and nothing (that I can detect) implicit in the test that would allow one to make such an assumption. The judgments expressed on the test are subjective in a way that makes the accuracy of such comparisons unlikely.

I'm not sure it's necessarily impossible that the scales can be compared, but I would need to see Haidt's methodological reasoning/groundwork before I would accept it.

If my concerns are warranted here, then, in terms of what you are saying: that conservatives rated 3.3 on authority and 3.0 on fairness can not be read as them valuing authority more than fairness in any meaningfully absolute sense. Indeed, that liberals rated 2.1 on authority and 3.7 on fairness similarly can't be read as them valuing fairness more than authority. The only obviously allowable conclusion from those four numbers is that liberals, in respect to conservatives, care more about fairness and less about authority. Or to be more precise: liberals care more about that which is being defined (by the terms of the test) as fairness and less about that which is being defined as authority.

/windy statistics nannying

(Sorry if I've overexplained.)

[ Parent ]
Thoth rules! (0.00 / 0)
Near the beginning of his essay, Haidt hypothesizes a neighbor who claims "Cables are an affront to the god Thoth. They radiate theta waves, which make people sterile." This neighbor is contrasted with another who claims "Homosexuality is an abomination to God. Gay marriage will undermine marriage, the institution upon which our society rests."

"Your [Thoth-loving]neighbor is clearly delusional and possibly schizophrenic." But...

"Because your [gay-bashing] neighbor is not alone in his beliefs, he does not meet the DSM-IV criteria for delusion."

Apparently all that's required to rescue your Thoth-loving neighbor from the rolls of schizophrenia is one more Thoth-lover, so that he, too, "is not alone in his beliefs."

Okay!

Hurrah for Thoth, and damn those theta waves!

(But you should still get the heck out of that neighborhood!)


[ Parent ]
But.... (4.00 / 1)
reading moral psychology papers will give you upsilon waves! In your own brain! Just imagine! And now the OpenLeft community will be infected with them! But Thoth will save us! Thoth will smite the moral psychologists and the cables!

Oh wait, sorry, forget all that, I was overcome by theta waves there for a second. Nothing to see here...

Um... cucumber sandwich?

[ Parent ]
It occurs to me (0.00 / 0)
that the idea behind my previous comment also indicates why I find point 3) from the main post to be dubious.
[ Parent ]
Here is my problem with studies like this (4.00 / 1)
When I took the survey I was struck by the fact that another way of saying respect is the we should respect the rule of law, an obvious cornerstone of liberal democracy.  There are too many different interpritations to these questions to derive much use from them.  

I have seen other attempts to construct a psycological foundation for political beliefs (see the work by adorno on the authoritarian personality) and have always walked away less than convinced.  

[ Parent ]
I agree (0.00 / 0)
The main problem with these kinds of studies is that they are based on quantified meaning, which insists on translating language, with all its rich ambiguity, into unambiguous numbers. That translation just doesn't work IMHO.  
[ Parent ]
Obtained power fairly? (4.00 / 3)
This clearly does not work in fact.  Conservatives were violently anti-Clinton and failed to give him deference even though he was a) elcted more fairly then George W. Bush and b) was the legal authority who needed to be given deference according to the Bible.

What seems more important ithan fairly elected is that the person agrees with and defends conservative and Christian "values". Fairly elected or even elected is not part of the equation. I believe that this is a recent change in conservative ideology.  It may reflect "Christian" values predicated on the idea that the end time is coming.  Or not.  

[ Parent ]
Never heard a conservative say that (4.00 / 3)
based on some conservatives I know, is that they'd say something to the effect that deference to authority is fair if the leader obtained power fairly

  I'm not questioning what you've heard, but in my experience I've encountered plenty of conservatives who worship at the altar of Franco, Pinochet, Obiango, Somoza, and many other authoritarian figures who obtained their power illegitimately.  Heck, Saddam Hussein was a right-wing darling before August 2, 1990 (which is a great thing to remind conservatives of if you don't mind having toasters hurled at you). Noriega was similar.

  It's instructive to see the contrast between the conservative attitudes towards Huog Chavez and the Saudi royal family. Chavez was freely elected; the Saudi royals were not. The average Venezuelan citizen enjoys vastly more political freedom than the average Saudi citizen (especially if she's a woman). Venezuelans are (mostly) Christians; Saudis are Muslims. Saudi Arabia suppiled 13 terrorists to the 9/11 attacks; Venezuela supplied zero. And yet conservatives worship the Saudis, while demonizing Chavez.

 Conservatives value nothing except political expediency for whatever is convenient at the moment. Conservatism is a bankrupt philosophy, at every level.  

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

[ Parent ]
Link doesn't play. (4.00 / 1)
at least not for me, anyway...
Use updated direct link to TED... n/t (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
It doesn't play for me either (0.00 / 0)


"Incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place"
Stoller
No for me (0.00 / 0)
though the link to the articles explained the theory.
[ Parent ]
Equivocate much? (0.00 / 0)
While I agree with your frustration, it seems like you're painting a picture that proves your view of morality.

For example, regarding torture, we're still debating not whether torture is right or wrong but whether "enhanced interrogation techniques" are torture. One may view this as cynical or even repugnant as I do, but does it not speak to the power of the harm side of the moral mind, as Haidt calls it, that torture which is generally held as equivalent to harm is ruled out by most participants in the discussion?

You also seem to see the categories of harm and in-group loyalty as mutually exclusive. I don't think that is the case. If one values loyality much higher than I do, that would skew the meaning of harm such that harm to his group registers higher than harm to another group. But that in and of itself does not mean harm is not an important moral category for that person merely that what constitutes harm is evaluated differently.

To change the subject somewhat: the point that resonated for me in Haidt's lecture was the value of punishment in getting people to sacrifice for the common good. Would that Obama could develop punishments as part of his arsenal for creating bi-partisanship. That would mean in my reading of Haidt that legislators willing to support health care reform, for example, would have the means of punishing those who don't. But further, the ability to punish uncooperative group members gets the authoritarians on board with working for the common good.

I'll defend Daniel here (0.00 / 0)
I don't see any equivocation, and his arguments about morality are sound. It is important to exclude certain values, like obedience, from category of moral values, or the word itself loses meaning.

On the other hand, the people who claim that "enhanced interrogation" is not torture are being insincere. Their only goal to to confuse and deceive with their use of words, in order to prevent the laws against torture from being enforced. The morality of those who ordered or participated in torture is not in doubt, regardless of how they would like to bend the discussion.

[ Parent ]
What then was the point of linking to Haidt? (0.00 / 0)
What then was the point of linking to Haidt?

Haidt cautions us to recognize that on matters moral everyone thinks they are right. That suggests they are not cynically positioning an agenda.

If we can claim with absolute confidence that others can only disagree with our views on torture or in-group loyalty because they do so insincerely, then I'm not sure what the point of linking to Haidt's piece is.

Based on my viewing, your and Daniel's comments are embedded in the moral matrix; you cannot understand how others can authentically disagree with you on torture.

Now, to be clear, in broad outline at least my morality is likely quite similar to yours; I would certainly say that under the Bush regime America has tortured and that torture is immoral. But perhaps the torture example is too extreme. How about abortion (ha!), do you think that no "pro-life" adherent can be moral? That is, genuinely hold a view that is consistent with their own moral calculus or is the pro-life position in every case a knowingly cynical ploy to control women?

In other words, are you saying Dick Cheney considers himself not moral, not amoral, but immoral? That he believes that waterboarding is absolutely wrong and pushes for its use for its very wrongness? That doesn't sound like the smug, self-righteous fellow I call Dick.

[ Parent ]
Well... (0.00 / 0)
Haidt cautions us to recognize that on matters moral everyone thinks they are right. That suggests they are not cynically positioning an agenda.

I don't see how this follows. Everyone thinks they are right on moral matters -- including those who think its morally ok to cynically position an agenda.

Saying that everyone believes their own morals are valid is not the same as saying that everyone is honestly saying what those morals are.

On the other hand, Mark Wallace's statement that "the people who claim that 'enhanced interrogation' is not torture are being insincere" does not seem supportable either. At the very least, having a phenomenal capacity for cognitive dissonance is not the same thing as insincere.

[ Parent ]
The evidence that they are being insincere (4.00 / 2)
is that the clear goal of their definitions of torture was to avoid law enforcement. That is absolutely clear from the some of the early statements from Gonzales before he was AG. Setting up a framework to avoid law enforcement is not moral reasoning, but simple CYA.
[ Parent ]
Well, I can split hairs too (0.00 / 0)
Well, I can split hairs too, but I'll refrain.
[ Parent ]
This Is Interesting (4.00 / 2)
(1) I think this makes some sense in terms of why US conservatives are so confused.  America is expressly based on political liberalism.  It's our official ideology.  We are the original liberal democracy.  And this just has be disorienting when your ultimate loyalty has to be to an ideology that's contrary to what you believe (treating all those dirty outsiders like sanctified in-group members?  Yuck!)  It's not like most cultures, where the basic conservative moral orientations line up more naturally with established social hierarchies.

(2) I agree with your second point, but I'm less sure about #s 1 & 3.  I agree that there are dangers there, but I guess I think there's likely to be a lot more room for fine-tuning so that those dangers aren't inevitable.

(3) On a personal note, I scored much higher than most liberals on harm and fairness, and much lower on purity and authority, but almost exactly at the liberal average on loyalty.  I actually think loyalty is a very good thing, but it requires discretion as to where it should be placed.  My loyalty score is arguably under-representative because of how the test is articulated.  Or not, because I don't believe in blind loyalty.  I believe that loyalty properly placed enables one to see what others cannot.  

I'm also more forgiving about this in others.  I know that Lynette Scavo on Desperate Housewives is headed for some serious trouble on account her loyalty to her son, but it only makes me feel more for her.

Above all, it's misplaced loyalty that really angers me. When those in authority abuse the loyalty shown them--that's one of the things that outrages me most.

I'm surprised I scored so low on authority, though, as I thought a couple of my answers reflected an awareness that there are, to mind, legitimate vs. arbitrary forms of authority that I feel quite good about--indeed, I'm much better disposed towards them after the last 20 years of seeing conservatives attack them!

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

Self (0.00 / 0)
I scored higher on fairness, lower on authority and purity compared to the standard liberal, but was only 0.1 off on harm (high) and loyalty (low).
[ Parent ]
Me too! (0.00 / 0)
I was more liberal than liberal on every measure except loyalty. Go figure.

Montani semper liberi
[ Parent ]
self (0.00 / 0)
I was higher on harm and fairness, but also higher on respect for authority.  I was lower than the liberal mean for loyalty and way low on purity.

Regarding the authority bit, guess that's why I'm in management, though I also score quite low on the RWA scale.  

#3 was more of a shot across the bow for discussion than a serious thesis I would defend.  There is a danger to having too many priorities is all I'm saying.  

#1 I'm pretty confident on - if you add additional variables to your moral equation, you can greatly alter the results.  I think Haidt is underplaying the significance of that.  In #1 I am not saying that makes conservatives less moral, I just think it means you can't say "conservatives and liberals mostly value the same things, so can't we all just get along?!"


[ Parent ]
I liked the tests (4.00 / 3)
and my impression of them is consistent with some of your comments. The thing I found frustrating when trying to answer the questions was that I could not make my priorities clear. I value in-group loyalty, but would disassociate myself from a group that demonstrated a willingness to behave unfairly and harm others for material gain. This is similar to Paul's comment on the outrage of misplaced loyalty.

My results did not fit very well with either liberal or conservative, although I consider myself very liberal. This may be because of the way I interpreted the questions. I disagreed with most of the statement that implied it was always wrong to harm other. This is because I think it is very important to fight back against those who are trying to take advantage of other people, and fighting means harming. Someone who thinks they can step on others on their way to success needs to be met with serious resistance, and should suffer consequences for their actions. I am glad to see the left wing get more serious about fighting back.

Necessary, fake morality (4.00 / 2)
I think the key to Authority and Purity, is they are "fake" morals that are nonetheless necessary for a functioning society.  There is no moral reason to obey Authority but there are practical reasons.  For example, there is no moral reason to stop at a red light; running a red light poses no problem at all once you know there is no other traffic.  But bad habits can form when rules are often broken; we are all safer if we all obey the rule of the red light.  By pretending that obeying Authority has true moral backing, society runs smoother.

Purity is more primal.  It is disgustingly to eat feces or to passionately kiss your brother or sister.  There are strong evolutionary reasons for this.  Sometimes we learn other rules that trigger the disgust instinct; for example, Muslims find eating with your left hand gross, as it is the one used for dirty activities.  But ultimately, there is no justification for learned purity when health is not actually involved.

But I think society needs the shorthand, easy rules of Authority and Purity to run smoothly.  We liberals need to change these rules, but actually giving them up would not work very well.  Political Correctness, for example, is a great use of Authority reapplied.  And, of course, we really do need people to obey those stop lights.

Loyalty, on the other hand, is really just a subset of Fairness (where it overlaps with Trust), but one that has taken on its own evolutionary life and is ripe for misuse and corruption.

That's funny. I have virtually no respect for Authority, (4.00 / 1)
and yet I do see stopping at stop signs to be a moral issue. Isn't it a fairness issue; i.e. the rules exist to ensure safety for the innocent and that the person who was there first departs first? I will tend to be incredibly unsympathetic to anyone who wants to violate the sense of basic of fairness built into most rules of traffic (other than speeding, where the rules tend to be reasonably arbitrary. There's no immediate you vs. me aspect to speeding.)Which would support your overall argument.

     However, what was interesting to me is that in fact liberals and conservatives weren't nearly as apart on fairness issues as issues of authority. This tends to suggest that, apart from all the conservative talk about personal responsibilty, in fact it is conservatives who take significantly less personal responsability when issues of fairness are at hand.  

[ Parent ]
That's Just The Point! (4.00 / 1)
You don't think authority and purity are real morality, because you're a damn closed-minded liberal!

Okay, I said it as a joke, but I'm inclined to think it's true.  (Note the role reversal going on here, Mark!)

What he means by morality is, essentially, a behavioral/attitudinal bias that's recognized as a standard for behavior. Just because it feels fake to you doesn't mean it feels fake inside someone else's skin.  And that, of course, is one of the things liberals tend to do that conservatives don't--empathize with others who look or think differently.  So you ought to be able to get why it's not fake, just because it feels fake to you.

Now, I happen to agree that authority and purity are mere matters of functional necessity.  But, then, so is all of morality, from an evolutionary standpoint.  Social animals have morality because it's necessary in order for them to be social animals.  Non-social animals don't have morality.  Don't need it.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
I think (0.00 / 0)
Liberals can have some value for authority and purity, it is just that when push comes to shove we will pick fairness and harm prevention over them quite easily.  

I tend to believe that the rules regarding purity and authority that we need could be defended on harm reduction grounds.  Sleeping with your sister will harm the offspring that result, having no societal authority means anarchy and crime, etc.

[ Parent ]
Fear, anyone? (0.00 / 0)
The study that I would find much more interesting would be one that measured the roll played by fearfulness in forming the social attitudes of the two groups.  I'm not saying that morality doesn't play a role, but the more I ponder the issues, the more convinced I am that fear and how one responds to it is at the very core of the differences between liberals and conservatives (and their moral values).

$0.02

"Ignorance is the most dangerous element in any society." - Emma Goldman

fear (0.00 / 0)
Yes, there is research into the impacts of fear on ideology.  I'll cover this in future posts.
[ Parent ]
Altemeyer On Fear (0.00 / 0)
Altemeyer is quite clear that objective reasons to be fearful are much more powerful than RWA itself.  RWA is dangerous because it's a predispositon that's always with people, and it has all sorts of concomitant impacts we might not like.  But set off a bomb in the capitol, and everyone moves sharply in the direction of favoring a more RWA-type of worldview--trusting authoritarian leaders, fearing outgroups, etc.

There's a certain evolutionary logic to this, of course.  But the downside of being overly fearful all the time doesn't have as strong an evolutionary pressure as we might like.  We have brains, in part, precisely to let us tweak such evolutionary deficiencies.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
ok, being someone argumenative... (0.00 / 0)
There are no 'Natural Human Rights' written on stone tablets somewhere in the Universe. I think everyone can agree on 2-5 of those, but you can find someone who normally functions in a society, that can take exception to normally one or more accepted rights.

Just the same for Moral issues.  Its still relative.  Some of those who accept pts 4 & 5 could be right.  Not likely, ( like .01% probability!)  I(and anyone else) can call a belief immoral until heat death of the universe, and still not be believed by 100% of the population.  We can judge past moralities, but I would argue (other than God, whom some don't believe in) there is no 100% absolutely correct judge.  Even He has been either silent or vague about some of these issues (in my opinion!).  

Daniel, thats why I don't think your commentary pts 2 & 3 add any value.  Even though I believe you are right.  No value to helping others to adopt the moral ideals we probably agree upon.  

Every !moral! person thinks it a duty to convince others of the value of their morals.  The paper does show what areas we need to assail.  Author of paper is not saying what is absolutely  Moral, he is saying what others base their morality on. (bad partiple, bad)

All 'morality' is socially situated. (4.00 / 1)
There are no universal mores.

Adorno figured out the "authoritarian" personality 60 years ago.

I don't agree with biological explanations (0.00 / 0)
for political ideology.  If people don't change what is the point of holding elections?

How do you account for shifting attitudes over time like attitudes toward minorities and women?

I would say that (4.00 / 1)
biological explanations that don't account for how people actually change are bad biological explanations.

The human brain tends to find patterns in just about anything, so it's hardly surprising that some biologists make Sweeping Conclusions from their data. Given the prestige of science, it's also not surprising that some people (biologists or otherwise) will try to use Sweeping Conclusions for political purposes. Neither of these circumstances means that science is useless for talking about the human mind. This too is a biological explanation.

[ Parent ]
Biological Explanations Are A Starting Point (4.00 / 1)
How biological differences express themselves, and how this expression changes over time, those are very important, very complex issues of their own.

It's not one thing or the other, it's a complicated interplay of the two.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Biological explanations (0.00 / 0)
are "how we got here." Not the same thing as "where do we want to go now?"

Montani semper liberi
[ Parent ]
biology is not destiny (0.00 / 0)
But it is an influencing factor.  If your compass is off by a few degrees, you'll tend to miss your destinations in the same direction every time.  If you're smart, you learn to compensate.

So our biology will lead us to be more likely to favour and hold certain views.  If we recognize the evolutionary sources of those, and realize they don't necessarily work or hold up to logical scrutiny we can overcome them.

[ Parent ]
The problem with how you're using the term "biology" (4.00 / 2)
Certainly you're not arguing that there are biological differences between liberal and conservative brains. But that there are aspects of brain function, biological in origin,  that have been and continue to be influenced by societal/cultural contexts. And that the the different ways that people respond to these influences overtime develop distinctly different political cultures. But these differences are not, strictly speaking, "biological."
I think that in order to address these differences in behavioral response to the environment, you have to look at what Richard Dawkins calls "memes." In a memetic, rather than biological, analysis of conservative vs. liberal, you would look at how two different meme-complexes, which may or may not include the variables Haidt is discussing, have developed and replicated over time through cultural, not biological, evolution. Big difference there.  
[ Parent ]
this work is sadly mistaken (0.00 / 0)
but it is endlessly popular because it flatters liberals. Interestingly enough, it flatters conservatives as well -- you just have to spin the results differently.

Except in extreme cases -- the paranoia of McVeigh or Stalin, and perhaps not even then -- you can not pathologize or diagnose someone's beliefs in this hyper-normative fashion. It's a myth just as much as the fictions of the Coming of Age in American Samoa.

It's surprising that, after years of battling essentialism, liberals are so willing to jump on this bandwagon. Or, perhaps not -- those results are indeed terribly flattering to us. Just remember that you can run a different set of tests and "discover" terrible things about blacks -- I refer you to books like the Bell Curve.

I pretty much agree with you (0.00 / 0)
Take away the element of self-congratulation from this "science", and it suddenly looks far less interesting and sensible.

I personally don't find it very plausible that there's something inherent in the "psychology" of, say, white residents of the South, as opposed to that of residents of the Northeast, that inclines the first to be so heavily Conservative, and the second so strongly liberal.

Too often, I think, we are reality based only when it suits our egos.

[ Parent ]
What You're Missing Is That (4.00 / 1)
it doesn't take very large hard-wired differences to sustain significant cultural differences.  Particularly if there's cross-migration that tends to self-select.

I think you're pointing to an area that needs a lot of investigation, not a simple fact that refutes this work out of hand.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
I don't think there's (0.00 / 0)
a particle of evidence in this case to support the notion that any of the differences in "psychology" which Haidt describes have any basis in "hard wiring", rather than environment.

Such a conclusion is completely unwarranted based on the evidence I can see -- and, for what it's worth, I'm not sure why a liberal would even hope that such a thing might be true.

As far as self-selection via emigration goes, isn't that the argument popular for centuries about why, say, residents of Africa have fared relatively poorly in the clash of civilizations, as opposed to those who emigrated to the north? Do you really want to go there?

[ Parent ]
Evidence, Much? (0.00 / 0)
This isn't even an argument on your part.  Just expression of an attitude.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
there's not much evidence at all (0.00 / 0)
which is sort of the point. Nobody doubts that people express attitudes, and that these attitudes are correlated with each other, and with the larger environment.

But to declare that "conservativism and liberalism exist at a fundamental level of human brain function" is absurd; outside of the popular literature (Pinker on the left, Herrnstein and Murray on the right), assertions of biological or evolutionary determinants of cultural behaviors is not taken seriously by the academy.

A good book on this, which I always recommend to people, is Neo-Liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology:

http://www.amazon.com/Neo-libe...

Which gives pretty excellent coverage of these sorts of things (McKinnon focuses on "evolutionary psychology" explanations of gender norms and free-market liberalism, but the general points apply a fortiori to the arguments made here.)

[ Parent ]
Um Sorry, No (4.00 / 1)
There is certainly a long history of reading social norms back into God, and after that nature.  But that doesn't alter the fact that we are social animals and that there clearly are genetic components involved in this that predispose us towards certain types of behavior.

So, does this require rigorous interrogation to separate the wheat from the chaff?

You betcha!

Does this mean you can simply dismiss an entire area of study because some examples might be wrong-headed?

Not so much.

The evidence for biologically-based differences between liberals and conservatives is not new.  There are decades of it.  It's not exclusively biological, nor is most of it clearly genetic, as opposed to a combination of genetics and early nurturance.  The less hard-wired it is, the happier I'd be, in fact.  But what makes me happy is not the issue here.  The issue here is what the data tells us.  It's not nearly enough data, not nearly good enough for what I'd like to see.  But it's damn sure enough to tell us something's going on.  And what's new here is precisely that it's starting to usefully enrich the conceptual landscape for understanding the forces at play.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
these statements: (4.00 / 1)
"The evidence for biologically-based differences between liberals and conservatives is not new.  There are decades of it."

"It's not nearly enough data, not nearly good enough for what I'd like to see.  But it's damn sure enough to tell us something's going on."

Are false, if you are talking about anything accepted by the scientific community.

Outside of pathological cases such as Alzheimer's, there is no evidence whatsoever for a connection between the semantic content of beliefs and particular brain structures.

There is some extremely recent work on things such as DRD4:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

where (weak) associations between biological structures and very broadly defined cultural behaviors such as "risk taking" are found. But there is nothing close to the things you are asserting!

Given that research into "obvious" connections such as sexuality and brain structure is in its deep infancy, this is not a surprise of course. Some researchers in evolutionary psychology -- itself a very controversial field -- postulate the existence of brain modules and so forth. These are still hypothetical objects with no direct physical or genetic evidence.

I encourage you to look at McKinnon's book.

[ Parent ]
One Track Mind (0.00 / 0)
I'm not talking about evolutionary psychology, so I don't know why you keep insisting that I read McKinnon.  Nor do I insist on a one-gene/one-thought sort of relationship.

Your devotion to straw man arguments is remarkable, but none of this has anything to do with what I'm saying.

In point of fact, it could well be that everything Altemeyer, Sidanius, Pratto and others have observed is due to nurture, not nature.  Neither they nor I have been primarily interested in that.  But in a sense, that's precisely why I take such evidence seriously.  It has not been produced in service of an agenda, it has just sort of emerged, and it awaits further investigtion to see what sort of nurture/nature breakdown there might be.

However, there is other research on reaction times and temperament and stuff like that which shows that these sorts of things--which have plausible relationships with liberal vs. conservative orientations--are innate, showing up within days or weeks of birth.

More generally, it just seems like it would be very weird if there weren't some these sorts of differences, given how much of our genetic makeup goes into synthesizing stuff that alters how our bodies work.  If none of that had anything at all to do with how we tended to react in social situations, I would regard that as truly amazing and deeply counter-intuitive.

Strange though it may seem, it is possible to think that something is highly probable, without for a moment falling for too slick arguments for too neat examples of it.  To take another example to illustrate this point: given how vast the universe is, I think it virtually certain that there is extraterrestrial life far more advanced than we are.  This doesn't for a minute make me any more succeptible to UFO cults, however.  The two are totally unrelated.

Murray certainly deserves the UFO cult comparison (not sure the UFO cultists do, though).  Pinker, perhaps not.  But, then, I haven't read him on this stuff, though I have read him a bit on other stuff.  The point is, there's a pinciple here of distinguishing between different sorts of arguments even if they're in the same general subject area.  And I don't think that the distinction I make is all that uncommon or hard to grasp.

So, if you're familiar with the work I'm talking about and would like to discuss it specifically, then fine.  Otherwise, you're simply expressing an opinion, sans any relevant data.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
- (0.00 / 0)
"I'm not talking about evolutionary psychology"

You are in part. For example, the paper referenced in this blog post makes extensive use of the evolutionary psychology literature to select the various "axes" along which to measure these things. Note, by the way, that the paper does not make the extravagant claims of you and Daniel.

"However, there is other research on reaction times and temperament and stuff like that which shows that these sorts of things--which have plausible relationships with liberal vs. conservative orientations--are innate, showing up within days or weeks of birth."

This is the only piece of evidence you have proposed to make your case about innate, biological sources of political beliefs. However, I am unaware of any researcher who has claimed to identify the political orientation of day or week-old babies (!)

"More generally, it just seems like it would be very weird if there weren't some these sorts of differences, given how much of our genetic makeup goes into synthesizing stuff that alters how our bodies work."

There are many things that seem totally reasonable, but are false. This is one of them. (You seem so convinced of this that you can't imagine someone would argue otherwise -- which is why you keep accusing me of attacking straw men!)

You are confusing two issues. One the one hand, the fact that people's attitudes and beliefs are highly correlated. This is indisputable. The extent of these correlations is surprising, and it's the reason (spin aside) the studies are very interesting.

One the other: that the sources of these correlations is biological, or, even more specifically genetic. As far as we can tell, this is false. Cultural attitudes, and more specifically politics, appear to be autonomous of both genetics and brain physiology.

[ Parent ]
The More You Write, The More Mistakes Appear (0.00 / 0)
"I'm not talking about evolutionary psychology"

You are in part. For example, the paper referenced in this blog post makes extensive use of the evolutionary psychology literature to select the various "axes" along which to measure these things.

When I made that comment, I hadn't even read the paper yet.  Even now that I have read the paper, I'm not relying on arguments I haven't read in the papers it cites.  So even if your claim were true--which doesn't actually seem to be the case--it would be utterly off point.

Note, by the way, that the paper does not make the extravagant claims of you and Daniel.

Exactly what extravagent claims would that be?  All I've claimed is that there's an accumulation of evidence that doesn't make it surprising to claim a biological foundation biasing use towards different political orientations.  I never claimed anything was proven.  I just said that evidence exists suggesting that.  And it does.

"However, there is other research on reaction times and temperament and stuff like that which shows that these sorts of things--which have plausible relationships with liberal vs. conservative orientations--are innate, showing up within days or weeks of birth."

This is the only piece of evidence you have proposed to make your case about innate, biological sources of political beliefs. However, I am unaware of any researcher who has claimed to identify the political orientation of day or week-old babies (!)

That's it in a nutshell.  You insist on a strawman portrayal of my position, claiming that I claim full-scale proof, when I never said any such thing.  However, the simple fact is that reaction times, and arousal patterns do seem related to novelty attraction or avoidance, which in turn seems related to liberalism vs. conservatism.  It's far from proven, but definitely suggestive and worth further study.  That's all I'm saying here.

Manwhile, you're hyperventilating too hard to even hear me.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Flattering, why? (0.00 / 0)
Granted, as good narcissists, we've sort of taken it that direction, but this study is also patently unflattering- it's about what x you are prepared to sacrifice in order to gain y. As Mark Matson points out upthread, any "moral" choices made in this study come with heavy cost. Why would it be flattering to make such choices?
[ Parent ]
Honestly, (0.00 / 0)
I look at this research and pretty much am left wondering what the overall point might possibly be.

Does it really surprise anyone that those who describe themselves as Conservative might be more inclined to favor authority over fairness? Isn't that practically constituitive of Conservative ideology? Where's the insight here, the thing we wouldn't have fully predicted based on the ideology? Why would we not imagine that the ideology would affect one's larger "psychology", in the sense of moral principles?

Point is, the attitudes toward authority and fairness might as well be a product of the ideology (perhaps accepted for very different reasons, such as one's demographic circumstance, or family value system), as something that determines one's ideology.

Really, unless Haidt's making a larger argument than he would at first blush appear to be, I just don't see any important substance in his results.  

Just to add to my point (0.00 / 0)
certainly there are more self described liberals in, say, Massachusetts than in white Alabama.

Are we really going to say that there's something basic in the "psychology" of residents of Massachusetts than in the white residents of Alabama that inclines the first group to be liberal, and the second to be Conservative? Isn't it far more plausible to think of the ideologies of each group, accepted mostly because of social context, as determining the tested attitudes toward authority and fairness?

Does it really make sense to think of the "psychology" of these groups as being the active agent that "causes" them to embrace the ideologies, rather than the other way around?  

[ Parent ]
you can't totally seperate them (0.00 / 0)
Your upbringing and thought patterns materially affect how your brain works.  Bilingual people exhibit different patterns for forming speech and understanding it.  They have a much easier time learning third and fourth languages because their brains are already well organized for the task of translating thoughts into an arbitrary language instead of the primary language many of us have.

So if you grow up a certain way, with certain ideas and attitudes this becomes part of your psychology.  You can change, but it's not trivial, which is why it is so hard to convince people of things they're not inclined to believe.

So the dominant social order has a way of becoming the individual psyche.

[ Parent ]
There Are Circularity Issues To Untangle, No Doubt (4.00 / 3)
But this is an advance, IMHO.  The work of Altemeyer (with Rightwing Authoritarianism), Sidanius and Pratto (with Social Dominance Orientation) and others shows a pretty clear record of biological bias that's then modified by later experience.

Haidt is proposing a more differentiated--and thereby less stigmatized--description of conservative traits.  He's right, I think that this can help us deal more effectively with conservatives and conservatism.

My feeling long has been that conservatism derives from a cluster of tendencies that are evolutionary useful (not to the exclusion of liberalis, of course!) but are vulnerable to expression in ways that are quite destructive.  So the challenge has always been to differentiate between conservatives and conservatism.

It's one reason why I've repeatedly stressed the difference between ideological movement conservatives--of the sort who want to drown government in a bathtub--and the great mass of conservatives who say they prefer more constrained government, but want stable or more social spending, for example.  The later, I think, are quite reachable, while the former, not so much.  And one problem with Obama's approach is he's trying to reach out to the unreachable ones.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Neat tricks (4.00 / 3)
I became aware of Haidt's work early last year, and I find it interesting and possibly on something like the right track, but I think his categories are too narrowly conceived, and thus his conclusion that conservatives are in tune with a broader spectrum of moral templates to be rather iffy.

As a first pass, let's say that his system of five categories is fairly accurate -- that the underlying biological mechanisms cohere well with that model, and that his terms for the categories are functionally useful.

In this case part of the reason, I would guess, as to why liberals conceive of their morality in terms of justice and empathy is that liberal morality developed using these terms as foils for such ills as blind faith, blind obedience, and fanaticism -- which might be conceived as instincts for, respectively, loyalty, respect for authority, and purity run amuck.

Thus, under Haidt's theory, liberals might be said to have conceived a fairly peculiar moral language that focuses only on the harm/care and justice/fairness modes of moral thought. As I see it though, that doesn't necessarily mean that the other modes aren't present they just aren't expressed in a traditional fashion -- and Haidt's test is conceived in a way that basically only detects traditional ideas of these other modes of moral thought. For whatever reason, he is basically defining "loyalty", "authority", and "purity" in ways that only conservatives identify with. And I suspect the converse may be true of his ideas of justice and empathy, these too are defined in light of the liberal moral and philosophical tradition he identifies with. (IIRC, I have heard Haidt refer to himself as a "utilitarian consequentialist" which, if I've figured out the jargon, would align him with people like John Rawls and Peter Singer as against pragmatists like Richard Rorty or Michael Bérubé or me.) angrymind gives an example in a comment above that demonstrates how the definition of harm might change in a conservative context.

I think one clear example of a purity discourse which is not covered by Haidt's definitions and would not be registered by his test is the work of Sam Harris. Harris talks about (in effect) polluting minds rather than bodies or souls, but he advocates a vigorous vigilance against the irrationalities he attributes to religion, that has much in common with the warnings of a fire and brimstone preacher against sin. That Harris does this is what has garnered him the unfortunate label of "fundamentalist atheist" (a combination which, to my thinking, abuses both terms for reasons too involved to go into here). That Harris addresses his arguments to reason rather than faith makes them no less a discourse about purity and pollution.

Note that, in and of itself, identifying Harris as engaging in a purity discourse is not a criticism (IMHO, Harris's argument is dreadful, but that's a separate issue and again beyond the scope of this comment). I think that one thing Haidt's research might teach us is to be more aware of what kind of moral discourse we avail ourselves of which we may not necessarily identify as moral discourse.

Another example of a moral discourse that is not dealt with well by Haidt's definitions is the idea of solidarity -- obviously a variation on loyalty. Perhaps solidarity, as a political concept, is too dirty for Haidt to soil his pristine scientific discourse with... (I have heard Haidt declaring the worthiness of abjuring the taint of PC...)

Overall, science itself (as practiced, as opposed to some abstraction guarded by a Teutonic capital letter) is a writhing mess of purity discourses, many of which could be said to rise to the level of ethical and moral dicta -- and if it weren't, it would be utterly ineffective. No?

There are a number of comments in this thread that define versions of loyalty etc. that do not necessarily accord with traditional versions and which are difficult to reconcile with the phrasing of Haidt's test. For example, Paul Rosenberg: "My loyalty score is arguably under-representative because of how the test is articulated.  Or not, because I don't believe in blind loyalty.  I believe that loyalty properly placed enables one to see what others cannot"; Mark Wallace: "I value in-group loyalty, but would disassociate myself from a group that demonstrated a willingness to behave unfairly and harm others for material gain"; most of Mark Matson's comment (this one), especially the section identifying authority as contingent rather than intrinsic.

Even the idea that empathy or justice should be the focus of morality can be a purity discourse -- one that tends to ensure that liberals are good at talking about empathy and justice and bad at talking about purity. When is purity discourse useful for morality? How does this work? How will we know if we don't talk about it, or assume that purity talk is something to define ourselves against (even as we engage in it)?

My speculation is that Haidt's schema (in its current form) will turn out to be too mired in the categories he's inherited from the liberal philosophical tradition to stand up well as science. I also think that his discussion of ideas like purity, disgust, ingroup loyalty, and such may well provide pointers toward what can be usefully said about morality from a biological point of view (for values of "usefully" that imply eschewing naive reductionism and naturalistic fallacies). A lot of what is said about justice and empathy, say, could -- without diluting its message -- perhaps be interpreted as defining a dynamic, complex terrain of who is and is not "one of us", for what purpose, at any given moment. When you've got something as complex as the human brain to work with, you can pull off all sorts of neat tricks with simple tools -- moral tools included.


Well, You And I Could Have A Nice Long Go Of It! (0.00 / 0)
Since I sort of half agree with 80-90% of what you say.  (The stuff about purity discourses, particular in science, is the 10-20% where I agree completely.)

But what I think it boils down to is:

(1) You raise some good objections that can lead to fruitful clarifications--or not, if this is a total dead-end, which I very seriously doubt.

(2) However, I think this work is sounder than you do, because I see it more distinctly as being about predispositions, which tend to change less readily than applications.  I think I'd agree with you a lot more if you were to argue less against his basic thrust and put more emphasis onto the ambiguity of what it all means in practice.

(3) But, then it's good that you see the problems differently, as it's only by hashing them out vigorously that we'll get to the bottom of things.  It will certainly be interesting to see if 10 more years of research uncovers a couple more basic elements in the moral matrix, for example.  Although it sort of seems more arguable that there are two basic elements--the two-fold liberal cluster and the three-fold conservative one.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
90% of all half-believed statistics are... (4.00 / 1)
This is the first time I've tried to collect my thoughts on Haidt coherently enough to write them down. So it's possible that, on further reflection, I'll only half agree with 80-90% of what I said too. Or that 80-90% of what I said only half expresses what I meant. (Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier...)

1) I don't think it's a dead end either. I hope that much was clear.

2+3) When I was writing earlier, I was vaguely aware that there was some distinction between a number of the examples I was coming up with and the kinds of examples Haidt uses, but nothing that clarified that impression ever came to mind. I'm not sure enough of how exactly your distinction between predispositions and applications is intended to apply to what I said to be able to tell if it's referring to the same thing.

I think part of what frustrates me is that I'm not entirely sure how sound I think it is, precisely because I think what might be learned about dispositions is obscured by Haidt's application of his concepts. (Am I just making a hash of what you meant by all those words?)

I'm questioning whether the (clear and marked) trend in the data is best described by something inherent in whatever neurobiological system his categories map onto (i.e. Haidt's conclusion, more or less) or whether that trend is the result of some other factor that interacts with that system.

How are you defining his basic thrust? Did I just argue against it again? Or did I do something else?

Statements by Haidt such as

Political liberals have moral intuitions primarily based upon the first two foundations, and therefore misunderstand the moral motivations of political conservatives, who generally rely upon all five foundations.

throw red flags for me. Even moreso now that I've actually taken his test. Unless the ambiguities were intentional, some of the questions seem phrased terribly -- especially the ones about free expression vs conformity or obedience. There are some questions where the answers I would give would diverge quite a bit depending on which meaning I assigned.

The examples I was coming up with earlier are intended to show that it's plausible that the distinction between conservatives and liberals that's shown by the test is an artifact of the definitions being used for the five categories. In part, I raised the idea of the philosophico-linguistic underpinnings of his definitions to question to what degree the artifacts that might arise from them are due to the definitions of the justice and empathy domains being basically liberal definitions with the other three being basically conservative definitions.

How would one write a single test that could meaningfully compare the purity concerns of Sam Harris with those of Bill Donohue? Or the loyalty concerns of Andy Stern and Karl Rove? Or the justice concerns of Wole Soyinka and Clarence Thomas?

Am I making things any clearer? Maybe I should quit while I can still convince myself I'm ahead.

Like you, I came out higher than the liberal average on harm and fairness, lower than average on purity, and about average on loyalty. I came out average on authority also, but its not as if I have anything like what a conservative would recognize as respect for authority. I think that, like we both apparently did on the loyalty questions, I was able to import my own definition of respect into the wording of some of the questions.

[ Parent ]
The test, I would think, looks for something on the order of liberal vs. (0.00 / 0)
conservative gestalts. The ambiguities are absolutely intentional. Of course you are able to import your own meaning; that is the study. It's a study of where you establish operational hierarchies. The study's overdetermined dualities are not a byproduct; they are its forefront.  
[ Parent ]
I understand (0.00 / 0)
that it can be possible to conceive and execute a study that way. I have yet to see any evidence that this one, indeed, was. Also, the degree of ambiguity varies widely enough between questions to lower the probability of that hypothesis.
[ Parent ]
You're right of course (4.00 / 1)
Since we all exist in society and have political leanings of some kind, it is really difficult to write tests like this in a truly neutral fashion (if such a thing even exists).  Haidt does remark on the dearth of conservatives at TED as a problem since it reduces the diversity of the audience and weakens his research (he gets a lot more liberal respondents than conservative ones).  I doubt there are many (any?) conservatives in his group.  They just aren't that interested in studying this stuff, and of course there are many explanations for that, but it does make it harder to study nonetheless.


[ Parent ]
Some Of These Are Imponderables (0.00 / 0)
at least in our present state.  But I think some things could really be improved upon.

I'll have to give this more thought before settling on anything, but just as an off-the-cuff "for instance", I might point to the example of Kohlberg's methodology studying levels of cognitive development in moral reasoning.  He set up dilemmas, and there were no right answers, there were just different ways of reasoning.  If these tests were somehow more like that--I know I'm being incredibly vague here, but--more open-ended, but still succeptible to uniform evaluation, then we would have something we could have more confidence in.  This still would leave a good number of imponderables untouched, but it would give us something more solid to go on, and that might could help us get around to those imponderables, too, at some point.

One thing I can add to the above concerns this:

How would one write a single test that could meaningfully compare the purity concerns of Sam Harris with those of Bill Donohue? Or the loyalty concerns of Andy Stern and Karl Rove? Or the justice concerns of Wole Soyinka and Clarence Thomas?

The answer to this, at least, is relatively simple.  One gets the sort of test that I'm looking for above (that's the hard part, since I haven't specified it yet).  One has matched questions in it.  One deals with purity concerns  Sam Harris would have. A matching one is functionally identical, but deals with the purity concerns of Bill Donohue.  For good measure, you should have a third one that has no overtly ideological content to it. Do the same with each moral dimension.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Having now finished reading (0.00 / 0)
the paper linked in the OP... um, wow, there are more, not self-contradictions exactly, more like short circuits passed over without apparent recognition, in there than I can shake a comment at in a finite period of time. E.g. this theory may suggest an explanation of why liberals are so bad at understanding conservative morality, and of why conservatives disagree with liberal morality, but as to the converse of those, that is, why conservatives are so bad at understanding liberal morality and why liberals disagree with conservative morality? AFAICT, not so much. (At least when conceived as a theory meant to have some relation to biology, and not as a purely psychological schema.)

I still think the argument I was trying to make above fits my perceptions, however, I can see that those comments were better adapted to the other material I've seen by Haidt than this particular paper.

On the other hand, I do overall agree with some of the chief points of this paper: that liberals don't perceive conservative morality very well, that recognizing moral concerns stated in language we are not used to as moral concerns is extremely important, and that the moral domains identified are likely meaningful as part of the effort to translate conservative moral languages into liberal moral languages in a useful way. I also have the impression that an unintended subtext of the paper is that liberals don't understand their own morality very well either.

Hopefully I'll find the time to write something more cohesive about all this. Here's one thing that occurred to me though, based on the summary at the end of the article:

(1) Human morality consists of more than what is covered by the traditional Kohlberg/Gilligan domains of justice and care. (2) Liberal morality rests primarily on these two foundations (we call them fairness/reciprocity and harm/care), whereas conservative morality rests on five foundations, including ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity concerns as well. (3) Recognizing these latter foundations as moral (instead of amoral, or immoral, or just plain stupid) can open up a door in the wall that separates liberals and conservatives when they try to discuss moral issues.

It might be said that a similar door needs to be opened between the morality of establishment Democrats and the morality of the netroots. Why is it that the morality of the netroots -- made up, on the whole, of people who are, in theory, more liberal than establishment Democrats -- seems to contain more overt references to the concerns usually associated with conservatives: loyalty, respect, and purity?

(And I do mean "overt" references, the "where's my fainting couch, I feel a purity discourse coming over me" brigade seems unlikely to admit that's what they're doing.)

Our self-flattering answer might be that we're more honest about our real concerns, but is that a) really true, and b) even if it is, why does it make us sound in some respects, more like conservatives (presuming you agree that is so)?

If the answer to the previous question is to set up a moderate/radical distinction, what does that do to Haidt's theory?

(Well, ok, that turned into more than one thing...)

[ Parent ]
The Psychological Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives | 64 comments
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