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.  

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.