[RD] Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations test

[Truthy]

Neither my girlfriend (an aspiring Psychology PhD), nor her mother (a Psychology academic) has heard of this theory, and both were very skeptical both of the theory as-described and how Piaget’s work is supposed to factor into it. I echo some of the already-expressed problems with the way the questions are phrased and what they seemingly appear to have been asked with specific reactions in mind, and it’s frustrating when I don’t feel myself eliciting anything along the binary of expected responses. A lot of my reactions were, “I don’t like it/I wouldn’t choose to do it personally, but it’s not my place to judge the decisions of consenting, conscious adults.” So a lot of middle button results.

I also don’t like the political divide as created. Left-Liberal encompasses a wide array of moral systems, many of them wholly mutually exclusive or irreconcilable (e.g. does this category also include Leftism? Because Leftism and Liberal are literally contradictory terms), it doesn’t seem at all well-defined what Libertarian represents here, and Conservative, again, can represent a very wide-array if moral systems that are just lumped together into one broad category.

It just comes across as a vague iteration of the MBTI test, which is itself mostly bullfeathers. For as many problems as I have with the political compass test, I feel it is much better at producing results that track with my core political beliefs, and which are conveyed in a much clearer, more immediately understandable manner.

Haidt and some others built on the line of work starting with Piaget, then Kohlberg, then Turiel on moral psychology and moral development of kids. Haidt has focused a lot more on moral intuitions as low-level, fast, system I processes, whereas the older folks emphasized psychological rationalism, which nowadays is described as a slow, system II process. It turns out moral intuitions are very system I. Haidt also did a good job showing that moral intuitions are not strictly about individual harm, as Kohlberg and Turiel thought. Across cultures, they are typically also about disrespect, disgust, and support for norms. This all strikes me as being predictable, but I don't think anyone else showed this experimentally before the late 80s and 90s, with Piaget, Kohlberg, and Turiel turning out to be wrong on several fronts.

Not to be mean, but some of your criticisms strike me as missing the point. You probably didn't have strong negative reactions to a lot of the questions because you're very progressive and your moral intuitions guide you elsewhere. Critiquing the questions as "not my place to judge" is really how Haidt was expecting progressives to answer; well-educated people (especially westerners) are more likely to lack strong negative reactions to violations of norms that shame victimless wrongdoings, while more conservative types will feel negative emotions even if they're fully aware that no individual is being directly harmed. Idk the data, but my impression is that answers to questions like these, that probe at people's moral intuitions, are good predictors of people's politics. Judging by the results I'm seeing here and have seen from people I know irl, it looks about right. Some of your other criticisms are fair, but stray too far into "the quiz and idea are stupid and useless" territory for my taste. Beyond that, I think you're asking too much from one quiz.

Haidt is one of the more famous psychologists alive right now and is a pretty influential researcher, with almost 60k citations on google scholar. Idk why you, your gf, and her mom haven't heard of him or the moral foundations idea, but I'm not keen on accepting those things as grounds for denigrating it or Haidt. I've known plenty of grad students and professors who didn't know much about important things in their field. Grad students of course shouldn't be expected to know everything and professors specialize and focus on things they're interested in. My guess is that neither of them focus much on moral psychology.

I haven't actually read "The Righteous Mind," but it's on my backlog. If you, your gf, or her mom are interested in moral psychology, you/they should probably give it a read. If you're still not impressed after that, then I'd love to hear more criticism about the quiz, the book, or Haidt's work in general.

 

[Farm Boy]

I really like the well educated correlates with being a poopstain thrown in there. Hehe. I don't really think I believe it though, I think they just have thier own, non-traditional heresies.

 

[Gori the Grey]

You're welcome.

Thank you. I thought about doing so, but then couldn't be arsed.

You've conflated two of them in the first entry on fairness. And didn't put a plus or minus on the fourth one in that category. Or the first one on authority.

Proofreading I can be arsed to do.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I haven't actually read "The Righteous Mind," but it's on my backlog. If you, your gf, or her mom are interested in moral psychology, you/they should probably give it a read. If you're still not impressed after that, then I'd love to hear more criticism about the quiz, the book, or Haidt's work in general.

I ran across an article about Haidt from 6 years ago while looking for an essay by Solzhenitsyn.
https://newrepublic.com/article/102760/righteous-mind-haidt-morality-politics-scientism

Some relevance to this thread's test.

Haidt is a strong supporter of moral intuition, telling us that “gut feelings are sometimes better guides than reasoning for making consumer choices and interpersonal judgments.” We must “reject rationalism and embrace intuitionism” and “be wary of any individual’s ability to reason.” Individual rationality clearly is suspect for Haidt; but “if you put individuals together in the right way ... you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. That is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity.”

Intellectual and ideological diversity? Hahahaha
Is there even one group or institution out there that practices this?

The idea for the test pops up next.

Haidt’s view is more realistic. “There’s more to morality than harm and fairness ... the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors. Secular Western moralities are like cuisines that try to activate just one or two of these receptors—either concerns about harm and suffering, or concerns about fairness and injustice. But people have so many other powerful moral intuitions, such as those related to liberty, loyalty, authority, and sanctity.” This recognition that morality has many “flavors” is welcome, but it leaves some important questions unanswered. What if the evolutionary psychologist’s “groupish” understanding of morality fails to square with powerful moral intuitions? Haidt notes that most human cultures have been “sociocentric” rather than individualistic, and quotes with approval the anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s observation: “The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe ... is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures.”

It leads to a theory on why Democrats don't understand Republicans.

Vainly invoking the universal laws of science to account for the accidents of history, Haidt has fallen into a classic confusion of categories. His analysis of American divisions, he tells us, is an application of “Moral Foundations Theory,” which identifies “the universal cognitive modules upon which cultures construct moral matrices.” Applying the theory, Haidt proceeds to develop a typology of liberal and conservative mentalities, with liberals focusing on issues to do with caring and fairness and conservatives on questions of loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Summarizing his findings, he reports that “conservatives responded to a broader set of moral tastes than did liberals,” and he concludes that “Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don’t.” Later he warns: “Until Democrats understand the Durkheimian vision of society and the difference between a six-foundation morality and a three-foundation morality, they will not understand what makes people vote Republican.” And finally, in the closest he comes to a practical proposal for reform, Haidt suggests that rancorous divisions might be overcome if congressmen brought their families to Washington. “Before 1995, congressmen from both parties attended many of the same social events on weekends; their spouses became friends; their children played on the same sports teams. But nowadays most congressmen fly to Washington on Monday night, huddle with their teammates and do battle for three days, and then fly home on Thursday night.” If only politicians knew each other better, “Manichaeism and scorched earth politics” could be left behind.

The author of the article, John Gray (emeritus professor of European thought at the London School of Economics), has plenty of criticism for Haidt.
About 1/3rd of the article is constructive criticism.

...That is an implication of Haidt’s analysis about which he should be seriously concerned. But Haidt seems not to grasp the depth of the difficulties that he faces...

...When Haidt considers what the normative element in morality should be, his conclusion is simple-minded to an extraordinary degree:...

...Haidt assumes a connection between utilitarianism and the values of liberal democracy that dissolves with a moment’s critical reflection...

...Haidt appears not to grasp the importance of the fact that intuitionism and utilitarianism are rivals, and not only in moral philosophy. They are also at odds in practice...

**Edit**
quote fixed, sorry Derrick SB.

 

[El_Machinae]

Hahaha,

I scored lower than all the cohorts' average on 5 out of the six metrics. "Nope, don't give a crap about most morals", it looks like.

 

[Farm Boy]

If the answers are polar, as the theory is going, I think that just means you're less blind.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I haven't read most of the thread, but took the test. It should come as no surprise that my results are "left-liberal".

 

[Cutlass]

I ran across an article about Haidt from 6 years ago while looking for an essay by Solzhenitsyn.
https://newrepublic.com/article/102760/righteous-mind-haidt-morality-politics-scientism

Some relevance to this thread's test.


Intellectual and ideological diversity? Hahahaha
Is there even one group or institution out there that practices this?

The idea for the test pops up next.


It leads to a theory on why Democrats don't understand Republicans.


The author of the article, John Gray (emeritus professor of European thought at the London School of Economics), has plenty of criticism for Haidt.
About 1/3rd of the article is constructive criticism.

The problem with saying that liberals don't understand conservative moralities is a hard one. There is a lot going on here behind the scenes.

The O'Reilly factor: An ideological bias in judgments about sexual harassment
Sandervan der Lindena
CostasPanagopoulosb
a
Department of Psychology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Cambridge, UK
b
Department of Political Science, Northeastern University, United States of America

Received 18 September 2018, Revised 13 November 2018, Accepted 14 November 2018, Available online 22 November 2018.

Highlights
•
Liberals and conservatives are known to rely on different moral foundations.

•
We conducted a national survey experiment to evaluate ideological asymmetries.

•
Liberals equally condemned Bill O'Reilly and Harvey Weinstein for sexual harassment.

•
Conservatives were much less likely to condemn their own in-group (O'Reilly).

•
Conservatives were also less concerned about sexual harassment than liberals.

Abstract
Liberals and conservatives are known to differ in the extent to which they prioritize moral concerns about harm, justice, and particularly, in-group loyalty. Accordingly, here we evaluate ideological differences in the context of an important societal issue: sexual harassment. In a national US sample (N = 1000) participants were asked how big of a problem sexual harassment is in the United States and, following random assignment to one of two conditions, whether they think a prominent liberal (Harvey Weinstein, n = 500) or conservative (Bill O'Reilly, n = 500) should go to jail following sexual harassment accusations. Main results reveal two clear findings; 1) conservatives are generally less concerned about sexual harassment in society and 2) while the probability of condemning Weinstein or O'Reilly was about equal among liberals, conservatives were significantly and substantially more likely to condemn the out-group (Weinstein) than they were to condemn their own in-group (O'Reilly). These findings uncover an important ideological asymmetry in judgments about sexual harassment.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886918306184

So what do we take away from this? To liberals, it's bad if liberals or conservatives do it. To conservatives it's only bad if liberals do it. It's perfectly OK if conservatives do the same thing.



This is why liberals don't get conservative morality.

As someone on reddit explained it:

Learned_Hand_01 M H 375 points 15 hours ago


Learning this made such a difference in how I view conservatives.

From my liberal perspective, the other three axis have nothing to do with morality, and in fact, even looking to them for a source of morality seems immoral.

However, it allows me to at least understand the moral judgments of conservatives. My wife likes to watch videos where Atheists talk to theists or some guy interviews people about their morality. A lot of times I can see a basic breakdown of communication going on where the conservative tries to justify their position on one or more of the three axis they don't share with liberals and the liberal gets frustrated because they don't even see how a moral argument is being made at all.

On the other hand, conservatives will ask in all seriousness how a liberal morality is even possible without reference to authority and liberals will either think they are being made fun of or that the conservative is immature in some way that prevents them from even understanding morality.

The Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac never made sense to me as a moral quandary until I understood more about conservative morality. To me it was a simple mob boss directive. "Who are you going to choose? Me, or obvious morality?" To conservatives, it is an agonizing moral dilemma because it pits different axis of morality against each other. If an order comes from God, it is by definition moral. To a liberal, an order is moral or not, and whether it comes from God is beside the point.

A liberal who studies the Bible will find God to be astoundingly immoral. Conservatives will find that statement both shocking and nonsensical.

https://np.reddit.com/r/science/com...d_conservatives_are_known_to_rely_on/ecevreu/

This, "To conservatives, it is an agonizing moral dilemma because it pits different axis of morality against each other. If an order comes from God, it is by definition moral. To a liberal, an order is moral or not, and whether it comes from God is beside the point." is a really critical part. To liberals, people who will do evil because they are told to by an authority that they are taught they are supposed to obey are still doing evil. To conservatives they are not. They're just doing what they are told.

To people like me, Sahah Huckabee Sanders is a vile and evil monster. If she were my daughter, she would not be allowed to step foot in my house. If I were her preacher, she would not be allowed to set foot in my church. Yet her father is her preacher, and they both think they're doing God's work.

But the fundamental problem with taking God's word as your commandments is that you don't really know if you are or not. You are, ultimately, taking man's word for what God's word and will are. And man is fallible. Well all you got is that a man said that God said this, so this is what you must do. Or, even worse, you have these people who claim a "personal relationship with God" who claim that if what they believe and do isn't what God wanted them to do, well then God would have told them so. God didn't say anything, therefor what they do must be in accordance with what God wants.

This is why liberals don't get conservative morality.

 

[El_Machinae]

Self-serving morality is incoherent, and not scalable. But that's not the same thing as saying conservative morality is not along dimensions that liberals have trouble perceiving

The philosophical argument about whether God is the Arbiter of morality or beholden to morality is a very old argument. The Abraham Isaac dilemma is adjudicated along your bias to that question, it's not a spread between liberal and conservative values.

 

[Arwon]

Wait are "left liberal", "libertarian" and "conservative" the only three outcomes? Lol.

 

[Truthy]

I ran across an article about Haidt from 6 years ago while looking for an essay by Solzhenitsyn.
https://newrepublic.com/article/102760/righteous-mind-haidt-morality-politics-scientism

Some relevance to this thread's test.


Intellectual and ideological diversity? Hahahaha
Is there even one group or institution out there that practices this?

The idea for the test pops up next.


It leads to a theory on why Democrats don't understand Republicans.


The author of the article, John Gray (emeritus professor of European thought at the London School of Economics), has plenty of criticism for Haidt.
About 1/3rd of the article is constructive criticism.

I gave that a read and wasn't very impressed tbh. I started reading "The Righteous Mind" and it looked to me that this Gray guy skimmed the book and then proceeded to ramble about his own pet peeves with evo psyche, or "Darwinism" (unlike Haidt, he likes to use a more sinister and archaic word). I haven't gotten very far into the book, but already I notice Gray brings up points as if Haidt hadn't thought of them, yet Haidt clearly addresses them, sometimes for multiple pages. For example, Gray says "Haidt appears not to grasp the importance of the fact that intuitionism and utilitarianism are rivals." Meanwhile, Haidt says this very clearly and at length in chapter three! Doesn't seem to me he has much trouble grasping the fact or recognizing its importance.

I'm guessing most of his criticisms will turn out to be uncharitable readings or misreadings (or non-readings). But even to his bigger point about the poor applicability of evo psyche to politics--look, every single thing involving animals on this planet involves evolution in some form. Really, folks like Haidt seem to be much less guilty of ignoring history than social scientists like this guy are of insisting evolution doesn't affect human history. Again, haven't finished the book, but I'll bet Haidt never says or implies the contingencies of US history don't matter and I bet Gray is exaggerating the extent to which Haidt says the liberal/conservative dichotomy of the US applies easily to China. I also enjoy the irony of Gray complaining about the broad strokes of "scientism" while, in turn, lumping everything Haidt says into the category of scientism and then spending more time refuting whatever that even is than he does on Haidt in particular.

The best point could be the shakiness of Haidt's group morality stuff, which I'll have to read about more.

 

[brennan]

Not very clannish then.

I found it difficult to answer the questions consistently, a lot of the time I was weighing up someone's right to do something with how dickish (or stupid) the act was, but I guess that's been taken into account when choosing/wording the questions.