What do you make of psychologist Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations theory?

[bripat9643]

Basically he says that there are six essential moral foundations (care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation) and that the policy differences between conservatives and liberals come down to which they value and how they prioritize them. In his view, liberals stress the first three, while conservatives consider each more or less equally.

Here's his website about it: Home moralfoundations.org
Here's an older talk about it in his own words: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives - Jonathan Haidt TED-Ed

"First three" means the first three pairs, right?

I like the essential reductions but Liberalism is in effect the opposite of Authoritarianism so that would involve number five. The first, fourth and sixth are personality traits, not political philosophies.

I disagree. Government is authoritarian. Liberals and republicans both represent authoritarianism in different ways.

I do not see a lot of classical authoritarianism on the left. Tough talking, angry, scapegoating, militaristic, nationalistic leaders do not really appeal to us. Care to explain further?

Oh, right, because Obamacare isn't authoritarian.

You guys kill me. You're so deluded by your own bullshit.

 

[Deleted member 53821]

Societies generally begin as conservative and over time they progress to liberal. When there are few people you have to embrace a lot more selfishness just to survive, even though there is some socialism, i.e. people help each other build barns etc. But in really hard times people are selfish.

Later after the society is established and the fight for mere survival has receded, a more liberal attitude takes place, i.e. as there is more abundance the community of humans extend more help to those having trouble surviving on their own, like those with mental problems, people that are crippled and can't hunt or work, older members of the tribe or society.

Modern conservatism in America is simply an artificial attempt to make that animalistic selfishness a noble thing. But it isn't. Certainly everyone feeds and houses their own family but in advanced human societies the collective wealth and energy supports those that can't support themselves.

In America this artificial attempt to keep animalistic selfishness as the norm is driven by the very few wealthy who are themselves mental children and do not want to help anyone with anything, so they spend energy and money on convincing (or as in America with Fox News and conservative-talk-radio, brainwashing) millions into helping them keep selfishness as a noble trait.

Again, it isn't. It is an animal leaving others to die because why should you help them in a dog-eat-dog world.

Conservatives are human beings that never grow up entirely. They are forever rabid children on a deserted island fighting for food.

Human beings are selfish period and they are much happier being so. There isn't any way of getting around it. Do you want a raise from your boss.? Tell them what you can do for them which is nothing more than satisfying their selfish need.

Everything else you said about societies embracing selflessness is bullshit because the whole point of laws is to act as a collective defense for ones own property. There is not one society that has laws in which private property isn't protected.

I also find that liberals today are closet authoritarians who parade around as "liberals" in order to mask their own authoritarian tendency. Just try to disagree with a liberal and see what happens.

 

[Deleted member 53821]

I've seen similar studies and I happen to agree because there are definite trends in which some people are liberal in the sense they are open to new ideas and others are conservative in the sense they resist hard to any new ideas. It seems though that new ideas in modern liberalism takes us in the direction something we see in communist Russia. Seriosly! When was the last time a democrat didn't argue for something that isn't found in the communist playbook.

 

[MACAULAY]

Societies generally begin as conservative and over time they progress to liberal. When there are few people you have to embrace a lot more selfishness just to survive, even though there is some socialism, i.e. people help each other build barns etc. But in really hard times people are selfish.

Later after the society is established and the fight for mere survival has receded, a more liberal attitude takes place, i.e. as there is more abundance the community of humans extend more help to those having trouble surviving on their own, like those with mental problems, people that are crippled and can't hunt or work, older members of the tribe or society.

Modern conservatism in America is simply an artificial attempt to make that animalistic selfishness a noble thing. But it isn't. Certainly everyone feeds and houses their own family but in advanced human societies the collective wealth and energy supports those that can't support themselves.

In America this artificial attempt to keep animalistic selfishness as the norm is driven by the very few wealthy who are themselves mental children and do not want to help anyone with anything, so they spend energy and money on convincing (or as in America with Fox News and conservative-talk-radio, brainwashing) millions into helping them keep selfishness as a noble trait.

Again, it isn't. It is an animal leaving others to die because why should you help them in a dog-eat-dog world.

Conservatives are human beings that never grow up entirely. They are forever rabid children on a deserted island fighting for food.

________________________________________________________

Well, I think this ought to get the Horse Shit Post of the Month Award.

I realize that it is only the 20th of the month, but I just don't believe anything is likely to come along to top it.

It screams Socialist Pinhead condescension.

Surely you all saw how the damn fool trotted out "amimalistic selfishnees" to describe traditional Americans.

The fool is so proud of "animalistic selfishness" he used it twice in one post. And finished up with "rabid children".

Is this legitimate political discussion now?

Here's a thought, Isaac: **** You.

 

[IsaacNewton]

Societies generally begin as conservative and over time they progress to liberal. When there are few people you have to embrace a lot more selfishness just to survive, even though there is some socialism, i.e. people help each other build barns etc. But in really hard times people are selfish.

Later after the society is established and the fight for mere survival has receded, a more liberal attitude takes place, i.e. as there is more abundance the community of humans extend more help to those having trouble surviving on their own, like those with mental problems, people that are crippled and can't hunt or work, older members of the tribe or society.

Modern conservatism in America is simply an artificial attempt to make that animalistic selfishness a noble thing. But it isn't. Certainly everyone feeds and houses their own family but in advanced human societies the collective wealth and energy supports those that can't support themselves.

In America this artificial attempt to keep animalistic selfishness as the norm is driven by the very few wealthy who are themselves mental children and do not want to help anyone with anything, so they spend energy and money on convincing (or as in America with Fox News and conservative-talk-radio, brainwashing) millions into helping them keep selfishness as a noble trait.

Again, it isn't. It is an animal leaving others to die because why should you help them in a dog-eat-dog world.

Conservatives are human beings that never grow up entirely. They are forever rabid children on a deserted island fighting for food.

________________________________________________________

Well, I think this ought to get the Horse Shit Post of the Month Award.

I realize that it is only the 20th of the month, but I just don't believe anything is likely to come along to top it.

It screams Socialist Pinhead condescension.

Surely you all saw how the damn fool trotted out "amimalistic selfishnees" to describe traditional Americans.

The fool is so proud of "animalistic selfishness" he used it twice in one post. And finished up with "rabid children".

Is this legitimate political discussion now?

Here's a thought, Isaac: **** You.

So that is your 'legitimate political discussion'? Wow what a grasp of thought and the human language you have.

I know it hurts because it hits home. Conservatives are forever in their minds constructing scaffolding that will attempt to support an argument for selfishness. But it always crashes because selfishness IS the base animalistic urge. And if you read more carefully I said everyone takes care of themself and their family.

The divergence is:

Conservatives never stray from this view and because the society has matured around them they are at odds with the generosity of other people, so conservatives construct mental ironworks so they can pretend selfishness is noble. By the way, this is also one of the main reasons conservatives gravitate towards religion. It gives their selfish mental scaffolding a boost and makes them feel like they are noble.

Liberals also take care of themselves and their families and pay taxes etc...but the more advanced society provides more ability to help the less fortunate. That's all. Liberal, or liberated, means free. A freer and open mind. Perfect? No, no one is perfect. A liberal sees government giving big business billions in subsidies and believes this 'welfare' is better spent feeding the millions of children that go to bed hungry IN AMERICA every night. Really, the wealthiest nation in the history of the Earth where 75% of the population claims to be Christian and millions of children are hungry every day of their lives? Stop lying to yourselves.

I know it FEELS good for you conservatives to call anyone that disagrees with you a 'socialist' or 'commie' or whatever your Pavlov word is this week, but just because you say it doesn't make it so. I am a capitalist but all economic systems have to be regulated. Don't agree? Then why aren't you and the Republicans trying to overturn all the monopoly laws?

You emote rather than think. You think a gut level feeling settles an argument. Sorry, if you can't think critically you are out of your league. Try someone else.

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

I really had hope that this thread could lead to some interesting insights for all of us about human nature and how psychology affects political thought. It had some promise from some early contributions and really only descended into a case study of the exact tendencies his books and talks discuss with IsaacNewton's initial post. It was fun while it lasted. I'd like to thank everyone who genuinely participated.

 

[IsaacNewton]

I really had hope that this thread could lead to some interesting insights for all of us about human nature and how psychology affects political thought. It had some promise from some early contributions and really only descended into a case study of the exact tendencies his books and talks discuss with IsaacNewton's initial post. It was fun while it lasted. I'd like to thank everyone who genuinely participated.

Sorry to crash your party Pedro, I just joined and am still getting my bearings. Jesus H, you are that sensitive?


Moderators, delete my posts here so Pedro can have his thread as he likes it.

I am serious, I like to see genuine discussion and I apologise to the original poster. Please delete my posts. Thank you.

 

[The Independent Whig]

Haidt’s work is instrumental to a revolution of increasing understanding of human social behavior that’s taking place within the social sciences, from which we’re learning a lot about ourselves, each other, and the political divide. Of course, unlike the natural sciences, there’s little in social science that’s black and white. Rather, all is shades of grey. Distinctions are made not in terms of mathematical formulas that can predict outcomes of physical experiments, but rather in terms of statistically significant trends and tendencies, averages and aggregates. That said, as Haidt describes in The Righteous Mind, the terms liberal and conservative are valid distinctions about which there are some things we know.

Based on The Righteous Mind and other books like Descartes’ Error by Damasio, Predisposed by Hibbing, Smith, and Alford, Predictably Irrational by Ariely, Our Political Nature by Tuschman, Moral Tribes by Greene, Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman, A Conflict of Visions by Sowell, and Coming Apart by Murray, it’s clear that just as there are three basic body types – ectomorph, endomorph, and mesomorph – so too are there three basic brain types. The brain types are defined by the three sets of psychological predispositions, traits, and styles of thought that we currently label liberal, conservative, and libertarian.

But those psychologies are not one and the same with the ideologies that we also label liberal, conservative, and libertarian. Psychologies are mostly inside-the-mind stuff but ideologies include lots of outside-the-mind stuff that's shared among their adherents, including the understanding of human nature and the sacred values that are reflected in the ideology’s vision of what the world is and what it can be. These visions are what Haidt calls grand narratives.

To emphasize: Liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism, rightly understood, are three different brain types; three different sets of cognitive wirings that perceive, intuit, and reason about the social world in three distinctly different ways. These three brain types are among the “certain conditions” from which flow the ideologies that we ALSO (unfortunately) label liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism, and the economic ideologies of socialism and capitalism.

Among the psychological predispositions, traits, etc., that define the brain types are Haidt’s moral foundations.

Moral foundations are tools of subconscious intuition. They operate like little radars, constantly scanning the social environment for patters of behaviors and ideas that presented opportunities/threats to our genetic ancestors and sending flashes of intuition to consciousness when such patterns are detected. Intuitive thought happens automatically and instantaneously.

Moral foundations are also some of the primary tools of conscious reason. Unlike intuition, reason is not automatic and instantaneous; it requires language, the construction of a logical argument, and importantly, the time to do it. The chief purpose of reason is to construct the arguments we use to justify and defend our own intuitions, and to try to convince others that our intuitions are the right ones. Reason evolved to help us win arguments, not to help us find truth. (The Argumentative Theory Edge.org ) Reason is always, and can only ever be, a post-hoc rationalization of intuitions already felt and decisions already made. Reason follows intuition, in every sense of the word “follows.”

In short, moral foundations define the limits and the extent of our cognitive universe of social thought – the “performance envelope,” if you will, of our ability to perceive, intuitively grasp, and consciously understand the social world around us.

According to Haidt’s research, the liberal brain is wired to employ the care, fairness, and liberty foundations, and of these mostly just care. For liberals, the loyalty, authority, and sanctity foundations not only fail to resonate, but further, tend to be seen only, or at least mostly, as tools of oppression, and are thus rejected as immoral. The conservative brain, on the other hand, is wired to employ all of the naturally selected cognitive modules of social awareness at roughly the same level that the liberal brain employs only care.

A Venn diagram of the social cognitive tools of liberalism and conservatism would represent liberalism as a circle around the first three foundations and conservatism as a larger circle around all six foundations, completely enveloping liberalism. There’s no liberal foundation that’s not also a conservative foundation, but half the conservative foundations are external to the liberal universe of social cognition.

Given these social science findings, some of the things we observe about the liberal righteous mind make sense.

For example, on page 334 of The Righteous Mind, Haidt explains:

In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a "typical liberal" would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a "typical conservative" would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to assess how accurate they were by comparing people's expectations about "typical" partisans to the actual responses from partisans on the left and the right)' Who was best able to pretend to be the other?

The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as "very liberal." The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as "very liberal." The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with questions such as "One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" or ''Justice is the most important requirement for a society," liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree.​

The Chronicle of Higher Education observed that Haidt’s research “gainsays one of the central claims of liberals, that is, that liberals are more open-minded, empathetic, imaginative, and tolerant than conservatives are. The study indicates, rather, that when it comes to facing the other side, liberals lean toward caricatures and extreme cases, and this tendency rises the more liberal they are. ( Liberals Conservatives and the Haidt Results Brainstorm - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education )

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary (Empathy Definition of empathy by Merriam-Webster , empathy is

“the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this.” ​

By this definition, then, it is clear that conservatives have more empathy for others than do liberals.

It also makes sense, as Haidt observed on the Bill Moyers and Steven Colbert TV shows ( Jonathan Haidt Explains Our Contentious Culture Moyers Company BillMoyers.com and Jonathan Haidt - The Colbert Report - Video Clip Comedy Central ) that conservatives understand human nature itself better than do liberals. It follows from his findings. The fewer psychological mechanisms of social perception, intuition, and reasoning one employs the less aware one is of the social world those mechanisms evolved to detect.

It makes sense that liberals score higher on the personality trait of openness than do conservatives. When half the cognitive modules of social awareness and reasoning are switched off or turned down it’s only natural to be open to all sorts of thoughts and behaviors that folks with the full suite of modules would be more wary of. It’s important to understand what the term “openness” really means from a psychological standpoint. “Openness” denotes a point on the scale of sensitivity toward social threats and opportunities. The opposite of “openness,” therefore, is not closed mindedness; rather, it is heightened awareness. The fact that Liberals are measurably higher on openness means by definition that they are necessarily lower on social awareness.

It makes sense that liberals have historically tended to think of conservatives as bad people, whereas conservatives have historically tended to think of liberals as well intentioned people with bad ideas. (Thomas Sowell documents several examples of this throughout history in his books A Conflict of Visions and The Vision of the Anointed, and here: Fact-Free Liberals Part IV - Thomas Sowell - Page full ). When half the moral foundations are external to one’s universe of social thought one is left with practically no logical alternative but to conclude that people who think differently must be, can only be, afflicted with some sort of psychological, emotional, cognitive, or moral handicap like racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, general bigotry, small mindedness, etc., etc., etc.

And since liberals “know” that non-liberal ideas are the result of a moral handicap it follows that liberals might feel not only justified but morally obligated to prevent those ideas - and the people who hold them - from being accepted into “polite” public discourse. This explains why so many overwhelmingly liberal colleges “disinvite” conservative speakers, turn a cold shoulder toward standup comedians who don’t toe the PC line (Why some comedians don t like college campuses - CNN.com ), and essentially try to banish non-liberal thought from campus. It also explains why liberals seek to deprive non-liberals of their livelihoods, as they’ve famously done to bakers and photographers and even to Mozilla’s CEO. It’s the mindset of the French Revolution that Haidt described when he spoke at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), only without the guillotines. Since its birth during the Enlightenment, Liberalism has been ever thus. (Jonathan Haidt Archives - The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and EducationThe Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education ) Liberal logic has forever gone something like this: morality starts and ends with “care,” which is to say with liberalism, which is to say that non-liberals are immoral, and therefore liberals are morally obligated to extirpate from society non-liberal ideas and those who hold them.

It’s as Haidt says in his analysis of his study which showed that conservatives understand liberals better than the other way around (Page 335):

If you have a moral matrix built primarily on intuitions about care and fairness (as equality), and you listen
to the [conservative] Reagan narrative, what else could you think? Reagan seems completely unconcerned about the welfare of drug addicts, poor people, and gay people. He's more interested in fighting wars and telling people how to run their sex lives.

If you don't see that [conservatives are] pursuing positive values of Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity, you almost have to conclude that Republicans see no positive value in Care and Fairness. You might even go as far as Michael Feingold, a theater critic for the liberal newspaper the Village Voice, when he wrote:

Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm)​

One of the many ironies in this quotation is that it shows the inability of a theater critic-who skillfully enters fantastical imaginary worlds for a living-to imagine that Republicans act within a moral matrix that differs from his own.​

A conversation about social issues between a liberal and a conservative is like a conversation about rainbows between a colorblind person and a fully sighted one, in which the colorblind person simply “knows” that the fully sighted person is an extremist whacko nut case because he sees social colors that self-evidently simply don’t exist. Liberal “knowledge” about conservatives and human nature says more about the moral myopia of the liberal righteous mind than it says about anything conservatives actually think, say, or do.

R. R. Reno captured the situation well in his review of The Righteous Mind when he said:
Our One-Eyed Friends by R. R. Reno Articles First Things

“Thus the profound problem we face. Liberalism is blind in one eye yet it insists on the superiority of its vision and its supreme right to rule. It cannot see half the things a governing philosophy must see, and claims that those who see both halves are thereby unqualified to govern.”​

 

[prison/con.net]

libtards are why conservatives and liberatarians better NEVER give up their guns and better always un-elect anyone who is anti-gun.

 

[WelfareQueen]

Basically he says that there are six essential moral foundations (care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation) and that the policy differences between conservatives and liberals come down to which they value and how they prioritize them. In his view, liberals stress the first three, while conservatives consider each more or less equally.

Here's his website about it: Home moralfoundations.org
Here's an older talk about it in his own words: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives - Jonathan Haidt TED-Ed

"First three" means the first three pairs, right?

I like the essential reductions but Liberalism is in effect the opposite of Authoritarianism so that would involve number five. The first, fourth and sixth are personality traits, not political philosophies.

I disagree. Government is authoritarian. Liberals and republicans both represent authoritarianism in different ways.

I do not see a lot of classical authoritarianism on the left. Tough talking, angry, scapegoating, militaristic, nationalistic leaders do not really appeal to us. Care to explain further?

Tell that to Lenin, Mao, and Josef Stalin.

 

[WelfareQueen]

Basically he says that there are six essential moral foundations (care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation) and that the policy differences between conservatives and liberals come down to which they value and how they prioritize them. In his view, liberals stress the first three, while conservatives consider each more or less equally.

Here's his website about it: Home moralfoundations.org
Here's an older talk about it in his own words: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives - Jonathan Haidt TED-Ed

"First three" means the first three pairs, right?

I like the essential reductions but Liberalism is in effect the opposite of Authoritarianism so that would involve number five. The first, fourth and sixth are personality traits, not political philosophies.

I disagree. Government is authoritarian. Liberals and republicans both represent authoritarianism in different ways.

Government can be authoritarian, or not, by degrees. But to suggest all government is by definition authoritarian is radical anarchy.

Liberalism and Authoritarianism are by nature mutually antagonistic/exclusive.
On the other hand "Liberals" and "Republicans" are not opposites. They're not even the same element.

Classical Liberalism is almost exclusively authoritarian.

 

[IsaacNewton]

Haidt’s work is instrumental to a revolution of increasing understanding of human social behavior that’s taking place within the social sciences, from which we’re learning a lot about ourselves, each other, and the political divide. Of course, unlike the natural sciences, there’s little in social science that’s black and white. Rather, all is shades of grey. Distinctions are made not in terms of mathematical formulas that can predict outcomes of physical experiments, but rather in terms of statistically significant trends and tendencies, averages and aggregates. That said, as Haidt describes in The Righteous Mind, the terms liberal and conservative are valid distinctions about which there are some things we know.

Based on The Righteous Mind and other books like Descartes’ Error by Damasio, Predisposed by Hibbing, Smith, and Alford, Predictably Irrational by Ariely, Our Political Nature by Tuschman, Moral Tribes by Greene, Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman, A Conflict of Visions by Sowell, and Coming Apart by Murray, it’s clear that just as there are three basic body types – ectomorph, endomorph, and mesomorph – so too are there three basic brain types. The brain types are defined by the three sets of psychological predispositions, traits, and styles of thought that we currently label liberal, conservative, and libertarian.

But those psychologies are not one and the same with the ideologies that we also label liberal, conservative, and libertarian. Psychologies are mostly inside-the-mind stuff but ideologies include lots of outside-the-mind stuff that's shared among their adherents, including the understanding of human nature and the sacred values that are reflected in the ideology’s vision of what the world is and what it can be. These visions are what Haidt calls grand narratives.

To emphasize: Liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism, rightly understood, are three different brain types; three different sets of cognitive wirings that perceive, intuit, and reason about the social world in three distinctly different ways. These three brain types are among the “certain conditions” from which flow the ideologies that we ALSO (unfortunately) label liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism, and the economic ideologies of socialism and capitalism.

Among the psychological predispositions, traits, etc., that define the brain types are Haidt’s moral foundations.

Moral foundations are tools of subconscious intuition. They operate like little radars, constantly scanning the social environment for patters of behaviors and ideas that presented opportunities/threats to our genetic ancestors and sending flashes of intuition to consciousness when such patterns are detected. Intuitive thought happens automatically and instantaneously.

Moral foundations are also some of the primary tools of conscious reason. Unlike intuition, reason is not automatic and instantaneous; it requires language, the construction of a logical argument, and importantly, the time to do it. The chief purpose of reason is to construct the arguments we use to justify and defend our own intuitions, and to try to convince others that our intuitions are the right ones. Reason evolved to help us win arguments, not to help us find truth. (The Argumentative Theory Edge.org ) Reason is always, and can only ever be, a post-hoc rationalization of intuitions already felt and decisions already made. Reason follows intuition, in every sense of the word “follows.”

In short, moral foundations define the limits and the extent of our cognitive universe of social thought – the “performance envelope,” if you will, of our ability to perceive, intuitively grasp, and consciously understand the social world around us.

According to Haidt’s research, the liberal brain is wired to employ the care, fairness, and liberty foundations, and of these mostly just care. For liberals, the loyalty, authority, and sanctity foundations not only fail to resonate, but further, tend to be seen only, or at least mostly, as tools of oppression, and are thus rejected as immoral. The conservative brain, on the other hand, is wired to employ all of the naturally selected cognitive modules of social awareness at roughly the same level that the liberal brain employs only care.

A Venn diagram of the social cognitive tools of liberalism and conservatism would represent liberalism as a circle around the first three foundations and conservatism as a larger circle around all six foundations, completely enveloping liberalism. There’s no liberal foundation that’s not also a conservative foundation, but half the conservative foundations are external to the liberal universe of social cognition.

Given these social science findings, some of the things we observe about the liberal righteous mind make sense.

For example, on page 334 of The Righteous Mind, Haidt explains:

In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a "typical liberal" would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a "typical conservative" would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to assess how accurate they were by comparing people's expectations about "typical" partisans to the actual responses from partisans on the left and the right)' Who was best able to pretend to be the other?

The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as "very liberal." The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as "very liberal." The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with questions such as "One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" or ''Justice is the most important requirement for a society," liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree.​

The Chronicle of Higher Education observed that Haidt’s research “gainsays one of the central claims of liberals, that is, that liberals are more open-minded, empathetic, imaginative, and tolerant than conservatives are. The study indicates, rather, that when it comes to facing the other side, liberals lean toward caricatures and extreme cases, and this tendency rises the more liberal they are. ( Liberals Conservatives and the Haidt Results Brainstorm - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education )

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary (Empathy Definition of empathy by Merriam-Webster , empathy is

“the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this.” ​

By this definition, then, it is clear that conservatives have more empathy for others than do liberals.

It also makes sense, as Haidt observed on the Bill Moyers and Steven Colbert TV shows ( Jonathan Haidt Explains Our Contentious Culture Moyers Company BillMoyers.com and Jonathan Haidt - The Colbert Report - Video Clip Comedy Central ) that conservatives understand human nature itself better than do liberals. It follows from his findings. The fewer psychological mechanisms of social perception, intuition, and reasoning one employs the less aware one is of the social world those mechanisms evolved to detect.

It makes sense that liberals score higher on the personality trait of openness than do conservatives. When half the cognitive modules of social awareness and reasoning are switched off or turned down it’s only natural to be open to all sorts of thoughts and behaviors that folks with the full suite of modules would be more wary of. It’s important to understand what the term “openness” really means from a psychological standpoint. “Openness” denotes a point on the scale of sensitivity toward social threats and opportunities. The opposite of “openness,” therefore, is not closed mindedness; rather, it is heightened awareness. The fact that Liberals are measurably higher on openness means by definition that they are necessarily lower on social awareness.

It makes sense that liberals have historically tended to think of conservatives as bad people, whereas conservatives have historically tended to think of liberals as well intentioned people with bad ideas. (Thomas Sowell documents several examples of this throughout history in his books A Conflict of Visions and The Vision of the Anointed, and here: Fact-Free Liberals Part IV - Thomas Sowell - Page full ). When half the moral foundations are external to one’s universe of social thought one is left with practically no logical alternative but to conclude that people who think differently must be, can only be, afflicted with some sort of psychological, emotional, cognitive, or moral handicap like racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, general bigotry, small mindedness, etc., etc., etc.

And since liberals “know” that non-liberal ideas are the result of a moral handicap it follows that liberals might feel not only justified but morally obligated to prevent those ideas - and the people who hold them - from being accepted into “polite” public discourse. This explains why so many overwhelmingly liberal colleges “disinvite” conservative speakers, turn a cold shoulder toward standup comedians who don’t toe the PC line (Why some comedians don t like college campuses - CNN.com ), and essentially try to banish non-liberal thought from campus. It also explains why liberals seek to deprive non-liberals of their livelihoods, as they’ve famously done to bakers and photographers and even to Mozilla’s CEO. It’s the mindset of the French Revolution that Haidt described when he spoke at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), only without the guillotines. Since its birth during the Enlightenment, Liberalism has been ever thus. (Jonathan Haidt Archives - The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and EducationThe Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education ) Liberal logic has forever gone something like this: morality starts and ends with “care,” which is to say with liberalism, which is to say that non-liberals are immoral, and therefore liberals are morally obligated to extirpate from society non-liberal ideas and those who hold them.

It’s as Haidt says in his analysis of his study which showed that conservatives understand liberals better than the other way around (Page 335):

If you have a moral matrix built primarily on intuitions about care and fairness (as equality), and you listen
to the [conservative] Reagan narrative, what else could you think? Reagan seems completely unconcerned about the welfare of drug addicts, poor people, and gay people. He's more interested in fighting wars and telling people how to run their sex lives.

If you don't see that [conservatives are] pursuing positive values of Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity, you almost have to conclude that Republicans see no positive value in Care and Fairness. You might even go as far as Michael Feingold, a theater critic for the liberal newspaper the Village Voice, when he wrote:

Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm)​

One of the many ironies in this quotation is that it shows the inability of a theater critic-who skillfully enters fantastical imaginary worlds for a living-to imagine that Republicans act within a moral matrix that differs from his own.​

A conversation about social issues between a liberal and a conservative is like a conversation about rainbows between a colorblind person and a fully sighted one, in which the colorblind person simply “knows” that the fully sighted person is an extremist whacko nut case because he sees social colors that self-evidently simply don’t exist. Liberal “knowledge” about conservatives and human nature says more about the moral myopia of the liberal righteous mind than it says about anything conservatives actually think, say, or do.

R. R. Reno captured the situation well in his review of The Righteous Mind when he said:
Our One-Eyed Friends by R. R. Reno Articles First Things

“Thus the profound problem we face. Liberalism is blind in one eye yet it insists on the superiority of its vision and its supreme right to rule. It cannot see half the things a governing philosophy must see, and claims that those who see both halves are thereby unqualified to govern.”​

Not hard to notice that extremes of example are used throughout. An unbiased viewpoint? Not hardly. It is very biased.

You need look no further than this message board to see conservatives who call for, on a regular basis, extinction and/or removal of 'liberals' from society, and various vitriolic name calling that paints 'liberals' as hideous animals or some variation.

Also, most people fall along a spectrum, rather than 'one side or the other'. Most people have traits of various brain types. Social conservatism with liberal economics. Libertarian economics with liberal social views. And if you listed 50 political subjects you would be hard pressed to find two people that agreed on all 50.

This type of research, as noted, is 'general' and shows more 'tendencies' rather than anything concrete. And in the wrong hands this type of research becomes eugenics, where people read it and place themselves in a superior position to others, and then feel justified in doing all sorts of terrible things.

Life requires various mindsets for differing situations. If you are on a deserted island people become much more conservative to survive. If you decide you want to make movies a more liberal mind is conducive to success in that field. Either of these absolutes? Not by a longshot. The whole point is this just points out 'tendencies'.