Moral Psychology

[bobk]

Please check out this TED talk and survey about moral psychology:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_ha...oral_mind.html
http://www.yourmorals.org/

I find this stuff endlessly fascinating and will definitely read Haidt's new book. The research helps explain why we have such a strong "culture war" going on over issues like SSM, abortion, and capital punishment (to name just a few), and helps us understand why each side thinks the way they do. One idea that he puts forth is that our response to a moral issue comes mostly from our emotional disposition rather than logic. (i.e. our reasoning is only used to justify the emotional response.)

Anyway, here's my score for the sacredness survey (the first one on the yourmorals site):

Harm: 8.0
Fairness: 8.0
Ingroup: 8.0
Authority: 7.2
Purity: 8.0

I'm not quite sure what this says about me, but am curious what scores you all get (might be just as interesting as the Briggs-Myers results).

[DCJenn]

Cool- I'm going to check that out later. Must force myself back to work right now...

J.

[SoonerTexan]

Glad Jenn bumped this...I've been meaning to check it out but haven't had time

[niener]

This is really fascinating. I'm not well-versed enough on moral psychology to dispute or defend any of his claims or assumptions, but a lot of what he says makes sense to me. The results of his testing across the 5 moral values he's defined are very strong. I think I took a different quiz than you did (I took the Moral Foundations Questionnaire) but my results line up exactly with what would be expected based on my political views (I'm a liberal-leaning moderate, or moderately liberal, whatever you want to call it).

The whole concept of a necessary balance (yin and yang, light and dark, liberal and conservative, etc) has always seemed very intuitive to me, but his talk makes me question whether I find it intuitive simply because I'm more liberal leaning. If I were more conservative, would these ideas seem foreign to me? At the end when he talks of buddhism, hinduism, and other philosophies that rely on this idea of a balance and that being able to step outside of the moral matrix, as he calls it (step out of the argument basically), is the only way to moral humility, would a group of people who are ultimately concerned with maintaining purity, stability and a respect for authority come to that same conclusion? What would they say is the path to moral humility?

Also a note to conservatives: the beginning of the video starts with a few jokes at the conservative's expense, so if you take offense just hang in there or skip the first few minutes, he evens things out once he reaches the real point of his talk.

[bobk]

Bumping this again. I'm about half-way through Haidt's book and it's excellent. Here are a couple of interesting moral scenarios that were presented during the research:

A family's dog was killed by a car in front of their house. They had heard that dog meat was delicious, so they cut up the dog's body and cooked it and ate it for dinner. Nobody saw them do this.

Julie and Mark, who are sister and brother, are traveling together in France. They are both on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie is already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy it, but decide not to do it again. The keep that night as a special secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other.

I think most people would find either situation disgusting on some level, but trying to articulate what's morally wrong with them is not so easy, especially if your primary method of judgement is whether someone or something was physically harmed.

[Momo]

8s w/the exception of "ingroup" which was a 3.3. I view everything on earth as temporary. If you believe as I do, in a hereafter & that you are the only entity responsible for either achieving it or not, then you may realize, as I have, that even the best groups, peeps& ____ on earth are just that, an earthly pleasure. Therefore walking away from "ingroups" doesn't strike me as something that I couldn't easily do. I also have found, that for the most part, most people are more than likely/willing to take you back & welcome into the fold if you chose to join again. There are always exceptions.

[MrsK]

I'm glad you bumped this. Sorry, I haven't had time to see the link. But, the two scenarios you described struck me for two reasons. First, in both situations there is a divergence from expected human emotions - whether those emotions are socially construed or not, we expect people to be emotionally attached to their pets so much so that eating them is almost akin to cannibalism. Likewise, we refrain from incest not only because of concerns regarding genetic mutation and biological drive to distribute genetic matter but to protect the immediate family from the threats that romantic alliances and disputes can create. Also, in both scenarios it seemed important to the author to say that no one other than the parties involved knew about these events - as if the parties felt that their behaviour was shameful and should be hidden.

[bobk]

Also, in both scenarios it seemed important to the author to say that no one other than the parties involved knew about these events - as if the parties felt that their behaviour was shameful and should be hidden.

I noticed that as well. I think it was added to the scenarios so that the people being questioned could focus on the act itself. If you leave that out, it's possible to judge something to be wrong solely on the basis that someone else might be angered or offended.