The virtue of excellence

Friday, March 12, 2010

Bryan on Jon Haidt

Jon Haidt is one of my favorite researchers on happiness, and moral psychology.  I love the guy.  Can't say enough nice stuff about his work.

Today...Bryan Caplan asks a question of his moral psychology:
How hard did you try to include items about Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity that would specifically appeal to liberals?
Turns out, about 18 months ago, I asked almost an identical question in a private email to Dr. Haidt, following conversation around his fabulous other work:
My question: while I believe that the explicit moralities are as stated, is there any (notable?) evidence as to whether responses / actions of folks from the educated liberal set are any less motivated by Ingroup, Purity, or Authority?

From my libertarian (outsider to both liberals and conservatives) point of view, I wonder if the "educated liberal" has merely swapped definitions of Ingroup, Purity and Authority. 

Certainly the furor over Larry Summers very mild gender comments evoked a strong Purity/Authority reaction well out of proportion to his simply considered statements.
It seems that Marxist / gender&race studies suggests that Ingroup is an essential part of not only morality but rationality.
It also seems that an awful lot of liberal dialogue has replaced idea-conformance with nationality/race as the relevant Ingroup.

Indeed I wonder if the explicit rejection of the 3 "conservative" moral dimensions has led not to the abandonment of those 3, but rather to their manifesting (just as strongly) in other ways...and perhaps those other ways are more concealed from the self, because of their opposition to stated principles?

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