Political diversity will improve social psychological science, by Duarte et al.


Robert Campbell

Recommended Posts

Now being circulated for commentary is a new "target article" to be published in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

http://the-good-news.storage.googleapis.com/assets/pdf/psychology-political-diversity.pdf

This is big, folks.

One reason being that Jonathan Haidt is expending a chunk of his political capital by putting his name on this article. Haidt has a history of carefully tempering any gesture of his that his fellow academics would perceive as contrarian (and there are some minor instances in the present piece) but he's pretty much putting it all out there now. The institutional reactions are going to prove interesting.

Another reason is that the first author (in inverse order by seniority) is Joe Duarte, who has long been associated with The Atlas Society (where he and I collaborated on a presentation a few years ago).

You will never—I repeat, never—see any ARI affiliate getting involved in this kind of effort.

Robert Campbell

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Robert,

I have the following book by Jonathan Haidt, which I haven't read yet. I got it because I liked the title.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Since I haven't read it, in order to get a quick gist of his thinking, I looked him up on YouTube and saw his most recent TED Talk (2012).

Really cool.

Also, I saw this (from 2014), so I'm throwing it in for the hell of it:

I like Haidt's view of capitalism being driven by creating value and his recognition of it in the business environment. That's what Rand is all about. And I like how he reevaluated his thinking by looking at correct statistics.

And I really like his view about morality being transmitted primarily by stories, core stories, not logic. Not because I prefer that (I would prefer logic were that possible), but because that is what I observe in human nature.

Notice that stats made him reevaluate his thinking, but you can still feel the tug of the progressive morality in his presentation. I don't mind when the two world-views get mixed, but the stories back off when faced by striking facts.

I'm going to pull Haidt's book off the shelf and throw it on my "read this now goddamit" pile :) .

Ah, yes.

And I'm going to read the paper.

After all this, there's no way out of it. (Besides, I like Joe.)

:)

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guy is an excellent teacher.

I think I may drop in on his course one day...if he is still teaching in Manhattan.

He did slip in that old cannard about a "little bit of truth in both videos."

Always have to play the moral equivalency card...tedious.

Thanks.

A...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Haidt's very good at what he does. Which includes being a skilled academic politician. Takes on some of whatever intellectual milieu he's in (Penn, Chicago, UVA, now NYU). Finds a way to temper his perceived transgressions (though I will be interested to see what the commentaries on the BBS article look like).

The Righteous Mind is a good read. It's be using in my Moral Development course, starting in three weeks.

Robert Campbell

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A few more things on Jonathan Haidt:

The first is a wonderful lecture he gave at Stanford that I just watched:



Haidt boils morality down to six topics, but note, this is from a psychological point of view. This means these topics easily spark feelings of sacredness or outrage (from sacrilege) and otherwise strongly impact people in terms of psychology.

Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Liberty/oppression
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation

He has a lot of data researching this and his simple explanations and examples are very good. But one thing he said, in my view, raises his discourse to the level of profound insight (Ayn Rand level).

He said when a morality is centered on only one of these values, i.e., when one is sacred, meaning blasphemy provokes outrage, the people who think like this generally trample all over the other main moral values.

Wow!

It's hard to impress me, but that observation did. Everything I have lived and observed up to now resonates with it and speaks to its truth. And it explains so much, even at the core story level.

Haidt gives as example liberal morality, which is predominantly centered on the sacredness of care and nurture. (Don't forget, Haidt identifies himself as a liberal.) The opposite, the outrage, is harm. And liberals think in terms of groups, so their moral storylines are predominantly victimization stories. And note, you dare not joke about an oppressed victim to a liberal/progressive. I just wrote the following offline to a friend:

Think about the liberal/progressive. He holds victims as sacred (i.e., care/harm is his sacred value scale). Without a victim to defend, he is nothing. And he wants no humor about victims. He wants pure politically correct language.

Think of people like this you know and run them through the other values in your mind. Are they concerned about fairness or do they tolerate (or even encourage) cheating? In my experience, these are eminently corruptible folks. Think about Al Gore selling Current TV to the Saudis for oil money. Is freedom for all and not just their victims even on their radar? Most progressives I know are supporters of big government, which they want to use for shackling powerful oppressors and elevating their victims. How about loyalty? Liberals and progressives are notorious for eating their own. Do they think power is sexy or the rebel? Most of them I know side with the rebel. (Revolution now! Right on! Power to the people! Etc.) And are they respectful of things others consider sacred? Hell no. They live in mockery, even self-mockery.

Note, this same kind of thinking can be applied to any morality that centers on only one sacred notion.

Think about Objectivist fundamentalists who hold loyalty to Rand as sacred. Everything else is out the window if she is on the table, whether it is excommunicating people in open betrayal to longstanding relationships, skewing public polls, mocking in lowbrow language what others hold sacred, a level of indifference to care and nurture of weak folks that borders on depraved (especially when talking about nukes and war), and so on. The only measure of integrity for these folks is loyalty to Rand, her memory, her honor, etc. That is in practice. In words, they always say it's different and talk about reason. I prefer to look at what they do as a better indication.

This is a hell of a good lecture by Jonathan Haidt. I highly recommend it.

On another note, the article Robert linked to in the opening post is already getting some traction in the mainstream:

Is Social Psychology Biased Against Republicans?
October 30, 2014
By Maria Konnikova
The New Yorker

From the article:

Haidt hadn’t planned on continuing his research after his initial speech. He had meant to raise the issues and wait for others to take over. But, two months after the convention, he came across the thoughts of a libertarian graduate student (now a co-author of Haidt’s new paper), published on the S.P.S.P. listserv. José Duarte hadn’t been at the S.P.S.P. meeting, he told me when we spoke. But the subsequent attention sparked his interest. He had long been fascinated by the methodological issues that stemmed from a lack of political skepticism in the field, and he also believed that he had been rejected from one graduate program because of his political views. Duarte has written about that experience, and Haidt has compiled a list of other student accounts on his personal Web page. The problem, Haidt decided, was widespread enough that it merited further research.


Way to go, Joe!

:smile:

And the last tidbit from one of Haidt's websites:

Note: I’m doing very little public speaking for the next 2 years — trying to hide away and write the next book: “Three Stories about Capitalism,” expected out in 2017.

I seem to remember in one of the videos I watched he also called this "The Moral Psychology of Capitalism." At least, I think that's right. “Three Stories about Capitalism” is the name of a lecture of his I embedded in an earlier post.

Regardless, I predict this is one dude who is going to be very important to our neck of the woods.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As an added thought, for those who are familiar with Haidt's ideas, I think there is a strong parallel between what he calls "parochial altruism" and what Rand said about love being exception-making.

In other words, we naturally take care of those we love or care about in a form others call altruistic. We naturally don't take care of strangers like that unless forced to. There are exceptions since this is generally voluntary, but as a trait, this tendency as stated is easily observable. And there are some consistent exceptions like major disasters where people tend to chip in and travel to help victims when there is strong media coverage.

That's just the way our brains are wired before we even think about morality.

Rand called this concern with our own values (and people we care about) selfishness. Haidt is calling it altruism with an adjective (parochial). I think the underlying concept is close. Maybe not exact since the angles are different, but close enough to notice.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Robert,

I haven't read the article, yet, but I have read around and seen several lectures by Haidt. I'm very impressed. Here are a few observations and questions since you have greater familiarity with his work.

1. Like I mentioned in my first comment, his drift from a liberal/progressive toward a more libertarian view is glaring if you look at the dates of his lectures. I know he says he goes where the data takes him, but some of what I have seen would be well served with disclaimers. Just getting liberals riled now by saying conservatives have a more inclusive view of morality that progressives (who tend to be more monastic) is a good shtick, but that's only for entertainment value. :smile: Idea-wise, it can get confusing to newbies.

2. I love his six paradigms, perspectives, standards, categories, whatever you want to call them for measuring moral thinking and feeling. I intend to run some of Rand's writing through these filters and see what I come up with. I suspect Objectivism has such a strong impact on people (myself included) because she finds a way to hit high on all six, including a highly qualified care. And that includes hitting high on the demonization side of each, too.

3. I need to dig deeper into Haidt's work, but I don't see intensity of feeling--or something like valence--given import, albeit I have seen him mention this in offhand manners like people who are more enthusiastic (and less) and what provokes outrage.

Rand, for instance, encourages a very high intensity of moral feeling, cemented by certainty, in all areas if you take her straight. As a contrast, different Christian religions offer different levels of commitment and intensity. Some denominations are lackadaisical and others are violently fundamentalist. So it would be interesting to see what causes such intensity (I suspect the storytelling around sanctity and loyalty).

Also, valence is a cousin of this aspect I am looking at. I understand emotional valence in terms of action. Some emotions shut you down like comfort, satisfaction, sadness, etc. They have low valence. Others move you to act like excitement, rage, extreme horniness, panic (which can also paralyze from overload), etc. These have high valence. (I know you know this, I'm just saying it for the reader.) In moral feelings, some sentiments lead to action and others lead to complacency. It would be interesting to look at moral valence through Haidt's six filters.

4. Here is one aspect I did not see Haidt cover--moral conversion or transformation. I'm pretty sure reason and habit (like moving to a new environment) can account for a slow conversion of beliefs, but there is a religious phenomenon that has always impressed me: the immediate redemption process. Like becoming saved for Christians. It's a blinding emotional experience where a bad guy suddenly turns into a good one. There's still work to be done when this happens, but essentially he breaks one mold of behavior and and adopts another one.

I've seen this in 12 step meetings, church conversions, even in Rand (the reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time experience). I have seen scumbags turn into moral people overnight, get jobs and families, become productive, etc., through this process.

Until Haidt covers this, I believe his work is merely an aspect of moral psychology. Maybe I'm wrong and he has covered it, and because I'm just now looking into him I haven't come across it yet. Even so, I believe this experience deserves a place in his current discussions.

5. I love how he takes the New Atheists to task for their religiosity. After I started reading Dawkins, Harris, etc., I became bothered by their tribalism and demonization of religion. Outright bigotry at times. After a while it occurred to me that they were merely founding a new religion. I have now seen lectures by Haidt where he uses data from their works to show this religiosity (like with running their books through the LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) program and noticing the certainty and demonization patterns in their speech. I kinda feel vindicated. :smile: But I tremble at the thought of running Rand through the same analysis. :smile:

6. There is another aspect I have not seen Haidt look into, but I bet it would yield very good fruit. For lack of a better term, let's call it a meta model.

Suppose someone has learned a meta-pattern of values re Haidt's six categories while growing up. By meta-pattern, I mean the importance of each value (including the "blasphemy" point of no return) and the intensity with which a person holds each value. Now suppose this person has a religious conversion. I suspect he will transfer his meta-pattern to the new substantive values.

Here's an example from O-Land to illustrate what I mean: Lindsay Perigo. He used to be a flaming communist. From all accounts I have read of him, and from what he himself has said of that phase, his commitment, intensity, behavior, etc., were all identical to his Objectivist phase. (Since he is so irrational and bullying, even though he has currently mellowed a bit, his glaring flaws make him serve as an easy example to grok.)

In other words, before there was a semi-colorful, antagonistic and confrontational, highly judgmental, overly-emotional, tribalistic leader-wannabe spouting Marx. Later there was a semi-colorful, antagonistic and confrontational, highly judgmental, overly-emotional, tribalistic leader-wannabe spouting Rand. And where there used to be Marxist demons, there are now Randian demons--but in both phases were (are) treated identically. Ditto for heroes and so on.

I believe this meta-thinking in terms of psychology is just as important as the six categories are. I'm just not an academic to investigate it, though. I'm an autodidact who introspects. (And, hopefully, a budding fiction writer.)

Anyway, those are my impressions so far. If you get the time, I would be interested in your comments and/or corrections (which, since I am almost always right, will be few :smile: ).

Michael

EDIT: On point 6 above, it later occurred to me that Haidt shows clearly that liberals have one moral/psychological meta-profile and conservatives have another. This already implies the meta-patterns I mentioned. I just think this aspect needs a lot more thinking and discussion. Also, I just started his book, The Righteous Mind. It's an incredibly easy read so far and quite clear.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4. Here is one aspect I did not see Haidt cover--moral conversion or transformation. I'm pretty sure reason and habit (like moving to a new environment) can account for a slow conversion of beliefs, but there is a religious phenomenon that has always impressed me: the immediate redemption process. Like becoming saved for Christians. It's a blinding emotional experience where a bad guy suddenly turns into a good one. There's still work to be done when this happens, but essentially he breaks one mold of behavior and and adopts another one.

I've seen this in 12 step meetings, church conversions, even in Rand (the reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time experience). I have seen scumbags turn into moral people overnight, get jobs and families, become productive, etc., through this process.

Until Haidt covers this, I believe his work is merely an aspect of moral psychology. Maybe I'm wrong and he has covered it, and because I'm just now looking into him I haven't come across it yet. Even so, I believe this experience deserves a place in his current discussions.

Wouldn't you know it?

I did find something.

Haidt suggests the moral conversion experience I mentioned, which he calls an experience of "self-transcendence," is an evolutionary bug or design (he is ambivalent, albeit leans toward design) to entice individuals to adhere to a larger group and become productive members of it.

That's why he equates a religious moment of self-transcendence with one of going to war.

Maybe...

I need to think about it.

There's one thing I am sure of. A mechanism or process for prompting a self-transcending conversion moment in individuals is a great recruitment tool. (For example, if anyone wants to make a successful cult, this moment has to be a part of it. :smile: )

I'm kind of stuck on the term "self-transcendence," though.

The reason is I am convinced that holon is one of the organizing principles of the universe (among a few others). So if a person fully accepts his identity as a member of the human race, not as an isolated individual thing plopped into the rest of reality, any deep feelings of belonging to something larger (like the human race, or God, or reality, or a community, or even a sports team) do not arise from transcending the self, but instead, correctly identifying the self as a member (a holon within a larger one) and judging that as correct.

This way leads to a form of fractal thinking instead of the traditional individual vs. group dichotomy. What this means is that instead of just top-down thinking (the individual is the entire whole), there is also bottom up thinking (the individual is a member of a larger whole--which, by the way, also has a top and bottom and so on expanding upward--and is made up of smaller holons like internal organs, which are made up of even smaller holons, and so on going downward).

The great thing about holonic thinking is that the individual is both. And that, from everything I have observed, is accurate. I am an individual who is a self-contained "whole," but I am also an individual member of the human species, which determined my very nature as an individual before I was born. Reality is the ultimate top, the "mother holon" so to speak (which some people, in this manner of thinking, call God).

The self-transcendence moral conversion moment in this context is more precisely called a self-acceptance moment.

I do like that Haidt focused in on this moment. The experience is real. I think he is still working through what it means, even though he insinuates he knows the answer.

I know I am...

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now