More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The virtue of loyalty matters a great deal to both sexes, though the objects of loyalty tend to be teams and coalitions for boys, in contrast to two-person relationships for girls.21
The Loyalty/betrayal foundation is just a part of our innate preparation for meeting the adaptive challenge of forming cohesive coalitions.
The love of loyal teammates is matched by a corresponding hatred of traitors, who are usually considered to be far worse than enemies.
Far worse than a Jew is an apostate—a Muslim who has betrayed or simply abandoned the faith. The Koran commands Muslims to kill apostates,
in The Inferno, Dante reserves the innermost circle of hell—and the most excruciating suffering—for the crime of treachery.
The left tends toward universalism and away from nationalism,26 so it often has trouble connecting to voters who rely on the Loyalty foundation.
Liberal activists often make it easy for conservatives to connect liberalism to the Loyalty foundation—and not in a good way. The title of Ann Coulter’s 2003 book says it all: Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism.
Cultures vary enormously in the degree to which they demand that respect be shown to parents, teachers, and others in positions of authority.
authority should not be confused with power.
the alpha male performs some socially beneficial functions, such as taking on the “control role.”29 He resolves some disputes and suppresses much of the violent conflict that erupts when there is no clear alpha male.
Human authority, then, is not just raw power backed by the threat of force. Human authorities take on responsibility for maintaining order and justice.
When I began graduate school I subscribed to the common liberal belief that hierarchy = power = exploitation = evil.
In Authority Ranking, people have asymmetric positions in a linear hierarchy in which subordinates defer, respect, and (perhaps) obey, while superiors take precedence and take pastoral responsibility for subordinates. Examples are military hierarchies … ancestor worship ([including] offerings of filial piety and expectations of protection and enforcement of norms), [and] monotheistic religious moralities … Authority Ranking relationships are based on perceptions of legitimate asymmetries, not coercive power; they are not inherently exploitative.
If authority is in part about protecting order and fending off chaos, then everyone has a stake in supporting the existing order and in holding people accountable for fulfilling the obligations of their station.
The current triggers of the Authority/subversion foundation, therefore, include anything that is construed as an act of obedience, disobedience, respect, disrespect, submission, or rebellion, with regard to authorities perceived to be legitimate.
As with the Loyalty foundation, it is much easier for the political right to build on this foundation than it is for the left, which often defines itself in part by its opposition to hierarchy, inequality, and power.
“Looking for a well-built 21-to-30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed.” Hundreds of men responded by email, and Meiwes interviewed a few of them at his farmhouse.
If your moral matrix is limited to the ethic of autonomy, you’re at high risk of being dumbfounded by this case.
From within the ethic of autonomy, people have a right to live their lives as they please (as long as they harm nobody), and they have a right to end their lives how and when they please (as long as they leave no dependents unsupported).
These feelings—of stain, pollution, and purification—are irrational from a utilitarian point of view, but they make perfect sense in Shweder’s ethic of divinity.
Omnivores therefore go through life with two competing motives: neophilia (an attraction to new things) and neophobia (a fear of new things).
Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as “openness to experience”), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas.
Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what’s tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders,
boundaries, and trad...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
disgust is part of what he calls the “behavioral immune system”—a set of cognitive modules that are triggered by signs of infection or disease in other people and that make you want to get away from those people.
If we had no sense of disgust, I believe we would also have no sense of the sacred.
the psychology of sacredness helps bind individuals into moral communities.42 When someone in a moral community desecrates one of the sacred pillars supporting the community, the reaction is sure to be swift, emotional, collective, and punitive.
Whether or not God exists, people feel that some things, actions, and people are noble, pure, and elevated; others are base, polluted, and degraded.
American conservatives are more likely to talk about “the sanctity of life” and “the sanctity of marriage.”
On the left, however, the virtue of chastity is usually dismissed as outdated and sexist.
Devout Christians are often lampooned by secular liberals as uptight, pleasure-fearing prudes.
You can see the foundation’s original impurity-avoidance function in New Age grocery stores, where you’ll find a variety of products that promise to cleanse you of “toxins.”
And you’ll find the Sanctity foundation underlying some of the moral passions of the environmental movement.
Repugnance, here as elsewhere, revolts against the excesses of human willfulness, warning us not to transgress what is unspeakably profound. Indeed, in this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done, in which our given human nature no longer commands respect, in which our bodies are regarded as mere instruments of our autonomous rational wills, repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.
foundations that I introduced in chapter 6. I then defined innateness as “organized in advance of experience,” like the first draft of a book that gets revised as individuals grow up within diverse cultures.
The Care/harm foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children. It makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need; it makes us despise cruelty and want to care for those who are suffering. • The Fairness/cheating foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of reaping the rewards of cooperation without getting exploited. It makes us sensitive to indications that another person is likely to be a good (or bad) partner for collaboration and reciprocal altruism. It makes us want to shun or punish cheaters. • The Loyalty/betrayal foundation
...more
properly, given their position. • The Sanctity/degradation foundation evolved initially in response to the adaptive challenge of the omnivore’s dilemma, and then to the broader challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites. It includes the behavioral immune system, which can make us wary of a diverse array of symbolic objects and threats. It makes it possible for people to invest objects with irrational and extreme values—both positive and negative—which are important for binding groups together.
It appears that the left relies primarily on the Care and Fairness foundations, whereas the right uses all five.
Does left-wing morality activate just one or two taste receptors, whereas right-wing morality engages a broader palate, including loyalty, authority, and sanctity? And if so, does that give conservative politicians a broader variety of ways to connect with voters?
The message of my talk to the Charlottesville Democrats was simple: Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don’t.
Like Democrats, they can talk about innocent victims (of harmful Democratic policies) and about fairness (particularly the unfairness of taking tax money from hardworking and prudent people to support cheaters, slackers, and irresponsible fools). But Republicans since Nixon have had a near-monopoly on appeals to loyalty (particularly patriotism and military virtues) and authority (including respect for parents, teachers, elders, and the police, as well as for
traditions).
Brian was the director of ProjectImplicit.org, one of the largest research sites on the Internet, so we were able recruit 1,600 subjects to fill out the MFQ within a week.
FIGURE 8.1. The first evidence for Moral Foundations Theory. (Adapted with permission from Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009, p. 1033; published by the American Psychological Association.)
We found that people want dogs that fit their own moral matrices. Liberals want dogs that are gentle (i.e., that fit with the values of the Care foundation) and relate to their owners as equals (Fairness as equality). Conservatives, on the other hand, want dogs that are loyal (Loyalty) and obedient (Authority). (The Sanctity item showed no partisan tilt; both sides prefer clean dogs.)
Unitarian preachers made greater use of Care and Fairness words, while Baptist preachers made greater use of Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity words.
One version endorsed an idea consistent with a particular foundation, and the other version rejected the idea. For example, half of our subjects read “Total equality in the workplace is necessary.” The other half read “Total equality in the workplace is unrealistic.”
Liberal brains showed more surprise, compared to conservative brains, in response
to sentences that rejected Care and Fairness concerns. They also showed more surprise in response to sentences that endorsed Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity concerns (for example,
In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama showed himself to be a liberal who understood conservative arguments about the need for order and the value of tradition.
