Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / September 2007

Lately there have been a number of articles on the biological bases of
conservatism/liberalism and other human characteristics which we've
tended to think of as choices, for lack of a better word.  I couldn't
help but think of the deep divide between Safe Haven advocates and
opponents and the manner in which each side makes its case: "if it
saves only one life" vs. the more abstract arguments of the
opposition.  Perhaps this is why reason often takes so long to prevail
in so many areas of life -  "moral intuition" is an immediate and
visceral response which takes root long before "moral judgment" can
even consider the issue.

The battle over closed records can be seen in the same light, I think,
as well as many others.

It goes a long way toward explaining why the two sides on so many of
today's issues have so much difficulty even hearing one another.

J.

http://www.twincities.com//ci_6968954?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twinci
ties.com

Psychologist examines the roots of morality
Could our judgment skills be a product of genetic evolution?
BY NICHOLAS WADE
New York Times
Article Launched: 09/23/2007 12:01:00 AM CDT

Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say.

advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.

At first glance, natural selection and the survival of the fittest may
seem to reward only the most selfish values. But for animals that live
in groups, selfishness must be strictly curbed or there will be no
advantage to social living. Could the behaviors evolved by social
animals to make societies work be the foundation from which human
morality evolved?

In a series of recent articles and a book, "The Happiness Hypothesis,"
Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia,
has been constructing a broad evolutionary view of morality that
traces its connections both to religion and to politics.

Haidt (pronounced height) began his research career by probing the
emotion of disgust. Testing people's reactions to situations like that
of a hungry family that cooked and ate its pet dog after it had become
roadkill, he explored the phenomenon of moral dumbfounding - when
people feel strongly that something is wrong but cannot explain why.

Dumbfounding led him to view morality as driven by two separate mental
systems, one ancient and one modern, though the mind is scarcely aware
of the difference. The ancient system, which he calls moral intuition,
is based on the emotion-laden moral behaviors that evolved before the
development of language. The modern system - he calls it moral
judgment - came after language, when people became able to articulate
why something was right or wrong.

The emotional responses of moral intuition occur instantaneously -
they are primitive gut reactions that evolved to generate split-second
decisions and enhance survival in a dangerous world. Moral judgment,
on the other hand, comes later, as the conscious mind develops a
plausible rationalization for the decision already arrived at through
moral intuition.

Moral dumbfounding, in Haidt's view, occurs when moral judgment fails
to come up with a convincing explanation for what moral intuition has
decided.

So why has evolution equipped the brain with two moral systems when
just one might seem plenty?

"We have a complex animal mind that only recently evolved language and
language-based reasoning," Haidt said. "No way was control of the
organism going to be handed over to this novel faculty."

He likens the mind's subterranean moral machinery to an elephant, and
conscious moral reasoning to a small rider on the elephant's back.
Psychologists and philosophers have long taken a far too narrow view
of morality, he believes, because they have focused on the rider and
largely ignored the elephant.

Haidt identified five components of morality that were common to most
cultures. Some concerned the protection of individuals, others the
ties that bind a group.

Of the moral systems that protect individuals, one is concerned with
preventing harm to the person and the other with reciprocity and
fairness. Less familiar are the three systems that promote behaviors
developed for strengthening the group. These are loyalty to the in-
group, respect for authority and hierarchy, and a sense of purity or
sanctity.

The five moral systems, in Haidt's view, are innate psychological
mechanisms that predispose children to absorb certain virtues. Because
these virtues are learned, morality may vary widely from culture to
culture, while maintaining its central role of restraining
selfishness. In Western societies, the focus is on protecting
individuals by insisting that everyone be treated fairly. Creativity
is high, but society is less orderly. In many other societies,
selfishness is suppressed "through practices, rituals and stories that
help a person play a cooperative role in a larger social entity,"
Haidt said.

He is aware that many people - including "the politically homogeneous
discipline of psychology" - equate morality with justice, rights and
the welfare of the individual, and dismiss everything else as mere
social convention. But many societies around the world do, in fact,
behave as if loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity are moral
concepts, Haidt notes, and this justifies taking a wider view of the
moral domain.

Haidt believes that religion has played an important role in human
evolution by strengthening and extending the cohesion provided by the
moral systems. "If we didn't have religious minds, we would not have
stepped through the transition to groupishness," he said. "We'd still
be just small bands roving around."

Religious behavior may be the result of natural selection, in his
view, shaped at a time when early human groups were competing with one
another. "Those who found ways to bind themselves together were more
successful," he said.

Working with a graduate student, Jesse Graham, Haidt has detected a
striking political dimension to morality. He and Graham asked people
to identify their position on a liberal-conservative spectrum and then
complete a questionnaire that assessed the importance attached to each
of the five moral systems. (The test, called the moral foundations
questionnaire, can be taken online, at YourMorals.org.)

They found that people who identified themselves as liberals attached
great weight to the two moral systems protective of individuals -
those of not harming others and of doing as you would be done by. But
liberals assigned much less importance to the three moral systems that
protect the group, those of loyalty, respect for authority and
purity.

Conservatives placed value on all five moral systems but they assigned
less weight than liberals to the moralities protective of
individuals.

Other psychologists have mixed views about Haidt's ideas.

Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, said, "I'm a big fan
of Haidt's work." He added that the idea of including purity in the
moral domain could make psychological sense even if purity had no
place in moral reasoning.

But Frans B. M. de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, said he
disagreed with Haidt's view that the task of morality is to suppress
selfishness. Many animals show empathy and altruistic tendencies but
do not have moral systems.

"For me, the moral system is one that resolves the tension between
individual and group interests in a way that seems best for the most
members of the group, hence promotes a give-and-take," de Waal said.

He said he also disagreed with Haidt's alignment of liberals with
individual rights and conservatives with social cohesiveness.

"It is obvious that liberals emphasize the common good - safety laws
for coal mines, health care for all, support for the poor - that are
not nearly as well recognized by conservatives," de Waal said.

That alignment also bothers John T. Jost, a political psychologist at
New York University. Jost said he admired Haidt as a "very interesting
and creative social psychologist" and found his work useful in drawing
attention to the strong moral element in political beliefs.

But the fact that liberals and conservatives agree on the first two of
Haidt's principles - do no harm and do unto others as you would have
them do unto you - means that those are good candidates to be moral
virtues. The fact that liberals and conservatives disagree on the
other three principles "suggests to me that they are not general moral
virtues but specific ideological commitments or values," Jost said.

In defense of his views, Haidt said moral claims could be valid even
if not universally acknowledged.

"It is at least possible," he said, "that conservatives and
traditional societies have some moral or sociological insights that
secular liberals do not understand."