Politics and Morality
 

I recently revisited a TED talk I watched about a year ago due to another thread. Basically, the talk explores the differences in attitudes toward morality between liberals and conservatives, demonstrating that part of the reason these two groups seem to perpetually disagree is because they have fundamentally different attitudes about how to define what is moral. It's not terribly long - 20 minutes - and I definitely recommend it.



How does this make you feel?
What are your thoughts on the presentation?
How might this knowledge be applied to actual politics?

I also went to his website, Your Morals.Org, and took the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. It requires registration, but I think it would be really interesting if others took the questionnaire and posted their scores here.

Mine:
Harm: 3.2
Fairness: 4.3
Loyalty: 1.3
Authority: 0.7
Purity: 0.2

I'm not sure what i took away from the video.

Harm: 4.2
Fairness: 3.7
Loyalty: 2.8
Authority: 2.2
Purity: 1.8

I always find that the results of these types of tests change for me every time i take them. Generally the results are governed by my mood at the time.

I will need to watch the video at a later time, but I did the quiz.

Harm: 4.3
Fairness: 4.0
Loyalty: 2.8
Authority: 3.0
Purity: 1.2

Great video, found it very interesting.

Harm: 4.7
Fairness: 2.7
Loyalty: 3.5
Authority: 3.3
Purity: 2.5

I believe my fairness is low because I do not feel that life is fair, nor do I feel that it should be fair, I believe in equality and fair play (by the rules so to say) but I do not believe that everyone deserves the exact same as everyone else. i.e. what is fair, is it fair that the younger child gets to go first, no but it is logical. Is it fair to save the smallest piece for yourself, no but it is logical. Is it fair to treat two people the exact same way, no because two people have different needs, wants and desires? Treating people equally isn't necessarily fair, and treating people fairly isn’t always equality.

It made me wonder why my fairness was so low, considering, so I took the “Feelings of Fairness” questionnaire, I don’t judge issues as fair or not fair, to me that is just life. However, I greatly believe in equality.

Procedures: 6.5
Equality/need: 5.3
Equity: 5.6
Retribution: 5.0

It makes me wonder with others higher scores in fairness, what other people are thinking that would differ so much re: the questionnaire. What I think it is saying is that I don’t use whether something is fair or not to make my decisions, I do think of equality. I guess I still live in the realm of “no one ever said life was fair,” and I believe that. Life is not fair, but that’s o.k. and not worth worrying over, unlike equality, equality is worth worrying over and fighting for.

For those of us who do not register for stuff on the internet, can you give a legend/scale of what those numbers mean?

Sure Cimarron. Part of why I'm interested to see where different people end up is because the results also show the averages for self-described liberals and self-described conservatives.

For the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, results are on a scale of 0-5.

Harm
Liberals - 3.7
Conservatives - 3.0

Fairness
Liberals - 3.8
Conservatives - 3.1

Loyalty
Liberals - 2.1
Conservatives - 3.1

Authority
Liberals - 2.1
Conservatives - 3.3

Purity
Liberals - 1.3
Conservatives - 2.9

One of the things I'd really like to highlight with this is that it's important to recognize that, often times, we may be approaching issues from fundamentally different worldviews. That's not to say we shouldn't debate topics, but it might help us to be more understanding when people with whom we disagree just don't seem to "get" things which we think ought to be obvious.

Another important point that I think is worth highlighting is that these two worldviews work together. As Haidt mentions in the TED talk, Chinese philosophy does not view the yin or yang as superior, but as two necessary, opposing parts. Perhaps if we can learn to recognize the value in both the liberal and conservative moral frameworks, we can learn to be better political "losers" as well as more bipartisan.

What's the difference between a liberal and a conservative, and do real people actually refer to themselves as such?

(before and when I was a teenager, I used to refer to myself as a 'Republican', but that's before I knew what their politics' and agenda-party-affiliation was about, which I still don't entirely care to research; but now, I'm nothing. I do my research and vote for the candiate which I feel is lying the least, and actually able to account for and accomplish around 15% of what he or she claims. Pertaining to this inside-thought of mine which doesn't really add much to the discussion, I always found it both amusing and insufferable to hear people who for decades say they always voted Democrat/Republican until one day, month, year, they voted the opposite, and stated it as such, and realized they actually had a choice all along to vote for whichever politician best fit the needs of their community at the time.)

Harm: 0.5
Fairness: 3.0
Loyalty: 0.8
Authority: 1.3
Purity: 0.5

I think my low scores reflect my reluctance to interfere with others unless I'm sure someone's rights are being violated. I'm also surprised at my (relatively) high score for authority.

Lots of real people refer to themselves as liberal or conservative. Even if you consider yourself independent or what-have-you, most people are capable of recognizing where they fall in the spectrum. The survey gives more than two options though: if I remember correctly, there were 7 different options ranging from very liberal to very conservative.

I think especially now, moreso than in times past, people like to refuse to label themselves and think they're saying something meaningful (we are all unique snowflakes!). The human brain is designed by evolution to categorize, and the fact is none of us are all that special anyway. Whether we want to admit it or not, we generally know what label best applies.

Anyway, I don't want to get too far off the topic of this thread, so maybe another thread can be created if people want to discuss this other topic in more detail?

---------- Post added at 07:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:50 PM ----------

That's really interesting inBOIL. Your Harm score doesn't seem to fit with your statement that you care about someone's rights being violated. I think it's especially interesting since Harm and Fairness are the two things it seems almost everyone can agree are important (to varying degrees). I wonder if maybe your interpretation of the questions was different than others or if you're really the epitome of moral relativism :p

I think I'm viewing harm differently from others. Consider the following scenarios: you crash your car (solo), get put out of business due to fair competition, or get shot while trying to rape someone. In all 3 situations you're harmed, but your rights are not violated (IMO). I don't see harm as necessarily a violation of rights.

You may be viewing harm differently than others, but not in those scenarios. Pretty sure we can all agree that none of the harm that you're describing is immoral. ;) Otherwise, someone would be a 5 on the Harm scale, not somewhere lower in the 2's or 3s.

I'm curious, were most of your answers on either end of the spectrum? Strongly agreeing or strongly disagreeing? Do you typically avoid the inner parts of the scale on such questionnaires?

Harm: 4.5
Fairness: 4.2
Loyalty: 1.2
Authority: 1.2
Purity: 0.3

Yes, my answers were like that. I think the answers where I was in the middle were of the "it depends on the situation" variety, rather than the "it's kind of right and kind of wrong at the same time" variety.

You have to love vids and questionnaires sponsored by BMW go go yuppieville.

I did find it rather amusing at the superiority chuckles the liberals in the audience had at the expense of those not of the like.

Anyhow my results are; 1.3 harm 2.3 fairness 2.0 loyality 2.5 authority and .3 purity. I have taken a few of their other tests, and all it shows is that perceived molds can be very deceiving.

harm 2.2
fairness 3.3
loyalty 1.3
authority 2.0
purity 0.8

I've run across Haidt's work before and think it's a pretty useful framework for understanding how humans think about moral questions.

I did find the survey kind of frustrating - most of the questions were really too vague. I guess they want to measure our gut reaction to the core principle at stake in each question (say, 'authority') but my reaction is that, well, it depends on the situation. These five pillars are historically and evolutionarily important to us for a reason, but it's hard to apply them without any real context.