Why Conservatives Can’t Understand Liberals (and Vice Versa) | Intellectual Takeout:..."They found
five primary categories that serve as our moral foundation:1) Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/reciprocity: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives]
3) Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
4) Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).
What Haidt found is that
both conservatives and liberals recognize the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity values. Liberal-minded people, however, tend to reject the three remaining foundational values— Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Sanctity/degradation —while conservatives accept them.
It’s an extraordinary difference, and it helps explain why many liberals and conservatives in America think “the other side” is bonkers.
Liberals might contend, of course, that these values are not proper morals at all but base human traits responsible for xenophobia, religious oppression, etc.
Haidt rejects this thesis.
And through a series of historical illustrations, psychological studies, and cross-cultural references he explains that many liberals often fail to appreciate a timeless truth that conservatives usually accept:
order tends to decay.
(A truth, I’ll add, buttressed by the second law of thermodynamics.)
Now, Haidt is not suggesting conservatives are superior to liberals.
He points out that conservatives tend to value order even at the cost of those at the bottom of society, which can result in morally dubious social implications.
Liberals, however, often desire change even at the risk of anarchy...."
