What Psychology Teaches Us About Moral and Political Divides

Right after John Kerry’s devastating loss to George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election, Bill Clinton told the Financial Times that the Kerry campaign had failed to engage voters on “values” issues, that middle Americans saw the party as “two-dimensional aliens.”

“If you let people believe that your party doesn’t believe in faith or family, doesn’t believe in work and freedom—that’s our fault,” he said.

Clinton’s remarks highlighted a panic that occasionally descends on the American Left—one that peaked rather spectacularly after Kerry’s flameout: What if there’s something we simply don’t get about conservatives, something that will render useless all of our best-laid plans to win them over with our clearly superior logic and understanding?

In The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt confirms all of the Left’s biggest fears. Yes, there is something liberals simply don’t get about conservatives. There are a few things, actually.

The book can be seen as divided into two parts: a large, expansive exploration of the roots of our morality, how morality connects to group dynamics and evolutionary adaptations, and the many ways in which we are not as coolly rational as we’d like to think we are. Then, toward the end, there is a shorter, less convincing section in which Haidt attempts to apply the book’s many insights to contemporary politics and policy.

Key to all of this is Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), developed by Haidt and some of his likeminded colleagues. (Their website, YourMorals.org, provides an excellent, interactive introduction.) On a psychological level, argues MFT, there isn’t one thing called “morality.” Rather, morality emerges out of mental modules that have evolved to deal with six different concerns: care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. The key insight here—and the idea that makes MFT so powerful—is that each of us is attuned differently along these six dimensions.
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