A moral divide: why progressives and conservatives don’t get each other
A Critique of Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory
Every person has a different idea of wrong and right. This can be called morality. What we consider acceptable depends on many factors: our beliefs, our culture, our parents’ norms, our childhood traumas, etc.
Therefore, we all have unique moral values. This doesn’t mean we can’t just do whatever we want in the middle of the street. Some things would be really weird. Some things even unethical.
Hence, morality focuses on individual values, ethics considers the broader impact of actions on society.
Is this difference important? Probably not. Many scholars use the words interchangeably.
Jonathan Haidt, social scientist and author of the book The Righteous Mind, is one of them. We will discuss his ideas of morality in this article.
The definition of morality
Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technology, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to oppress or regulate self interest and make cooperative societies possible.
This is Haidt’s definition of morality. It’s quite a word salad so let’s also throw in Cambride’s version:
A set of personal or social standards for good or bad behaviour and character
Our morality allows us to adapt our behaviour to find the balance to what is true to us and what your environment finds appropriate.
Ok. So our moral compass helps us find the sweet spot between our own standards and those of society. This seems rather abstract. So how can we better understand morality?
We can use a framework, of course. :)
The Moral Foundations Theory
Jonathan Haidt founded his moral foundations theory in the ’90s. This model uses 5 (or 6) dimensions (foundations) to identify which values guide us in our behaviour and decision-making.
Many of our choices are made by impulses.
Take disgusting things, like some unconventional sexual acts. You can come up with specific examples yourself. At first, we instinctively say a disgusting action would be immoral. However, upon reflection, we realise that this action doesn’t cause any harm. It might lack taste, but that doesn’t mean it’s immoral.
Our intuitions come first, strategic reasoning follows later. We can often not explain why we consider something immoral.
Which aspects do we use in our Moral decision-making, according to Haidt?
- Care / Harm
How much do we take the suffering of others into account? - Fairness / Cheating
How much is proportionality, merit, and being ‘just’ important to us? - Loyalty / Betrayal
How many obligations do we have to our group, family, or country? - Authority / Subversion
How much do we need to obey and respect hierarchy, parents, police, etc? - Sanctity / Degradation
How important is it to control our desires and have virtues of chastity? - Liberty / Oppression — this one was added later by Haidt
How much are we entitled to equal rights, individual freedom, and freedom from oppression?
The higher we score on these scales, the more moral awareness we have. Well, according to the model. I have some issues with a fair few of these foundations.
Let’s review them.
1. Care / Harm
Causing someone harm is bad. This is the most apparent moral aspect for most of us. Luckily.
We can explain why this is by looking at how we used to protect our children, thousands of years ago.
Mums who were better at observing signs of suffering in their children could increase their chances of survival. Preventing harm is one of the most important drivers in our lives. For a long time, we’ve mostly focused on caring for our children, family, and tribe.
This has recently changed. Haidt observes something logical:
We care about violence toward many more classes of victims today than our grandparents did in their time
You can imagine that this is the result of globalisation and digitalisation.
Haidt measures the importance of all moral foundations through a questionnaire. For the care foundation, he asks participants how relevant it is if someone else suffers emotionally, and whether we should care for the vulnerable. He also wants to know if people think compassion is a virtue, if it’s bad to hurt a defenceless animal, and if it’s never right to kill a human.
Most people aren’t psychopaths. We live in a world in which the vast majority values the care/harm foundation.
Doing harm is bad. We can agree on that.
2. Fairness / Cheating
Fairness is important. Society tends to agree with that. The challenge is, what does fairness really mean? We interpret this in various ways. Haidt describes this conundrum as follows:
On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right it means proportionality — people should be rewarded in proportion to what they contribute, even if that guarantees unequal outcomes.
This seems like an adequate assessment. It touches on many discussions we have in society and politics.
Haidt connects fairness to evolutionary theory:
Those whose moral emotions compelled them to play “tit for tat” reaped more of these benefits than those who played any other strategy, such as “help anyone who needs it”
This is a highly individualistic take on why fairness matters. He illustrates the world as a transactional marketplace. Humanity used to pivot around tribes, where collaboration for the greater good was needed in order to survive.
In Haidt’s study, the importance of fairness is measured by asking how relevant it is if someone would be treated differently, or whether someone was denied certain rights.
Other questions inquired if people agree that making laws should mainly be about justice, if justice is the most important requirement for a society in general, and if it’s wrong if rich kids inherit money while the poor won’t.
We deeply care about fairness. What fair means, is open for interpretation.
3. Loyalty / Betrayal
I globally agree with Haidt’s take on the foundations we just discussed. We automatically and constantly take care and fairness aspects into consideration. We want to live in a world without harm and cheating.
I am, nevertheless, sceptical about Haidt’s other three foundations. First, Let’s see how he approaches loyalty.
He mainly connects loyalty with tribalism: family values and commitment towards your country.
He assesses this foundation by asking if someone agrees that a person needs to show love for the homeland. He asks if participants agree whether they are proud of their country’s history, if they should be loyal to family members (even if they are criminals), and if being a team player is more important than expressing oneself.
The way he formulated his questionnaire means he largely assesses the cultural dimension of collectivism, well developed by cultural scientist Hofstede.
The left tends toward universalism and away from nationalism
In this claim, he is probably right.
What he sees wrong is that not being a patriot doesn’t mean betrayal, the opposite side of his loyalty scale. Globalists can have equal compassion for a person from the other side of the world as for a compatriot. They are loyal to the total world population, or people from underprivileged countries.
The opposite of care is harm. The opposite of fairness is cheating. In these foundations, scoring high means being moral. These two foundations clearly move from good (care, fairness) to being bad (harm, cheating).
Haidt’s loyalty foundation is not a balance between good and bad, it’s a spectrum between personal preferences. Between globalism and nationalism/tribalism.
Globalism doesn’t mean betrayal. I understand people see it this way, but that’s their personal moral view. Not something universal.
4. Authority / Subversion
Haidt defines authority as those with a legal mandate to enforce behaviour: the government, the police, and parents.
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.
Progressive/liberal people have a moral blind spot because they don’t respect authority. Apparently. It seems this dimension is also causing a self-fulfilling Haidt prophecy.
Haidt links authority to legal entities. Sure, we can define authority as someone who influences behaviour. However, authorities are not limited to people with a badge. People change their views after reading insights from scientists, authors, or journalists. People follow the doctrines of philosophers, rock artists, or evangelists. Cartoon characters can be role models for kids. Influencers are, uhhh, well, influencers. Anyone who transmits a message to anyone can be an authority.
Haidt’s study assesses the authority dimension by asking if people should show respect for authority and if they should conform to traditions. He also asks if children should be taught to obey and if it is a soldier’s duty to always follow orders.
We now come to the most absurd part of Haidt’s questionnaire… he gives a higher moral score to people who believe that men and women have different roles in society.
Several cultural dimensions are being touched on. Haidt claims that strong hierarchical structures are needed. But, the degree of hierarchical importance varies per culture. Certain societies have a high power distance, others are more egalitarian. How much we obey has nothing to do with universal morality. It’s a result of how countries evolved over centuries.
Whether the roles of men and women should overlap is related to the cultural dimension of masculinity. Quite a number of countries are not so masculine. In these feminine countries, the roles of the genders become less strict. Men take care of the kids, work part-time, and are expected to show emotions, etc.
Are egalitarian feminine countries (the Scandinavian countries) less moral? I find this hard to believe, but they are, if we apply Haidt’s model.
I can conclude that Haidt’s foundation of authority is intrinsically biased. It favours masculine cultures with a high-power distance.
5. Sanctity / Degradation
The last foundation of the morality model is Sanctity. The model inevitably takes a political turn here. Sanctity is closely related to the ongoing culture war.
Sanctity means purity. How sanctious we are is assessed by asking how immoral it would be if someone violated standards of purity, or if someone acted in a way that god would disapprove of. Haidt also asks if participants agree whether it’s wrong if someone acts unnatural, and if chastity is a virtue.
A big part of this foundation boils down to how much people respect established social and religious conventions.
The original adaptive challenge that drove the evolution of the Sanctity foundation, therefore, was the need to avoid pathogens, parasites, and other threats that spread by physical touch or proximity.
Many of our instincts come from our need to survive. We want to avoid being infected by bacteria etc. In the past, the thread of diseases was everywhere. But times have changed. Some foods or sexual encounters are not going to lead to infections anymore.
What it means to be pure varies from person to person. For some, purity means eating biological food, practising Yoga daily, or ensuring that the media does not affect personal ideology.
Haidt ends this chapter with a passage that shows his partiality.
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.
It might be shocking to some, but we live in a world where monogamy is questioned. People think deeply about how we coexist and interact.
Haidt claims that liberals don’t take sanctity into account in their decision-making. This is just absurd. Many liberals just re-establish the definition of purity. They might even be more mindful of sanctity than those who follow pre-defined expectations.
We all have a different idea of a pure life. Adding religious ideals into a questionnaire to assess what purity means gives religion a monopoly on morality.
Is Thailand an immoral country for being less strict with genders? Is the Netherlands immoral because of its liberal sexuality? Does this make Saudi Arabia superior then?
I reject Haidt’s definition of sanctity.
The problems with the Moral Foundations Theory
I think it’s clear that I have some problems with the model. Let’s summarise them.
1. The meaning of the foundations
3 of the 5 foundations are biased and favour conservative values. The questions assess whether someone agrees with (mostly American) established social conventions.
Haidt shows how the 5 values are represented in the following diagram:
No wonder his book was heavily pushed by religious and conservative media.
What if Haidt had reversed his questions? In that case, he could easily claim that liberals are more morally aware.
- How important is the well-being of the entire world, including third-world countries to you?
- How important is it to be free from cultural expectations, conventions, and stigmas?
- How important is it to respect the law, but also to find your own intellectual influencers?
Haidt uses questions that already contain a moral judgement. He assesses how much people comply with his idea of morality, not how moral people are in general.
2. Are the foundations complete?
Haidt acknowledges that the dimensions themselves are not definite. He added a liberty foundation to account for problems in the fairness dimension. This foundation is not extensively discussed in this article because it is also not covered in his book.
But why would these 5 or 6 foundations be the ‘right’ dimensions?
Which other dimensions could be used to create a broad universal moral compass? Perhaps:
- Honesty — Should we tell the truth and be truthful?
- Responsibility — Should we be accountable for our actions and consequences?
- Benevolence — Should we promote the well-being and welfare of others?
- Autonomy / Judgement — Should we respect the freedom of individuals to make their own choices?
- Tolerance — Should we respect differences in beliefs, opinions, and lifestyles?
- Forgiveness — Should we let go of resentment and grant pardon to others?
- Humility — Should we be modest and not seek excessive pride?
- Patience — Should we demonstrate endurance in difficult situations?
All these aspects are not covered by the moral foundations theory, but can be essential to moral behaviour.
Morality is a vast field and might be hard to capture in a few dimensions.
3. Are all foundations equally important?
Another big issue I have with this model is that all foundations are given the same weight.
- Would it be moral to kick a cat when your dad tells you so? Of course not. Harm is stronger than authority.
- Would it be moral to push a child in a FC Liverpool jersey to the floor when you are in a Manchester United crowd? Of course not. Harm is stronger than the in-group / loyalty foundation.
- Would it be moral to punch visitors of a church or abortion clinic? No! Harm is stronger than purity.
Morality mostly pivots around harm and fairness. If these foundations are violated, the other ones become much less important.
John Lennon scores high on the harm and fairness dimension but low on authority, purity, and loyalty. He scores a 2 out of 5. An Islamic State terrorist scores low on harm and fairness but high on authority, purity, and loyalty. 3 out of 5. Does this give the terrorist a broader moral compass than John Lennon?
The value of the Moral Foundations Theory
You might sense that I personally gravitate towards more left-leaning political ideals. As a progressive person, I agree with Haidt that my ideological peers might use their empathetic and emotional systems disproportionally.
Let’s take the business environment as an example.
I’ve been in many boardroom meetings where I was pitching ideas and failed. I usually wanted to make a case related to better treatment of employees or users.
I used feelings as arguments. “Our colleagues are stressed” (harm) or “We can’t exclude blind users from our apps. They should be able to use it too.” (fairness)
Business people are not driven by feelings. They focus on KPIs, OKRs, VCs, and their potential career perspectives.
You can’t only tap into your care and fairness buckets to make a case. You need to look broader than this.
Although the loyalty, authority, and sanctity foundations might not be perfect, they are useful to help to put into perspective how business or social choices affect the world. We can make our message more compelling for others if we speak about things they care about. For instance, if someone values purity (in whatever form), include this in your communication.
Let’s reconnect
I strongly agree with Haidt’s pet peeve: our society is hopelessly divided. We live in a polarised world and don’t communicate at length. We need to reconnect.
We can improve compassion by defining moral domains. This would allow us to be aware of each other's preferences. Models like Haidt’s might not be perfect, but they give us tools to understand where people come from and what they value.
Morality models can help us reduce the polarisation that harms our society. No one wants to harm. We know that by now.
I discuss the moral foundations in relation to the choices we make in the tech world in my article: Can we Assess the morality of our UX?
