Your morals

[TheMercenary]

After watching the TED lecture by Jonathan Haidt that Dana referenced and hearing the speaker talk about his studies on morality I thought I would check out his site, yourmorals.org .

I joined; it was a simple questionaire and immediately directed you to his survey. Over 32,000 people have taken the survey and so your results are compared against the results of others who have taken the survey. I took his first survey, "Moral Foundations Questionnaire: What underlies the virtues and issues you care about? Why do you have the political orientation that you do?"

The scale you completed was the "Moral Foundations Questionnaire," developed by Jesse Graham and Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia.

The scale is a measure of your reliance on and endorsement of five psychological foundations of morality that seem to be found across cultures. Each of the two parts of the scale contained four questions related to each foundation: 1) harm/care, 2) fairness/reciprocity (including issues of rights), 3) ingroup/loyalty, 4) authority/respect, and 5) purity/sanctity.

The idea behind the scale is that human morality is the result of biological and cultural evolutionary processes that made human beings very sensitive to many different (and often competing) issues. Some of these issues are about treating other individuals well (the first two foundations - harm and fairness). Other issues are about how to be a good member of a group or supporter of social order and tradition (the last three foundations). Haidt and Graham have found that political liberals generally place a higher value on the first two foundations; they are very concerned about issues of harm and fairness (including issues of inequality and exploitation). Political conservatives care about harm and fairness too, but they generally score slightly lower on those scale items. The big difference between liberals and conservatives seems to be that conservatives score slightly higher on the ingroup/loyalty foundation, and much higher on the authority/respect and purity/sanctity foundations.

This difference seems to explain many of the most contentious issues in the culture war. For example, liberals support legalizing gay marriage (to be fair and compassionate), whereas many conservatives are reluctant to change the nature of marriage and the family, basic building blocks of society. Conservatives are more likely to favor practices that increase order and respect (e.g., spanking, mandatory pledge of allegiance), whereas liberals often oppose these practices as being violent or coercive.

In the graph below, your scores on each foundation are shown in green (the 1st bar in each set of 3 bars). The scores of all liberals who have taken it on our site are shown in blue (the 2nd bar), and the scores of all conservatives are shown in red (3rd bar). Scores run from 0 (the lowest possible score, you completely reject that foundation) to 5 (the highest possible score, you very strongly endorse that foundation and build much of your morality on top of it).

(I was unable to post the graph so I will have to post the scores)

Harm
Me 3.3
Liberals 3.6
Conservatives 3.0

Fairness
Me 2.5
Liberals 3.7
Conservatives 3.0

Loyalty
Me 3.8
Liberals 2.1
Conservatives 3.1

Authority
Me 2.8
Liberals 2.1
Conservatives 3.3

Purity
Me 0.8
Liberals 1.3
Conservatives 2.9

More information on the subject:

http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab...es-justice.pdf

If anyone else cares to take it go here to register:

http://www.yourmorals.org/

[SteveDallas]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

. . . political liberals . . . are very concerned about issues of harm and fairness (including issues of inequality and exploitation). Political conservatives . . . score slightly higher on the ingroup/loyalty foundation, and much higher on the authority/respect and purity/sanctity foundations.

Y'all will have to pardon me if I don't find this to be an earth-shaking revelation.

[TheMercenary]

Moral Foundations Theory was created to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes. In brief, the theory proposes that five innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world, and conflicting within nations too. The foundations are:

1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy.
3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation 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/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundaiton underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation 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).

Much of our present research involves applying the theory to political "cultures" such as those of liberals and conservatives. The current American culture war, we have found, can be seen as arising from the fact that liberals try to create a morality relying almost exclusively on the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity foundations; conservatives, especially religious conservatives, use all five foundations, including Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. You can find out your own moral foundations profile at www.YourMorals.org.

The theory was first developed from a simultaneous review of current evolutionary thinking about morality and cross-cultural research on virtues (reported in Haidt & Joseph, 2004). To read more about the theory and see some preliminary evidence for it, please start with this article (Haidt, J., & Graham, J., 2007), or see this New York Times article by Nicholas Wade. The theory is an extension of Richard Shweder's theory of the "three ethics" commonly used around the world when people talk about morality. (See this article: Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. [1997]. The "big three" of morality (autonomy, community, and divinity), and the "big three" explanations of suffering.) The theory was also strongly influenced by Alan Fiske's relational models theory.

http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mft/index.php

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by SteveDallas

Y'all will have to pardon me if I don't find this to be an earth-shaking revelation.

I don't really find that to be earth shattering either. It is more of an interest to see how you fall into the kind of thinking that you think you have, or what others think you to be, and finding out that things don't always fit as nicely as you expected.

Thanks to Dana I will repost her link to the original lecture.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/j...oral_mind.html

[xoxoxoBruce]

I got 'em.

[Sheldonrs]

Morals? What are those? Paintings on walls?

[Yznhymr]

Here's mine...kinda surprised me. I'm middle-of-the-road leaning Left for Harm and Fairness. I am uber-conservative for Loyalty, Authority, & Purity.

I guess that is all true because I was in the military for over 10 years, been married only once and would never consider sleeping with anyone else, am deeply loyal to my kids, and am compassionate & fair to most others I meet. This is not true of those people who wish harm, are not fair, etc. (I hate reverse descrimination). But if you are less than loyal, or do not see eye-to-eye with me on purity, that's fine. Just don't make fun of my president. Hail Obama!

[TheMercenary]

Yea, but pruity is your highest trait. That is strongest among conservatives.

[lookout123]

No real surprises.

[Cloud]

blecch. I have no wish to even place on the purity/sanctity scale.

[lookout123]

I think that is the one the kept coming up with questions about "disgusting". WTF? My reaction to the act would be based on what the act is. Shitting on a plate in a crowded restaurant? Very bad. Preferring anal sex? eh, don't care.

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by Cloud

blecch. I have no wish to even place on the purity/sanctity scale.

I barely did.

[Aliantha]

This is how mine stack up

[Phage0070]

[DanaC]

I can't post mine. It wouldn't let me save it as anyhing but bitmap....weird..


Mine looked a bit like Ali's.