How Do Our Moral Minds Work?
By: Tony Lu
Tags: Morality, Democratic Party, Liberalism, Conservatives, Republican Party

In the previous post, I wrote about Haidt’s views on the question “where does morality come from.” Hopefully that started to get you to think about how your moral system was developed. Like me, maybe the next question you thought about is, how do our righteous minds work exactly?

Intuitions First

Let’s say someone asks you, “A man robs your family’s convenience store to feed his hungry family. Do you think that is wrong and he should be punished?” You might take some time to think of an answer and then present some reasoning to justify your answer. How about this question: “A man buys a chicken from the supermarket, goes home and then has intercourse with it.” Do you think that’s wrong? You might also take some time to think of an answer, but perhaps the justification for that answer was harder to fabricate. This post hoc justification is one of Haidt’s main ideas. He says that moral reasoning is based on intuition first and strategic reasoning second.

The mind is divided into parts, like a rider (reasoning) on an elephant (intuition). The rider’s function is to serve the elephant. You can see the rider serving the elephant when people are morally dumbfounded. They have strong gut feelings about what is right and wrong, and they struggle to construct post hoc justifications for those feelings. Even when the rider comes back empty handed, the elephant doesn’t change its judgement.

Haidt tries to use intuitionism to get the readers to become familiar with the idea that our morality is initially based on intuition and then justified by reasoning. I liked how the author structured his argument. Rather than stating his theory from the beginning of the book, he used personal anecdotes and stories from the ancient past to tune the readers’ intuitions. Subsequently, he uses six pieces of scientific research to address the readers’ riders. One of them is “Babies feel but don’t reason”

Psychologists used to assume that infant minds were blank slates. But when developmental psychologists invested ways to look into infant minds, they found a great deal of writing already on that slate.

I think Haidt effectively got his point across by directly applying the technique that he suggested:

Therefore, if you want to change someone’s mind about a moral or political issue, talk to the elephant first. If you ask people to believe something that violates their intuitions, they will devote their efforts to finding an escape hatch — a reason to doubt your argument or conclusion. They will almost always succeed.

Strategic Reasoning Second

The story of the Ring of Gyges tells us that no human would be just if there were no consequences for committing injustices. Thus, to many people, looking “right” is often times more important than actually being right.

What, then, is the function of moral reasoning? Does it seem to have been shaped, tuned and crafted (by natural selection) to help us find the truth, so that we can know the right way to behave and condemn those who behave wrongly? Or does moral reasoning seem to have been shaped, tuned and crafted to help us pursue socially strategic goals, such as guarding our reputations and convincing other people to support us, or our team, in disputes?

I agree with the author’s view that when making post hoc reasoning, the justifications we provide are focused on persuading others rather than trying to find the objective truth. Haidt thinks that “our moral reasoning is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth. But we are also trying to persuade ourselves. We want to believe the things we are about to say to others.” Ironically, I tried to internalize these ideas before writing about them.

6 Foundations of Morality

Haidt states that the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors. Each taste receptor triggers different responses in different people and everyone uses more than one receptor.

He proposes 6 moral foundations:

The Care/harm foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children. It makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need; it makes us despise cruelty and want to care for those who are suffering The Fairness/cheating foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of reaping the rewards of cooperation without getting exploited. It makes us sensitive to indications that another person is likely to be a good (or bad) partner for collaboration and reciprocal altruism. It makes us want to punish cheaters and reward good citizens in proportion to their deeds. The Loyalty/betrayal foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions. The original trigger for the loyalty foundation is anything that tells you who is a team player and who is a traitor. But because we love tribalism so much, we seek out ways to form groups and teams that can compete just for the fun of competing. The love of loyal teammates is matched by a corresponding hatred of traitors, who are usually considered to be far worse than enemies. The Authority/subversion foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forging relationships that will benefit us within social hierarchies. It makes us sensitive to signs of rank or status, and to signs that other people are (or are not) behaving properly, given their position. The Sanctity/degradation foundation makes it easy for us to regard some things as “untouchable” both in a bad way (because something is so dirty or polluted we want to stay away) and in a good way (because something is so sacred that we want to protect it from desecration). And if you think, as I do, that one of the greatest unsolved mysteries is how people ever came together to form large cooperative societies, then you might take a special interest in the psychology of sacredness. Why do people so readily treat objects (flags, crosses), people (saints, heroes) and principles (liberty, fraternity, equality) as though they were of infinite value? Whatever its origins, the psychology of sacredness helps bind individuals into moral communities. The Liberty/oppression foundation makes people notice and resent any sign of attempted domination. It triggers an urge to band together to resist or overthrow bullies and tyrants.

Based on the surveys that Haidt conducted on Americans, he discovered that the ideologies and policies from Democrats and Republicans appeal to different moral foundations. Liberals have a three-foundation morality based on care-harm, liberty-oppression and fairness-cheating, with a greater emphasis on care-harm. Conservative morality on the other hand, rests on all six foundations, with a relatively equal distribution of importance. Haidt thinks that these moral foundations can help to explain the results in past presidential elections.

Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

The Democratic party has had so much difficulty connecting with voters since 1980. Republicans understand the social intuitionist model better than do Democrats. Republicans speak more directly to the elephant. They also have a better grasp of Moral Foundation Theory; they trigger every single taste receptor.

With the 2020 election coming up, it will be interesting to see how the candidates apply these concepts in their campaigns.

In summary, our righteous minds work by intuitions first and strategic reasoning second. Our moral matrix consists of 6 foundations (perhaps there could be more) that generalize how we feel in certain scenarios. I would like to end by stating the definition of what is morality. The dictionary definition of morality is: “Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.” Haidt has a functionalist definition which I like.