Got morality? Not me. I'm a liberal.

Got morality?

by digby

Well I guess this proves it: conservatives are more moral than liberals. In fact they are twice as moral as liberals --- or at least they have twice as many "moral values" as we do. Nicholas Kristof reports:

Conservatives may not like liberals, but they seem to understand them. In contrast, many liberals find conservative voters not just wrong but also bewildering.

One academic study asked 2,000 Americans to fill out questionnaires about moral questions. In some cases, they were asked to fill them out as they thought a “typical liberal” or a “typical conservative” would respond.

Moderates and conservatives were adept at guessing how liberals would answer questions. Liberals, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal,” were least able to put themselves in the minds of their adversaries and guess how conservatives would answer.

Now a fascinating new book comes along that, to a liberal like myself, helps demystify the right — and illuminates the kind of messaging that might connect with voters of all stripes. “The Righteous Mind,” by Jonathan Haidt, a University of Virginia psychology professor, argues that, for liberals, morality is largely a matter of three values: caring for the weak, fairness and liberty. Conservatives share those concerns (although they think of fairness and liberty differently) and add three others: loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity.


If loyalty is blind and respect for authority and sanctity mean adhering to archaic notions of patriarchy, colonialism or chauvinism in general, then guilty as charged. After all, if everyone had always held to that set of "morals" without question, even slavery would still be legal and I'm not ashamed to be against that or any of the other traditional hierarchies that conservative "values" would have kept in place (and seek to reinstate wherever possible.)

Kristoff was especially intrigued by the ideas set forth in the research that seems to imply (I'm not entirely sure) that conservatives are more concerned with taboos than liberals.

Of course, political debates aren’t built on the consumption of roadkill. But they do often revolve around this broader moral code. This year’s Republican primaries have been a kaleidoscope of loyalty, authority and sanctity issues — such as whether church-affiliated institutions can refuse to cover birth control in health insurance policies — and that’s perhaps why people like me have found the primaries so crazy.

Another way of putting it is this: Americans speak about values in six languages, from care to sanctity. Conservatives speak all six, but liberals are fluent in only three. And some (me included) mostly use just one, care for victims.


He can speak for himself about that. My moral language is far broader than care for victims, fairness and liberty. I like to think of it as social and economic justice, which the last I heard was considered to me the height of immorality by most people who call themselves conservative. So maybe we are dealing with a problem of semantics.

But let's talk briefly about taboos, shall we? Is there a taboo against torture? Well, I think there used to be. At least among people who consider themselves civilized, if not exactly moral. And yet conservatives by a large margin are more affirmatively for it than liberals. Again, I guess it all depends on what the meaning of "moral" is.

Here's where my alarm bells really go off:

“Moral psychology can help to explain why the Democratic Party has had so much difficulty connecting with voters,” writes Haidt, a former liberal who says he became a centrist while writing the book.


Yeah, sure he was.

I will have to read the book. I'm sure it's full of interesting data that could be useful in understanding our ideological divide. But let's just say I'm a little bit skeptical of an author who characterizes his work that way. After all, the country is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans and we have a Democratic president who serves as a living symbol of liberal accomplishment. Are we to believe that the only voters who matter are those who don't vote for them? They seem to connect quite well to certain parts of the electorate:

Barack Obama’s lead over [Mitt] Romney is attributable in large part to his wide advantage among women, younger voters, and nonwhites. Women favor Obama over Romney by 20 points – virtually unchanged from a month ago – while men are divided almost evenly (49% Obama, 46% Romney). This gender gap is particularly wide among voters under age 50. Women ages 18-49 favor Obama over Romney by nearly two-to-one (64% to 33%), while men the same age are split (50% Obama, 46% Romney).


But then those are the very people who tend to reject traditional values such as "loyalty", respect for authority and sanctity since these values have tended to marginalize them.

Update: Here's some of that conservative morality right now, particularly their alleged equal concern for the weak:




Update II: I see that Jonathan Chait flagged this today as well.

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