OpenMind | Reduce political polarization in your community

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I like the work of Jonathan Haidt. His books are among my favorites: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom; The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. (I'm working on a review of the third book.) This morning Haidt posted on Twitter that he has started a website called OpenMind, "A free interactive platform designed to depolarize communities and foster mutual understanding across differences." Here is the link.


OpenMind | Reduce political polarization in your community


I've signed up so I can take the quiz that measures my bias; it will be interesting to see if I'm practicing what I'm preaching! The site also posts resources to help explain liberal, conservative and libertarian mindsets. I haven't explored all of the content but I like what I've seen so far.

Nov 6, 2017: Discussion with Dr. Jonathan Haidt NYU - YouTube

Nov 6, 2017: Discussion with Dr. Jonathan Haidt NYU - YouTube


This wide-ranging interview by Jordan B Peterson of Jonathan Haidt contains fascinating and rich insights that are too many and too broad to even summarize here. Both Peterson and Haidt touch on moral foundations, differences in how conservatives and liberals see the world, tribalism, free speech, and so on. It's over 90 minutes long. Highly recommended!

Where are the conservative social psychologists?

Is the Field of Psychology Biased Against Conservatives? This New Yorker
article starts with:

On January 27, 2011, from a stage in the middle of the San Antonio Convention Center, Jonathan Haidt addressed the participants of the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. The topic was an ambitious one: a vision for social psychology in the year 2020. Haidt began by reviewing the field that he is best known for, moral psychology. Then he threw a curveball. He would, he told the gathering of about a thousand social-psychology professors, students, and post-docs, like some audience participation. By a show of hands, how would those present describe their political orientation? First came the liberals: a “sea of hands,” comprising about eighty per cent of the room, Haidt later recalled. Next, the centrists or moderates. Twenty hands. Next, the libertarians. Twelve hands. And last, the conservatives. Three hands.

Social psychology, Haidt went on, had an obvious problem: a lack of political diversity that was every bit as dangerous as a lack of, say, racial or religious or gender diversity. It discouraged conservative students from joining the field, and it discouraged conservative members from pursuing certain lines of argument. It also introduced bias into research questions, methodology, and, ultimately, publications. The topics that social psychologists chose to study and how they chose to study them, he argued, suffered from homogeneity. The effect was limited, Haidt was quick to point out, to areas that concerned political ideology and politicized notions, like race, gender, stereotyping, and power and inequality. “It’s not like the whole field is undercut, but when it comes to research on controversial topics, the effect is most pronounced,” he later told me.

The rest of the article ranges widely over the various studies researchers have conducted on this phenomenon. I recommend it highly as well as the work of Jonathan Haidt. He describes himself as a political liberal when he embarked on the journey to investigate the foundations of morality. Haidt ultimately identifies six foundations:

1. Care/harm: cherishing and protecting others.

2. Fairness/cheating: rendering justice according to shared rules. (Alternate name: Proportionality)

3. Liberty/oppression: the loathing of tyranny.

4. Loyalty/betrayal: standing with your group, family, nation. (Alternate name: Ingroup)

5. Authority/subversion: obeying tradition and legitimate authority. (Alternate name: Respect.)

6. Sanctity/degradation: abhorrence for disgusting things, foods, actions. (Alternate name: Purity.)

This isn’t too controversial. However Haidt stepped on a live rail when he noted that conservatives tend to rely on all six foundations while liberals and libertarians tend to favor only one. Liberals rely on the Care/harm foundation while libertarians gravitate to liberty/oppression. (See his paper: Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations) As you can see Haidt is not afraid to question the status quo! Imagine the horror that someone dares to suggest that conservatives might have a broader moral foundation than liberals, and the conclusion comes from a liberal! (Haidt admits he has drifted
more to the center as a result of his research and thinking.)

Anyway, please check out this article as well as the links to the various studies that are referred to in it. To me Haidt shows the result of truly trying to be objective.

Science Asks: Why Can't We All Just Get Along? - The Atlantic

I've been eagerly awaiting the publication of Jonathan Haidt's new book, The Righteous Mind, which I plan on reviewing here (one of these days). In the meantime here is a good summary of Haidt's approach. Science Asks: Why Can't We All Just Get Along? - The Atlantic