A couple of days ago I posted some points about the five psychological foundations of morality discovered by Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham.
In the previous post, I argued that two differences between a conservative moral stance and a liberal one were the models they used of morality and the degree to which they valued Truth (the version of reality believed on faith with little or no evidence because it would be "wrong" not to) over truth (the version of reality based on verifiable, ordinary, experience).
There are other differences, as well, which grow out of Haidt and Graham's explanation of the origin of these foundations. First, notice how the first two foundations—the ones accepted by conservatives but emphasized by liberals—map onto morality:
- Harm/care. The long history of mammalian evolution has shaped maternal brains to be sensitive to signs of suffering in one's own offspring. In many primate species, particularly humans, this sensitivity has extended beyond the mother-child relationship so that all normally developed individuals dislike seeing suffering in others, and have the potential to feel the emotion of compassion in response...
- Fairness/reciprocity. The long history of alliance formation and cooperation among unrelated individuals in many primate species has led to the evolution of a suite of emotions that motivate reciprocal altruism, including anger, guilt, and gratitude (Trivers, 1971). Because people feel these emotions when they observe or engage in reciprocal interactions, all cultures have developed virtues related to fairness and justice...
In the first case, Harm/Care, there is almost no distinction between the moral value and the psychological foundation. We have evolved as humans with a sensitivity to the suffering of others. We naturally experience empathy and compassion. And to the extent that our morality is based on this foundation it simply embodies that inbred characteristic.
To be "moral" in this sense is merely to be normally human—living out the sensitivities that are natural to our species.
The same is true in the second case. The evolved suite of emotions which motivate reciprocal altruism evolved because of our long history as social animals, and the morals based on that suite of emotions serve the same purpose the original emotions do. In this case, as in the other, moral behavior is simply human behavior.
Both cases fit naturally into a wisdom model of morality, which, among other things, assumes that humans are basically good and trustworthy. Neither case is a good fit for a legal model, which begins by assuming that without the benefit of moral laws and policing people will always tend to do the wrong thing.
Notice how the last case, purity/sanctity—the one least accepted by liberals, but taken seriously by conservatives—maps from the original impulse to morality:
- Purity/sanctity. Against the long background of primate evolution, the human transition to a heavily meat-based diet occurred quite recently (1–3 million years ago; see Leakey, 1994). The move to meat, which may...have included scavenging carcasses, coincided with the rapid growth of the human frontal cortex, and these two changes (meat eating and cortical growth) appear to have given humans—and only humans—the emotion of disgust (see Rozin et al., 2000). Disgust appears to function as a guardian of the body in all cultures, responding to elicitors that are biologically or culturally linked to disease transmission (feces, vomit, rotting corpses, and animals whose habits associate them with such vectors).
Our natural disgust for rotting meat, feces, vomit, etc. is a far cry from the ideas of sanctity found in religion or the public disgust expressed over a half-second glimpse of Janet Jackson's breast. There is simply nothing about the quite natural and helpful aversion to sources of disease that implies a natural extension of disgust to a glimpse of a normal, healthy, part of a fellow human's body.
Something about the jump from disgust at vomit to the morals of purity and sanctity is quite different from the extension of our care for those close to us to people we know less well—or even not at all.
The extension of caring or of concern for fairness is just that—an extension, a broadening of the circle of people that a value or emotion applies to. But the extension of disgust to people who are a different color, a different sexual orientation, or to a glimpse of a breast, is a fundamental change in the kind of thing the emotion relates to.
What is the connection between our aversion to feces and the requirement that an orthodox Jewish woman who accidentally shakes hand with a man must go through an elaborate purification rite? How is our natural disgust at a rotting corpse related to the refusal of conservatives to teach anything but abstinence?
The connection, of course, is emotional. The rational part of the "moral" stance is connected only tangentially, or not at all, to the original aversion. And exactly what the content is—what various acts or people or objects actually provoke disgust—is arbitrary, in the sense that it varies from culture to culture, and even from subculture to subculture.
What began as a natural aversion to unhygienic matter has come to be applied to cases that are completely unrelated to the original focus of the emotion.
It's as though we had somehow come to believe that green things were unfair.
This is quite unlike the values of fairness and care. Cultures may vary in terms of how far they extend those values (partially because of intervention by the ingroup/loyalty foundation) but the object remains the same: keeping people from harm, making sure they are treated fairly.
What is the difference? I would suggest that most of our feelings of moral disgust are rooted in a legal model of morality. People were appalled at the "impurity" of Janet Jackson's breast on television, not because they find breasts generally repulsive, but because they believed it broke a purity rule. Fundamentalists find it so hard to get over their homophobic tendencies because they believe those tendencies are in line with God's law. Orthodox Jews follow purity rules because they are religious laws.
The capacity for disgust is a very useful thing—when it is subject to a wisdom model. It is also a very flexible thing in that context. There was a time when I was disgusted at the thought of both escargot and sushi. Experience intervened, and neither disgusts me now. On the other hand, I don't think I could bring myself to eat rotting meat.
But here is another disconnect—you might consider me stupid if I did eat rotting meat, but you wouldn't consider me immoral. Unlike the foundations of fairness or care, morals based on purity have completely left the source of the emotion behind. The emotion has merely been arbitrarily appropriated, and reapplied.
I think we have good reason to question whether such a move was wise.
