Free Republic

With a presidential election on the horizon, maybe we should try to figure out what makes each side of the political aisle tick. Knowing what someone else cares about, instead of just lobbing insults on message boards, can sometimes help you land on something close to understanding. A social psychologist named Jonathan Haidt has spent the bulk of his career trying to figure out what motivates both conservatives and liberals. He’s uncovered some interesting points, which have been published in a book called “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” According to Haidt’s research, there are five...

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, a wide range of thinkers, both secular and religious, struggled to make sense of the profound evil of war, particularly Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. One such effort, “The Authoritarian Personality” by Theodore Adorno and three co-authors, opened up a whole new field of political psychology—initially a small niche within the broader field of social psychology—which developed fitfully over the years, but became an increasingly robust subject area in 1980s and 90s, fleshing out a number of distinct areas of cognitive processing in which liberals and conservatives differed from one another. Liberal/conservative...

“Of course I am a doctor and I want to preserve life. And out of respect for human life I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew is the diseased body. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind.”  These words are taken from Robert Lifton’s book, The Nazi Doctors.  They summarize the total enmification (the making into an enemy) of Jews by the Nazi government in the belief that Jewishness personifies physical disease in the body of humanity.  The concept of homophobia, as used by progressives to psychodiagnose Christians, is a variation...

One of the primary critiques of religion popular among New Atheists and secularists generally is that it is arrogant and close-minded for any group to claim a monopoly on Truth. The idea that a divine creator had a plan and ordered things a certain way, that he (or she, or it) revealed the Truth to an elect group and that all mankind will be judged by how closely they aligned their lives with the Truth... nothing could be more offensive to the secular progressive worldview. On the contrary, secular progressives claim the mantle of open-mindedness and tolerance. They understand that...

It hangs over American politics like a moth-bitten blanket. An old and weary narrative, it crowds out conversation and lets shopworn cheap-shots masquerade as thoughtful critiques. Yes, it’s one more marker of the bad faith and disrespect that pervade our politics, but its costs go beyond hurt feelings. Real Americans pay a price for this poisonous argument. The story in question is “the Republican war on science.” That particular phrase is the title of one 2007 book, but this story’s tentacles stretch far beyond a single volume. For years, a concerted effort has been made to intertwine scientific truth with...

I wonder if any Freepers are aware of Jon Haidt. His theories explain a lot and explain why we are in this current battle of Freedom vs. Fairness. He is a self-identified liberal so don’t let your friends when you explain this to them get away with saying he is a right wing wacko. Basically he has found that there what he calls “Moral Foundations” that humans everywhere subscribe to. These are in our makeups, and we filter information to fit them into our moral foundation. Basically there are 5 of these: 1)Care/Harm 2)Fairness/Cheating 3)Loyalty/Betrayal 4) Authority/Anarchy 5)Purity/Hedonism Everybody is...

As a general rule, the names of professional sports teams, and their connotations, are of little concern. No one cares that the Chicago White Sox don't wear white socks, or that Utah, where the NBA's Jazz are based, is the last place you'd think of when you think of jazz. But the Washington Redskins are different. Their name is a big deal. A group of Native Americans is pursuing a suit to strip the name of federal trademark protection. A few publications have stopped using the term in stories about the team. In May, 10 members of Congress wrote team...

A simple concept that could revolutionize scientific and social thought. . Pathological altruism, "altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm." A crucial qualification is that while the altruistic actor fails to anticipate the harm, "an external observer would conclude [that it] was reasonably foreseeable." Thus, she explains, if you offer to help a friend move, then accidentally break an expensive item, your altruism probably isn't pathological; whereas if your brother is addicted to painkillers and you help him obtain them, it is... . Part of the reason that pathologies of altruism have...

At The American, AEI resident scholar Andrew Biggs highlights an interesting study that confirms what most conservatives probably already know to be true of themselves: We understand why our liberal friends think what they think more than they understand why we think what we think. [University of Virginia professor Jonathan] Haidt’s research asks individuals to answer questionnaires regarding their core moral beliefs—what sorts of values they consider sacred, which they would compromise on, and how much it would take to get them to make those compromises. By themselves, these exercises are interesting. (Try them online and see where you come...

If you want to tell whether someone is conservative or liberal, what are a couple of completely nonpolitical questions that will give a good clue? How’s this: Would you be willing to slap your father in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit? And, second: Does it disgust you to touch the faucet in a public restroom? Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don’t worry as long as Dad has given permission. Likewise, conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination...

HITLER and Mussolini both had the ability to bend millions of people to their fascist will. Now evidence from psychology and neurology is emerging to explain how tactics like organised marching and propaganda can work to exert mass mind control. Scott Wiltermuth of Stanford University in California and colleagues have found that activities performed in unison, such as marching or dancing, increase loyalty to the group. "It makes us feel as though we're part of a larger entity, so we see the group's welfare as being as important as our own," he says. Wiltermuth's team separated 96 people into four...

What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some...

The first part of this article outlines Jonathan Haidt's theory of evolution and morality. Essentially, there are two types of morality--preverbal and postverbal. An interesting hypothesis and worthwhile in itself. The second part discusses conservative/liberal differences in morality. While problematical and disputable his take is interesting. They found that people who identified themselves as liberals attached great weight to the two moral systems protective of individuals — those of not harming others and of doing as you would be done by. But liberals assigned much less importance to the three moral systems that protect the group, those of loyalty, respect...

When Cathy Newman’s absurdly hilarious interview with Jordan Peterson exploded across the internet, it wasn’t just because it was so funny. To a lot of conservatives, myself included, it sounded way too familiar. What we’ve known for a long time, Cathy Newman made blindingly obvious: Liberals really don’t listen. Maybe liberals can’t listen. I’m seeing again it in a book I’m reading on the history of America’s culture wars. Conservatives’ opposition to new views on morality in the 1910s and 20s was “driven by fear,” the author says. Never mind that when the Pope Pius XI weighed in on the...

The Yale Problem Begins in High School by Jonathan Haidt | Nov 24, 2015 A month before the Yale Halloween meltdown, I had a bizarre and illuminating experience at an elite private high school on the West Coast. I’ll call it Centerville High. I gave a version of a talk that you can see here, on Coddle U. vs. Strengthen U. (In an amazing coincidence, I first gave that talk at Yale a few weeks earlier). The entire student body — around 450 students, from grades 9-12 — were in the auditorium. There was plenty of laughter at all the right spots,...

Why People Are Divided by Politics and Religion I wonder if any Freepers are aware of Jon Haidt. His theories explain a lot and explain why we are in this current battle of Freedom vs. Fairness. He is a self-identified liberal so don’t let your friends when you explain this to them get away with saying he is a right wing wacko. Basically he has found that there what he calls “Moral Foundations” that humans everywhere subscribe to. These are in our makeups, and we filter information to fit them into our moral foundation. Basically there are 5 of these:...

At the most recent conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the most talked-about speech was one that essentially accused the attendees of bias. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist from the University of Virginia, started his presentation by polling the audience of approximately 1,000 psychologists. When he asked how many considered themselves to be politically liberal, about 80 percent of the hands went up. Centrists and libertarians? Dr. Haidt estimated that fewer than three-dozen hands were raised. When he asked how many were conservatives, precisely three hands went up. As The New York Times reported, Haidt called that...

WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN? What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable...