Here is what started my intellectual crush on Jonathan Haidt -- An Econtalk episode on his new book. I found him very smart and very thorough with his arguments. In a lot of ways he reminded me of Bryan Caplan, both in style and the subject matter of political irrationality and moral intuitionism. I had to learn more.
Of course, if there were ever a forum to accurately convey an idea in a brief time frame, it’s a Ted Talk. He has a few. One is The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives. Another is on The Ecstasy of Transcendence. The third is on How Common Threats make Common Ground
The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives
The Ecstasy of Transcendence
How Common Threats make Common Ground
Here is a popular liberal talk show on which Jonathan Haidt appears (you can tell it’s liberal by all the thick rimmed glasses). The segment is called, The Republican Brain. Haidt gives a good overview of his research and how all political people circle around their sacred values. The liberals sharing the table applies it entirely against their political opponents – clearly to Haidt’s objection. Haidt pointed out that liberals seemed more anti-science a couple decades ago, and that they continue to be when they reject scientific consensuses about nuclear power and genetically modified foods. And the liberals responded, “no no, liberals evolve out of their biases and into rightness, conservatives just stay wrong forever.” One person says that it isn’t the same because they’re just being skeptical while the other side is denying a clear reality. It’s hard to see the difference.
This video is a short elaboration on the denial of scientific consensus’ on both the political left and the political right.
Here Jonathan Haidt covers libertarian moral demographics. First a few general demographics he cites: libertarians are more male, better educated, and less religious.
Sen. Orrin Hatch: “These people are not conservatives they’re not republicans, they’re radical libertarians and I’m doggone offended by it. I despise these people.” The point: libertarians and conservatives are very different kinds of people.
Libertarians endorse all the original moral values less than the other parties. They’re very cognitive – very analytical – not as swayed by emotion. They’re a lot like liberals except for they’re less compassionate. They’re not the bleeding hearts types. They systemize more than empathize. When the metric of liberty is included libertarians score high. One explanation is that this is caused by libertarians being mostly male. It is more likely that the causal chain is different. Cognitive types (males) are attracted to libertarianism. Why? Because women who are libertarians still score unusually high in cognition and less high in empathy.
The only emotion on which libertarians score high is reactance. Items on the scale are thing such as, “I find contradicting others stimulating”, “It makes me angry when another person is held up as a model for me to follow” “when something is prohibited I think that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” I find that as hilarious as the audience did.
Libertarians score low on extraversion, and score low on agreeableness, both of which liberals and conservatives score the same. Conservatives score high in conscientiousness, libertarians and liberals score lower than them.
Here is a much less formal talk about libertarian demographics.
It is easy to interpret the data as saying that libertarians don’t care, or have no emotion, or aren’t compassionate at all. That’s very clearly not what the data says.
“It is certainly true that libertarians look as social policy positions and they say, my God the liberal view is causing so much damage and here’s a way to do it much better. And they’re upset that bad policies are put into place by bleeding heart liberals, people who are so motivated by compassion that they can’t see the effect of their actions.” However compassion is not their main driver. “My sense is that libertarians come to see this more intellectually, and then they say my God these policies are much better at helping people.”
My personal introspection is aligned with what Haidt is saying. I fit the libertarian demographic.
