Does the Political Right Have a More Complex Morality Than the Left?
If so, this could help explain the growing political divide.
This article is based on Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Highly recommended!
Have you ever wondered why it’s so difficult to talk to people on the other side of the political spectrum? We call them words like “crazy”, “stupid”, “racist”, and “naive”. But, could it really be that simple? Or, could something else be going on that makes understanding each other difficult at the best of times, and impossible at the worst?
Moral Foundations Theory, examined by Jonathan Haidt in his excellent book, The Righteous Mind, suggests that there are at least six dimensions to morality. Depending on where people fall on the political spectrum, they will tend to value certain dimensions more than others.
According to Haidt, people on the political right tend to value all six dimensions roughly equally, while people on the left tend to value three much more than the others. This means that when people on the political right justify their political perspectives, the political left doesn’t register many of their justifications as valid. On the flip side, the political right judges the political left’s…
