Anomalies & Outliers: Field Notes on a Human Tribe

  Jonathan Haidt, Jesse Graham & Craig Joseph argue, based on “Dan McAdams’s (1995; McAdams & Pals, 2006) three-level account of personality (dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and life stories)” that:  

“the single dimension of left-right is indeed a useful construct that describes a network of Level 2 adaptations (such as right-wing authoritarianism) closely linked to Level 1 traits (such as openness to experience), but the study of ideology requires us to look at the Level 3 narratives of self and society that people construct and internalize as they develop, join groups, and share ideologies.”(Above and Below Left-Right: Ideological Narratives and Moral Foundations, Psychological Inquiry, 20:110-119, 2009).

So, that is a mouthful. Earlier in their paper, they helpfully offered:

“Why do people vary in their views of human nature and their visions of the good society? Why do many people categorize themselves as ‘liberal,’ ‘conservative,’ ‘libertarian,’ ‘socialist,’ and so on? Some researchers try to answer those questions by starting with people’s self-identifications and then moving ‘down,’ examining traits (such as openness to experience) that underlie and predict endorsement of an ideological label (see Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003, and Sibley & Duckitt, 2008, for reviews). In contrast, others find it more informative to move ‘up’ from such labels, examining the network of meanings, strivings, and personal narratives that unite the individuals who endorse a label (e.g., Conover & Feldman, 1981; Geertz, 1964; Smith, 2003; Sowell, 1995, 2007).”

Which is all very interesting, but really concentrating on particular sorts of ideological commitments [a San Francisco Democrat can be quite culturally different from a South Carolina Democrat (or not)]  rather than groupishness specifically. And that is a problem I will run into repeatedly: studies that brush up against my concerns around groupishness that are actually conceived around oppositional political sorts of “affinity groups” and what I would term coalitions, such as Liberal/Conservative and Democrat/Republican, rather than groups that are much more likely to be bound up with a person's identity, such as Cubs fan or White Sox fan. 

Right from the beginning, I find myself annoyed with the (entirely accurate within academia) assertions Haidt, Graham and Joseph make about the “trait approach” being “extraordinarily successful” to the point where “the Big Five taxonomy is widely accepted as a valuable high-order model of personality.” Sigh. I have looked at questions in the Big Five and they are so problematic that I am rendered the opposite of speechless whenever the topic comes up. (Conversely, Dan Kahan at his Cultural Cognition of Risk blog, argues that "These sorts of self-report measures predict vulnerability to one or another reasoning bias less powerfully than CRT and numeracy, and my sense is that they are falling out of favor in cognitive psychology.")

First, the “Big Five” taxonomy is generated by a self-report questionnaire that asks a person to assess in a Likert scale (1 to 5) their agreement with statements like “I have a rich vocabulary.” It seems obvious to me that the correct way to assess these questions is to understand they are capturing cultural commitments, not innate personality traits. We don’t know if the person has a rich vocabulary, only whether or not they believe they have one, and whether or not a rich vocabulary is something worth claiming is entirely cultural. How that meaningfully assesses “openness to experience” is not clear, unless one means that people with interests in intellectual pursuits are inherently more open to experience, which is a tautology, not a finding. Second, the theory currently uses the descriptive “openness to experience,” which has a particular usage in Standard English that equates to “open-mindedness” but the theory delimits the phrase as psychological category that does not (necessarily) equal the standard usage.  The questions asked in the Big Five questionnaire do not assess a person’s functional open-mindedness, though that is how the results are commonly described. (I have gone on and on about this before [http://isabel.penraeth.com/post/30209151045/the-moral-emotions-openness-liberals-conservatives & http://isabel.penraeth.com/post/32275404553/us-and-them-openness-groupishness-care-harm-and ]). Haidt, Graham & Joseph’s assertion around the “trait approach” being “successful” and perceived as “valuable” gets back to the definition of a theory in psychology: a framework that has proven generative of studies, not that it has proven fundamentally true [a definition offered in this textbook]. I sometimes fear the social sciences really are semantics all the way down. Well, that and statistics.

So, even when psychologists think they are dealing with a personal trait (as measured by the Big Five), at an individual-level construct, I would argue they are capturing cultural commitments, a groupish-level construct. That is what I mean about confusion around what is a trait of an individual and what is a cultural commitment on the part of the individual to a groupish standard. Haidt, Graham and Joseph suggest that some theorists work “up” and other theorists work “down,” but it seems to me nearly all of modern American psychology fundamentally atomizes everything to the individual not only because of a strongly individualistic American bias, but because of the functional limits of the preferred experimental method: the self-report questionnaire. [For much more interesting critiques of the Big Five, ones that are critical in quite different ways, see: The Five-Factor Framing of Personality and Beyond: Some Ruminations by Jack Block; The Five-Factor Model Describes the Structure of Social Perceptions, by Sanjay Srivastava; Two Cheers for the Big Five! [paywall] Donald W. Fiske.]

In their favor, Haidt, Graham & Joseph go on in their paper to ask of the trait approach, “Rather than arguing with success, an alternative response is to ask, Is that all there is?” They believe they can show there is more. But, yeah, me, I am absolutely going to argue with that sort of “success.”

Group Groupishness versus Individual Groupishness

Additionally, there are useful distinctions to be made between a “group groupishness” and an “individual groupishness,” where a group has traits that render it more “groupish” and an individual has preferences/habits that render groupish behavior more congenial to them. Triandis and Suh helpfully describe allocentrism and idiocentrism at the individual level, as well as work on collectivism and individualism at the cultural level:

The terms individualism and collectivism are used at the cultural level of analysis, where the number of observations is the number of cultures (e.g., Hofstede 1980). In such data individualism is the polar opposite of collectivism. As mentioned above, results at the cultural level may differ from results at the individual level of analysis. Thus, different terms are used to indicate the level of analysis. Individualism and collectivism are used at the cultural level, whereas at the individual level of analysis (i.e., within-culture analyses), the corresponding terms are idiocentrism and allocentrism (Triandis et al. 1985). Idiocentrism and allocentrism are personality attributes that are often orthogonal to each other. Idiocentrics emphasize self-reliance, competition, uniqueness, hedonism, and emotional distance from in-groups. Allocentrics emphasize interdependence, sociability, and family integrity; they take into account the needs and wishes of in-group members, feel close in their relationships to their in-group, and appear to others as  responsive to their needs and concerns (Cross SE, Bacon P, Morris M. 2000. The relational-interdependent self-construal and relationships. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 78:791–98).” (P. 140, Cultural Influences on Personality, Triandis & Suh, 2002.)

This becomes particularly useful when one wants to compare individuals who are personally allocentric yet are living in a collectivist society and individuals who are allocentric living in an individualistic society. 

In all cultures there are both idiocentrics and allocentrics, in different proportions (Triandis et al. 2001). Generally speaking, in collectivist cultures there are about 60% allocentrics and in individualist cultures about 60% idiocentrics. The allocentrics in individualist cultures are more likely than the idiocentrics to join groups—gangs, communes, unions, etc. The idiocentrics in collectivist cultures are more likely than the allocentrics to feel oppressed by their culture and to seek to leave it. (P. 141)

[Susan Cain, in her recent popular non-fiction book Quiet, very busily conflates introversion with allocentrism. But I digress.]

There are other measures or attempts at measurement in the wild world of the social sciences. Is groupishness most accurately measured by the communitarianism side of the Cultural Cognition Theory of Risk group grid, leaving out worldviews that land on the individualistic side of the scale? Triandis gives us The Psychological Measurement of Cultural Syndromes (a measurement that maps quite nicely to the Cultural Theory Grid-Group schema). Is groupishness confined to Triandis’ vertical collectiveness? And if it is, how is that measured? Rayner & Gross, for instance, tried to measure communitarianism on the Cultural Theory of Risk grid-group scale with a mathematical computation based on observing how much time members of a group spent together (Measuring Culture). Or when we talk about groupishness, is it most properly referring to Triandis’ collectivism. Where does the individual fit? Can one individual be more groupish than another? Is one culture more groupish than another? Is groupishness confined to the Gemeinschaftliche “high group, high grid” world of hierarchical-communitarians? Sometimes those using the term groupishness seem to be attempting to describe a measurement of how controlling the members of the group are of other people (in the group or not): how much they want to force their viewpoint onto others, or how totalitarian they are. It is a theorized variation on this theme that results in the calculation that totalitarian regimes that espoused Leftist views were really Conservative.

So, it seems entirely reasonable to me to suspect that one can be functionally groupish yet, if one has a cultural commitment to individualism, to adopt an identity-protective denial around that trait. Similarly, it also seems entirely reasonable to me that a cultural commitment/acceptance of groupishness need not be as pathological as individualist groups ["I would never join a group that would have me as a member."] might be inclined to believe.

I think the key to understanding groupishness and the current muddle around its use is the concept of authority. As Adam Seligman puts it in his book Modernity’s Wager:

Modernity, whether in the form of liberal politics, capitalist exchange, or the epistemologies of the social sciences, is inherently hostile to the idea and experience of authority and as a result has a hard time understanding its persistence. (P. 15 Seligman, Modernity’s Wager, Nook version)

So, of course, before we talk any further about groupishness, let’s talk about authority.

At the end of this series of pieces, which is a great many words from here, I conclude that it is not “groupishness” per se nor the forms it takes in religiosity, nationalism, culturalism &etc that is the sin that breeds socio-political evils (Nazism, 9/11), but mono-moralism, and that mono-moralism, unfortunately, is a universally habitual sin that no groups are immune from committing. I will argue that the conviction that there is one moral truth is necessary for the individual, but the conclusion that this one moral truth applies to all people, in all situations, in all places, and all times is always false. I will argue that the conviction that anyone who does not come to the same, obvious, simple, fair and right moral conclusions is evil is the sin that leads to the sort of “othering” that allows for justifying considerable human harm. [Us and Them, by David Berreby] And that mono-moralism does not require “groupishness,” as it is generally (oh-so vaguely) conceived, to work its damage.

Observations on Perspective-taking

I free the moth flinging itself against the window because observing its struggle begins to make me feel trapped, despite a certain squeamishness about flying insects and a concern that I might do more harm than good by accidentally injuring it. 

Some would think that I am showing empathy and being effective at perspective-taking. That would not be true. The moth does not feel trapped. Its eyes are on the distant view beyond the window. It does not perceive its dilemma, but continues to attempt to move forward, uncomprehending of the impediment it faces. When I gently encase it in my carefully cupped hands and it *is* trapped, it behaves quite differently: docile, quiet, still.

I have not taken its perspective. I have placed upon it mine.

Similarly, when I observe the woman in hijab or burqa or niqab and conclude that I know what that experience is like for her, I am wrong unless and until I listen to her describe her own experience. Because, unlike the moth, I can ask her and she is capable of telling me. Just because observing a woman wearing a burqa makes me feel trapped and claustrophobic does not necessarily mean that is how she experiences it.

But, you observe, Dear Reader, that I did free the moth from its confinement, a confinement it was not aware of until I freed it! And, I must respond, a human being is not a moth, and it is some time since we have generally recognized the right of individual human beings to a certain personal dignity and respect [Durkheim/Bellah, On Morality and Society,p. 46 ]. The matter takes on a much more fundamental moral weight in a circumstance where a human being does not consider herself trapped than that a moth does not consider itself trapped.

Cultures and Morals

Human beings develop their cultures, and are developed by their cultures in return, to adapt to particular social/political/economic environments. The moth is not meant to live inside a home, and so freeing it is no sin. But when I try to insist that a Muslim woman cannot be living a free life until she sets aside wearing the hijab, I am describing how it is not helpful or necessary in my cultural/moral environment to wear the hijab. There is no guarantee that I am freeing her to live a more full life in the culture in which she is embedded and which is embedded within her. Humans adapt, personally and culturally, and regularly set aside habits and beliefs that are not helpful to them, sometimes quite quickly. When they are not doing that, when they are not setting them aside, it is perhaps more helpful to consider what purpose it serves than to conclude that they are doing it because they are (pick one) stupid, backward, immoral, authoritarian, kowtowed, unevolved.

I will attempt to convince you that moral standards, theories, systems, and codes all derive from communal lived experience organized around something that we both inherit and impact: culture. I will also try to convince you that differing lived experiences that produce moral standards that do not align with yours do not produce inherently immoral systems, only moral systems designed for a different environment. What is the same is that different cultures/moral systems are inhabited by people who are biologically exactly like you who have simply had different experiences/different resources/different environments. (think rural vs. urban, north vs. south, wealthy vs. poor) The battle is not properly defined as right vs. wrong. The battle is more properly defined around whose experiences will be validated and whose will not, and in a country with a vast range of lived experiences possible, whose preferences with be nurtured with communal resources and whose preferences will be starved. [See Chapter 11: Moral Particularism, p. 305 − 330, Moral Theory: An Introduction, by Mark Timmons; Chapter One: Sociocultural Psychology, Hazel Rose Markus &  MarYam Hamedani, in The Handbook of Cultural Psychology, edited by Shinobu Kitayama & Dov Cohen]

Cultures are constantly changing, responding to the environment. But they tend to keep what works and rapidly abandon what does not. Cultural shifts can be rapid. Cultures pick things up from each other. Cultures measure themselves against other cultures. Cultures are a communal response, a communal inheritance. Cultural systems are moral systems [Chapter 19: Cultural Psychology of Moral Development, p. 477, by Joan G. Miller, in The Handbook of Cultural Psychology, edited by Shinobu Kitayama and Dov Cohen]. Moral systems are embedded in a cultural response to the environment. Resource restriction brings “conservatism” and resource abundance brings democracy. Resource restriction brings cram schools and resource abundance brings a concern that children have a care-free childhood [also see, p. 87, Chapter Four: The Evolutionary Foundations of Cultural Psychology, by Melvin Konner, in The Handbook of Cultural Psychology, edited by Shinobu Kitayama and Dov Cohen]. Relative stasis in the environment brings cultural stasis and reverence for the wisdom of the elderly. Constant change and upheaval in the environment brings cultural reverence for the highly-adaptive young and disregard for the relative worth of the older generations.

Our “reasoning” is fundamentally malleable. The person who argues that sexual expression should not be controlled because it is natural is easily able to simultaneously feel that children’s natural desire to eat large amounts of sugar should be controlled. We accumulate moral reasoning for the moral system that works for us and fits our experience. But most people make no attempt to be remotely consistent. For good reason.

One person says that it is immoral to experience the pleasure of homosexual relations. Another says that it is immoral to experience the pleasure of gun ownership. Measuring these statements is powerfully personal: where one believes there to be harm and where one believes there to be harmlessness is often based on experience and not particularly malleable or susceptible to persuasion [Parsing "Care" as a Moral Verb, this blog]. 

When it comes to implementing true values, there are always trade-offs, which is why there are different traditions of values (cultures) and why no one cultural tradition has ever been able to honor everything that is good.(p. 38, Culture Theory: Some Classic Problems, Why Do Men Barbecue? by Richard Shweder)

We insist on making group-level determinations about what sort of life is worth living and what sort of life is worth nurturing, because as a community, we bear the burdens of whatever these conclusions entail in allocation of shared resources and environmental effects.

Ultimately, moral systems are artefacts of cultures, and moral philosophers are inevitably apologists for the moral systems of their own culture.

My Method

My method, born of necessity not idealism, has been to simply observe, and upon observing I begin to notice patterns emerging, and then I locate discussions around those patterns in the academic literature, groping around until I find the terms that the specialists use to describe what concerns me. And then I become dissatisfied with the terms; it begins to feel that all the specialists have are semantics, and statistics based on the semantics. For linguists, the word “semantics” has depth and richness, but out in the world, “semantics” implies shallowness and word-play. The more I delve into these works, mostly in the social sciences, the more I am with the late, great sociologist George Homans when he observed:

We shall begin with semantics, the science of tracing words back to their references in observed fact. In sociology we are devoted to the ‘big’ words: status, culture, function, heuristic, particularistic, methodology, integration, solidarity, authority. Too often we work with these words and not with observations. Or rather, we do not wed the two. No one will make progress with this book who does not train himself to extensionalize [See S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, 58-60], who does not habitually catch himself as he mouths one of the big abstractions and ask: What does this mouthful mean in terms of actual human behavior that someone has seen and reported? Just what, in human behavior, do we see? The question is devastating, and we do not ask it half often enough.” (emphasis in original: The Human Group, 1950, p. 10)

Observation is the start of everything, and while statistical analysis is helpful, it is not the end. After statistical analysis, we must take it all back to observation and confirm the analysis (and its usefulness) there.

 Sophistication includes knowing when not to be sophisticated. No one is more a creature of fashion than the average intellectual. He is quite ready to believe, at any moment, that certain kinds of work are the only respectable ones to go into. We are told, for instance, that our data in sociology should be quantitative, that is, should be cast in numerical form, and of course they should. But good observation ought not to be discarded just because it is not numerical. Sociology may miss a great deal if it tries to be too quantitative too soon. Data are not nobler because they are quantitative, nor thinking more logical because mathematical. . . . Let us make the important quantitative, not the quantitative important. The final emphasis must always be on the group before us. (Homans, The Human Group, 1950, p. 22)

A problematic word that seems to be at the crux of the things that concern me about what I have been observing is “groupishness.”

 There is a great deal of fuzziness around the use of the word “groupishness” (and to some extent also in the use of terms like “group cohesion,” “tribalism” and talk of certain “human kinds” [a la Berreby] being “team players”). In one odd corner of the Internet someone described it as a “nonce word”—designed to be used once and not to become part of regular vocabulary—and someone else felt compelled to put quotes around it whenever they used it. In the latter case, the author offered that “It's not very helpful to think of groupishness as a category unless you specify what sort of group is going to be produced.” Perhaps having something to do with the problematic lack of a lexical history, it is a word some people seem to use but few seem to trouble themselves to precisely define. 

 I have come across a wide range of terms, thinking and theories around concepts of “groupishness” in sociology, group psychology, social psychology, political science, evolutionary theory and anthropology that I have been exploring. Much of the work around groups and groupishness that I have delved into has centered on political groupings that have used some version of the right-left scale, though that is not groupishness per se, rather a form of groupishness. And it has been my observations of statistical conservatives and statistical liberals that have worrisomely not matched the conclusions reported in the social sciences that have mostly informed my own contemplations. Nonetheless, I find myself most concerned with groupishness more broadly, and so my reading has ranged quite widely.

 This list, frighteningly enough, is by no means comprehensive of all the reading I have done, but it includes some of the more helpful thoughts and thinkers.

Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Sherif) Self-categorization Theory (Turner) Cultural Theory of Risk (Douglas & Wildavsky, Rayner & Gross-- further elaborated as the  Cultural Cognition Theory of Risk (Kahan et al) Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Toennies and Durkheim) In-group bias (Sumner) Social actions, Herrschaft, Verstehen (Weber) Work groups and Basic Assumption groups (Bion) Allocentrism and Idiocentrism/Collectivism and Individualism (Triandis) Collective identity (Mead, Melucci) Muscular bonding (McNeill) Constrained and Unconstrained Visions (Sowell) Optimal distinctiveness (Brewer) Cultural memory/Tradition (Pascal Boyer) Coalitions, mutuality and cooperation (Cosmides & Tooby, Kurzban, Sperber) Syndrome of Ethnocentrism (LeVine and Campbell) Authoritarianism (Adorno, Jost) Motivated cognition (Jost) Reverse Dominance Hierarchies (Boehm) Relationship regulation, Relational Management Theory (Fiske) Group cohesiveness (David Sloan Wilson, particularly around religiosity) Groupthink (Janis) The Four Elementary Forms of Sociality (Alan Page Fiske) Infrahumanization (Leyens & Demoulin) In-group boundary keeping (Lovaglia and Houser) Dual Inheritance Theory (Richerson & Boyd, Henrich) Cultural Psychological approaches (Shweder, Markus, Kitayama, Heine, Norenzayan, Buchtel) Moral Foundation Theory (Haidt, Joseph, Graham, et al., building on Shweder) Civil Religion (Rousseau, Bellah) Social Exchange Theory (Homans) Moral coherence (Ditto and Liu) Moral coordination (DeScioli and Kurzban) The Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt) The Blank Slate (Pinker) Us and Them: The Science of Identity (Berreby) Obedience to Authority (Milgram) Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo)  

It is impossible to fairly represent the depth, complexity and intellectual fullness of any of the thinkers I will be discussing here. But if one was intent on being perfectly comprehensive, one would never be finished, and so all one can do is be humble and make a start. I try to avoid setting up straw men, but I’m afraid in some instances I may come dismayingly close to doing that. Not only have some of these thinkers been incredibly generative, many write on challenging topics in ways that are not entirely accessible. Sometimes it is a writer whose work I must read in translation and a quick comparison between two translations shows meaningful differences that proves the importance of being able to read the material in the original language. In other cases, even when written in a language I am competent in, what the writer really meant by what they wrote is a matter of considerable disagreement and debate. But it is also a fact that having, necessarily, read only a limited amount of each thinker’s writing, even when written in clear and comprehensible language, I can easily and quite accidentally misunderstand and misrepresent what they said and what they meant by what they said by my cherry picking. (Dear Reader, if you believe you find such an error, please point it out to me.)

  I should also mention, Dear Reader, that when I place citations in this series on Groupishness, it is because the citation is a source for my thinking: via either agreement or disagreement. Sometimes I read a source and come to the opposite conclusion. Rather like the convention that one can re-tweet something as much as a mark of disapproval as approval. [Enjoy!]

But, out of all the similar topics that have been concretely written of and discussed widely, I perversely want to find a meaningful definition for a nebulous word like “groupishness.”

Because included in any discussion of the term “groupishness” must be the acknowledgement that much confusion and disagreement abounds as to what is properly considered a characteristic of the individual and what is a characteristic of the group.

Dan Kahan's original post:  MAPKIA! episode 1: religiosity, science comprehension & climate change

I don't think religiosity and science comprehension influence climate change risk perceptions. I do think they have something of a relationship. I am going to focus on religiosity, it being a cultural component I have some experience observing. I turn first to George Homans, the late, great sociologist.

 “But democratic institutions do not exist in a vacuum; they exist in a society, and they cannot live long unless the society is of a certain kind. . . . Democracy cannot be successful unless the nation is well educated and enjoys a standard of living so high that men do not have to worry about sheer survival. Just how high the standard of education and the standard of living need to be we cannot say, but we recognize that at least some minimum level must be achieved.” Homans, The Human Group, 1950, p. 465

It is my observation that individuals who are strongly religious in the US tend to have a personal sense of resource restriction. (A person’s sense of resource restriction is subjective, not objective. A millionaire can have a sense of resource restriction and a church mouse can have a sense of resource abundance.) It isn’t just that climate change threatens their groupish cultural identity: it asks more of them than they remotely feel capable of offering. They feel that they and their descendants will not flourish if the resource restrictions that responding to climate change requires are put into place.

Conversely, those who perceive considerable climate change risk are in a place where they feel that any resource restrictions that might be required are not really going to be a problem for them. They feel that they and their descendants will be better off (particularly compared to the alternative of doing nothing) if the resource restrictions that responding to climate change requires are put into place. Their sense of their own resource abundance (a combination of personal ability, external resources, evaluation of resources in the community) allows them to feel entirely equal to the problem at hand.

So the interesting question to ask for me would be: What influence does life experience have on religiosity and science comprehension and their relationship with climate change risk perceptions?

I can’t resist adding Homans’ observations from 1950 and note that, at that time, his perception was that it was the political left that was the greater threat to democracy. Or that is how I read it.

“Conflict is built deeply into any social order, which would be uninteresting without it. As usual, the question is: How much conflict and in what areas? If social conflict does not go too deep, representative government provides a method for deciding the issues, with much salutary release of emotion. We are all ready to accept a large amount of verbal violence in our politics. Our tolerance for it is high, and we admire a man that gives and takes hard knocks. But if conflict goes deep enough, as the United States once learned, and as the communist propagandists know well, democratic methods do not lead to the peaceful resolution of conflicts but to civil war. For democracy to survive, the members of society must enjoy some area of consensus, supported by the informal contacts of daily life, by formal communication networks, and by common ideals.” Homans, The Human Group, 1950, p. 465 

SNOB V. JERK

I have an illustrative set-up that I use to describe the basis for my delineation of the terms "snob" and "jerk."

Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are forced to attempt to pronounce a phrase that is in French, even though your French accent is not good and you are aware of it. The person you are speaking to starts making fun of you. What do they say?

A "Jerk" would abuse you for speaking French at all. (Bourbonnais, IL is now properly pronounced "Boor-bone-us." Versailles, MO is now properly pronounced "Ver-sayles." I propose that there is a language that is properly called "American" and deconstructing the pronunciation of French words is at the heart of it.)

A "Snob" would make fun of you for your poor French pronunciation, and possibly correct it. A "Selfish Snob" might mention that he has been to France as the basis for authoritatively correcting the pronunciation. A "Controlling Snob" might mention that she learned French from a wonderful French woman who taught at her private school. [In the "you can't make this stuff up" category, a DJ at the local classical station has begun giving the English translation of French-titled pieces because of regular calls to the station complaining about his French accent. I am clearly a "Snob" for listening to classical music at all, no?]

MERITOCRAT V. EQUALIST

One can observe among those groups that fall into the “Egalitarian” southern half of the Cultural Cognition of Risk Group-Grid analysis two quite different ideological moral viewpoints that I will call “Equalism” and “Meritocracy.” Equalism is the sense that no person is inherently superior to another and I associate it with the Communitarian east. Aaron Wildavsky and Mary Douglas referred to those who fall into the southeast quadrant as the “sectarians” [Risk and Culture, 1982]. Conversely, “Meritocracy” lives in the Individualist southwest and argues that people be should be judged on their personal merit and accepts and expects differentiation of ability.

In my conception, "Controlling Snobs" can be Equalists. They believe in leveling the playing field via community efforts, and believe "the system" can and should be managed. A problem is that sometimes the Equalists feel strongly they know best what leveling efforts are required, despite objections from those for whom the efforts are being made. "Selfish Snobs" can be Meritocrats. The are entirely comfortable with letting individuals compete freely for resources and are more concerned with limiting community efforts to control the individual. For them, "the system" needs to be limited even as it is managed. (I am not arguing that Equalism or Meritocracy comprise either supersets or functional limits of Egalitarian viewpoints, only that they are observable among them.)

[Just to round out the story, "Selfish Jerks" are comfortable letting individuals and communities compete, as they believe a properly functioning system will manage it all, but that one should not mess with the system. "Controlling Jerks" perceive that the system will properly manage as long as everyone knows and functions in their proper place. Broadly speaking.]

The orthodox labels for the north and south spokes of the CCR grid-group compass continue to bother me. Nonetheless, I will use them. It seems easy to me for people to (mis)understand those terms as bare-faced descriptions of social organization, with Hierarchists producing significant hierarchy and Egalitarians creating flat social structures. In my conception, it isn’t that the egalitarian social constructs have no structural hierarchy and hierarchical social constructs have no structural egalitarianism. It is the moral authority that groups and their adherents point to that determines their egalitarian or hierarchical orientation. Social constructs are the handmaidens of the group’s sense of where moral authority properly falls: nearly identical social organizations can be formed around perfectly “opposite” cultural viewpoints, the difference will be in their justification for that structure and their conception of the basis for living within the confines of that structure, not the design of the structure itself.

THE EQUALIST/MERITOCRAT EGALITARIAN DIVIDE

From my observations, more than a few people straddle this Equalist/Meritocrat “Egalitarian” divide, depending on the circumstance. Equalism allows a parent to be comfortable with all children getting ribbons on Field Day where a Meritocrat would be annoyed. It allows a school to see no problem with requiring the one child who did well on a test remain with her classmates failed as they re-do a chapter (See School Equalism below). One can find in the same person contradictory Equalist and Meritocratic impulses. They “straddle” the Individualist/Communitarian divide at the Egalitarian spoke, sometimes falling on the Individualists side, sometimes the Communitarian. Straddling Equalists can feel it is important to silence or shout down studies on differences in IQ between men and women and between this “race” or that, as they ascribe profound importance to things like IQ tests as actually measuring real superiority, while, simultaneously, arguing for every advantage they can get for their own child, making sure they live in “safe” neighborhoods with good schools and abandon the unsafe neighborhoods and bad schools to those who cannot afford to equal them in income.

True Equalists would never seek an advantage for their child or would ideologically commit their children to equalizing experiences. But today's high SES Communitarian American faces a community that values individual achievement and a growing divide between the haves and have-nots that makes it more and more difficult for their children to be able to achieve the lifestyle they, as high SES Americans, feels is the correct lifestyle. True Meritocrats would not be troubled by findings of difference, no matter what the basis, and competition is comfortable for them.

But these are not polar opposites, but rather kissing cousins, because they both believe that the social order is created by human beings, run by human beings, and can/should be altered/fixed/played by human beings. One can straddle this divide because one believes moral authority resides in humanity, and one is only waffling over whether that moral authority is substantially communal or individual in orientation. Moral authority resides in humanity, either individually (Meritocrats) or collectively (Equalists), and so does moral responsibility.

Similarly, it is challenging for an Equalist with Meritocratic leanings to reconcile themselves to the idea that men and women are biologically different in any meaningful way because biological difference opens the door to meritocratic difference that one way will merit more than the other. People in other quadrants can see arguments against male and female biological difference as bizarre or even immoral.

The true polar opposites of Egalitarian Equalists and Meritocrats are the Hierarchists to the north on the grid, who believe the power is in the creator of the social order and we human beings merely respond/play our role/are helpless in the face of it. In this view, a supra-human agent (God, Allah, YHWH, Brahma) or a supra-human agency (invisible hand of the market, fate, nature) is the inherent creator of the social order and cannot be controlled/fixed/managed—only insulted (in the case of an agent) or interfered with in ways that inhibit its proper function (free market fundamentalism). The Communitarian side tends to organize around a supra-human agent and a received social order. The Individualist side tends to focus on a supra-human agency that is both uncompromising and fickle. In both cases, the social order is perceived as fragile and interference as immoral.

This underlying, functional difference in cultural viewpoint is why “north” Individualists do not unite politically with “south” Individualists. For Meritocrats, the focus is on the individual being allowed to achieve their full potential. A counter example might be Free Market Fundamentalists for whom the focus is on allowing the system to work. STRADDLING EQUALISTS/MERITOCRATS It has been on my mind that Straddling Equalists/Meritocrats have some ideas about wgat is allowable to judge a person on and what is not, generally viewable as the sort of distinctions employers are allowed to make about potential employees. (Strict Free Market Fundamentalists would not want to limit employers and Strict Meritocrats would not want to limit the competition of individuals.) Things that are allowed to be the basis of merit for high SES Americans Straddling Meritocracy and Equalism:

    IQ

    Income/wealth

    Attractiveness

    Geographical location

    Education

    Criminal record

Things not allowed:

    Race

    Gender

    “Class” (Even though Social Economic Status or “class” is profoundly influences by all of the things that are allowed)

A high SES American Equalist would be profoundly upset to be called a racist, a sexist or a classist. The Deep Meritocrats are completely comfortable with any sort of basis for meriting, and are sometimes proudly “Darwinian” in their adoption of survival of the fittest. It appears to me that Equalists and Meritocrats experience a world where their personal agency is effective. That experience of effective agency grounds their cultural worldview. It is an Egalitarian who creates concepts like Locus of Control (see Locus of Control below) where feeling that one is *not* in control produces measures as pathological and results in poor life/health outcomes. For Hierarchists, imagining that one was in control would be the pathology.

THE AMISH ARE NOT EGALITARIANS

That might not seem to be a statement of profound insight, but Wildavsky and Douglas make just that assessment in Risk and Culture (1982). I must disagree with Wildavsky and Douglas’ argument that the Amish placement on the group-grid schema would be what I would call Equalists and they called sectarians (p. 105-108). They argue that the Amish are strongly egalitarian because of their systemic use of “leveling” techniques like choosing bishops by lot (sort of), having no specialized training for ministers or any paid ministry, and restricting farm size and careers. They ignore the strongly gender-based role restrictions and allow as Egalitarian a system that is only “egalitarian” for male members. They dismiss the Amish for their many schisms, and seem to be predicting their demise, but schism doesn’t necessarily produce fewer Amish, just more groups. Wildavsky and Douglas’ definition of what constitutes social success (income levels, large group sizes) seems to blind them to the success that the Amish have achieved. Conversely, they seem to praise what they perceive as the more strongly hierarchical Hutterites for their stability, as they define stability, but describe differences that make the Hutterites profoundly more Communitarian than the Amish, and only somewhat more Hierarchical.

From my perspective, the Amish are correctly termed “Hierarchists” because of the reasons they give for their structural egalitarianism. The Amish have a hierarchy, a social order, that they believe has been ordained by God. That puts them north on my grid, not south. The Amish social construction is based on their conception of a social order created by a supra-human agent, and they are equal in being less than God (all are equal in the eyes of the Lord). From this perspective, any strength, goodness, or positive quality that one may possess is dwarfed by God’s inherently superior qualities. In my observation, Equalism functionally elevates the human individual and has no room for the sort of submissiveness that is ideologically acceptable and desirable among the Amish. A FINAL COMPARISON If the assessment is that the system hinders equality, it is Egalitarianism, either of the Equalist or Meritocratic (or other) persuasions. If the assessment is that the system demands equality, it is Hierarchism, even if the system produces the functional appearance of egalitarianism.

_____________________________________________________________ School Equalism "To see the full spectrum of tea party morality in a single case, consider (or better still, Google) a transcript on Glenn Beck's website titled 'Best caller ever?,' which relates one man's moment of enlightenment. The exchange, which aired live in late September, starts with karmic outrage. A father in Indiana, proud of his daughter's work ethic and high grades, learned that she would have to retake a social studies test because most of the students—who, he says, run around after school instead of studying—had failed it. The teacher confirmed that yes, the whole class would have to take the test several more times because 'we have to wait for the other children to catch up.' The father asked if his daughter could work on new material while the other kids retook the test. The teacher said no, it would 'make the other children in the class feel not as equal.'" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703673604575550243700895762.html

One of the weaknesses of their definition of this foundation, and its use in MFT, is that it underplays that a key component of moral systems is defining who/what deserves care/moral concern and who/what does not, and also what actually constitutes harm. When they talk about those of the liberal moral viewpoint placing their moral emphasis on “care/harm,” they are being too imprecise with their definition of both of those words, care and harm, and glossing over real differences in the basic moral calculations individuals make to determine what constitutes care and what constitutes harm. MFT emphasizes individual moral viewpoints, as their testing is done at the individual level, and while they broadly aggregate those into liberal, conservative and libertarian as political groups, it does not seem to me that they are actively seeking to address the group dynamics that might drive these differing viewpoints. In fact, I suspect that they would argue that innate differences in individuals (including, among other things, visceral disgust responses, need for closure, authoritarian personality types) are what influence a person to hold a particular moral viewpoint and political orientation. I am troubled by the argument that individual moral calculations in response to questionnaires are expressions of an innate difference, when it is clear that many moral responses are culturally sensitive. From my reading, it seems clear that disgust responses are particularly and rather spectacularly susceptible to cultural influence (what invokes a disgust response, what does not).

More comfortably for me, Cultural Cognition of Risk Theory (hereafter CCR) emphasizes cultural viewpoints, mapping perceptions of risk into four cultural viewpoints under a “group-grid” matrix. The “group” axis delineates viewpoints ranging from “individualist” to “communitarian” and the “grid” axis delineates viewpoints ranging from “hierarchist” to “egalitarian,” which are then combined to label the quadrants: hierarchist-communitarian, hierarchist-individualist, egalitarian-communitarian and egalitarian-individualist. 

This theory (CCR) emphasizes group identity, that individuals will adopt what they perceive to be the viewpoint of their group and be influenced to accept or adopt information that aligns with their cultural viewpoint both in style and in substance. (See: A Complete and Accurate Account of How Everything Works) CCR proposes ideological symmetry in the tendency of people across the political spectra (CCR uses a grid, not a line to delineate viewpoints) to have identity-protective reasoning influence their participation in public discourse. I think this is an incredibly useful way to understand our political conflicts in the US: different cultural viewpoints have developed differing assessments of the risks associated with certain issues, and our natural groupishness inclines us to see the validity and profundity of arguments in line with our culture (and its proponents who understand things as we do) and to disparage the validity and profundity of arguments and its proponents who do not.

It is part of my proposal (not unique to me) that it is helpful to think about human beings as forming coalitions, which would be culturally determined as being more or less durable and important (gender, family, nation, work, team formation in the face of crisis), and that any person will not only have multiple coalitional loyalties, but also that those coalitions will have differing foci. One person may focus their concern most on family, another city, another state, another national, another international. There are limits as to how much focus any one person can bring to a particular level of coalition and attention will shift as need and perceived threat (aka “risk”) arises. Much of this is culturally malleable, but urgency and agency will combine to place focus and action where the person most feels it needs to be. 

As I have mentioned, repeatedly, I am uncomfortable with the arguments that those of the statistical conservative moral viewpoint (hereafter “Conservatives) have a personality pathology of xenophobia and closed-mindedness that is innately, biologically, evolutionarily determined and, in the end, more primitive than those of the statistical liberal moral viewpoint (hereafter “Liberals”) who lack these unfortunate qualities. Instead, I suggest that we are all “capable” of turning our attention to a local coalition when needs there seem great, and when our concerns at that local coalition-level are met (or we choose to ignore them, like Dickens’ “telescopic philanthropy”), we are then enabled to turn our attention to wider coalitions or potential coalitions. Alternatively, something may bring our attention to larger-scale coalition needs, but once that larger-scale coalition is no longer considered to be under threat, we will return to our attention to our favored local coalition (family, work, religious community). So that, after 9/11, some Americans would have found themselves widening their level of coalitional concern to the national level while others would have found themselves contracting their level of coalitional concern from “universal” (or international or perhaps transnational) to national. New York City residents, by contrast, would have perhaps found their attention forcibly placed on the local if their family had needs, but widened to beyond their doors if their family’s needs were met but others in the coalition of New Yorkers had needs they felt they could meet.

Deciding what level of coalitional concern is most important is a cultural decision, and one that is answered differently by different people in different circumstances. US society benefits from people with their attention at all levels of coalition. I wonder if it is only because of our affluence that we have the energy and ability to have such a large coalition of Liberals who place their focus outside of what they might consider parochial local coalitions to a wider scope of transnational coalition. I discuss this at further length here. Both Conservatives and Liberals in the US wish to improve their coalitions by the addition of new people, but the perspective on how to add to the coalition properly is in dispute. But they are the same in that both cultures will seek to add to their cultural coalitions by assimilating newcomers to their moral systems, their cultural views, their sense of proper moral authority.

I don’t prefer the orthodox CCR labels for the “grid” axis of the CCR matrix (hierachists and egalitarians). I feel that “hierarchist” is fundamentally a derogatory term in the US (1), even to those who would be functionally and accurately labeled hierarchists in the CCR system, and that “egalitarian” lets those whose cultural viewpoint maps to that area bask in an imagined (and in the US, morally superior) egalitarianism they do not remotely achieve. I agree with the CCR matrix functionally, and accept their measurement of where political assessments of risk fall on the matrix; I disagree with the labels used, and I propose a labeling system for what I perceive organizes cultural viewpoints along the grid axis of the CCR matrix that I call the Moral Authority Group-Grid matrix.

Underlying the levels of coalition we engage (which are widely similar in scope across civilizations, though the details are heavily influenced by cultural concerns) is a cultural sense of the proper placement of moral authority. I propose that Liberals place moral authority in the individual and have a strong sense of the importance of personal agency independent of a system (these are CCR’s “egalitarians”). Conservatives place moral authority in “the system” as created or generated by a moral power (God, Allah, YHWH, tradition, the Bible, the Constitution, the free market, law of the street). While Conservatives will still have as strong sense of personal agency, it will be under and within the system their moral authority has provided them (these are CCR’s “hierarchists”).

So, in my formulation, the proper placement of moral authority (and power) is the functional difference in “grid” characteristics of these cultural viewpoints. “Mechanists” experience a moral authority that is supra-human. It may be sentient and omniscient like the Christian God as revealed in the Bible, or be more like the uncaring and unconscious (but powerful and morally pure) “invisible hand” of the Free Market, or it can be consciously man-made, like the Constitution, or imbued with moral authority via tradition. Mechanists sense that they are a small part of a larger moral system, something more powerful than they are as individuals, something more wise, over which they have (and should have) little or no control. It is not possible, in the mechanist’s conception, to place moral blame on a mechanist’s moral authority or the systems it has created, rather responsibility falls to the individual (family, nation) to be in proper relationship with the moral authority and within the system this moral authority has created. Mechanists do still experience a sense of personal agency, though they will experience it as constrained or contained by the systems that the supra-human agency has  rightly and properly created. 

This sense that moral blame cannot be placed on the source of moral authority is symmetrical: both mechanists and activists experience their moral authority as unimpeachable.

For the “activists,” moral authority is in the individual. Their sense of personal agency is imbued with an urgency that they are responsible for all truly moral action in the world. It seems natural to them that moral failings do not fall on the individual (who is the source of true moral authority) but on the faulty systems the world creates, and they emphasize taking action to correct and change immoral systems. Inaction can be seen as immoral in and of itself. The activist sense is that the individual will succeed morally and functionally unless the system is immoral and dysfunctional. They inevitably see the system as in need of correction, if not destruction. 

Political liberals would congregate statistically in the activist quadrants, ranging from individualists like atheist activists to communitarians like environmental activists. Statistical political conservatives would congregate in the mechanist quadrants, ranging from individualists like free-market fundamentalists to communitarians like the Amish. My “Liberal” label roughly combines both communitarian and individualist egalitarians, and my “Conservative” label roughly combines communitarian and individualist hierarchists. (The above group-grid shows potential placement of culturally identifiable groups in the US; it has no hard data to support it.)

I propose that these differing allocations of moral authority result in differing definitions of who qualifies for care and what constitutes harm, differences that are insufficiently captured in MFT.

CULTURAL VIEWS ON CARE: DOWNTRODDEN vs. BROKEN

So it has been much on my mind, recently, that the preferred mode of thinking about those considered deserving of care and privileged moral concern by Liberals are those who are downtrodden, those who are injured or kept from full functioning by the system, and the focus of action will be on changing the system. Conservatives, meanwhile, privilege those who are broken as in need of care, and this care will be focused on fixing the individual not the system. To reiterate, intimately tied in with these calculations on care is the culture’s fundamental understanding of where to place moral authority. If Liberals place moral authority in the individual, as I believe they do, then it becomes natural to place blame and responsibility on the system and desire it to be fixed rather than fixing the individual. In fact, it becomes a sort of blasphemy to place blame on the individual or to suggest the individual needs to be fixed. Rather than wondering whether or not the system needs to change, a significant part of the moral calculation for Liberals is who is more downtrodden. Conversely, if Conservatives place moral authority in the system (via the agency that created that system), then it becomes necessary to place blame and responsibility on the individual and desire to fix the person rather than fix the system. It is not the system that needs to be corrected, except perhaps to return it to a previously pure state that has been adulterated by Liberal changes, and concerns around brokenness will only be to determine if someone has actually been harmed and what the appropriate aid would be. 

No one places moral blame on their moral authority; everyone places blame (and responsibility) elsewhere. Broadly speaking, a primary conflict between the moral systems as expressed in these two cultures will be where moral authority legitimately resides and functionally whether to privilege social justice (heal the individual by fixing the system) or charity (directly aid the individual).

An example that comes to mind for me is a Liberal I know with a concern for Spanish-speaking immigrants who feels the best way to aid them is to agitate for changes in the system through protests, legislation, organizing and marches, including dramatic marches through the scorching border deserts of the American Southwest. A Conservative I know with a concern for Spanish-speaking immigrants organizes an “English for speakers of Spanish” class. It seems to me that the Liberal is concerned with changing the system and has his gaze on lifting up the downtrodden, while the Conservative is concerned with assimilating the Spanish-speaking immigrants into the coalitions that are important to her. The Liberal perceives that the system should broaden itself to accommodate the needs of Spanish-speaking immigrants; the Conservative perceives that the Spanish-speaking immigrant needs to be helped to speak the majority language, fit in better, and perhaps qualify for better jobs. 

More theoretically, a Conservative might also have a concern about illegal immigration (something that injures the coalition) and desire to strengthen laws designed to remove illegal immigrants from the country; I propose they do not perceive this as a change to the system, but a failure of the system to function as it is designed to function by the interference of people trying to change or game the system. They would perceive illegal immigration as a threat to the functioning, coherence and stability of important coalitions, like the national coalition. Meanwhile a Liberal might have a concern about homophobic businesses refusing to offer services for gay weddings or owners of businesses expressing opposition to such weddings, and so boycott and protest such businesses. They perceive a need to change the laws to make such weddings legal and to constrain individuals from refusing services for such weddings or from otherwise expressing opposition to such weddings.

Some may argue that many Liberals are in the “helping professions,” like psychotherapy, which focus on healing the broken. I don’t know of any systematic statistical analysis of therapist political affiliations, but anecdotally it does seem to attract a large number of Liberals. This potential dominance might seem to argue against my sense of Conservatives seeking to heal brokenness and Liberals seeking to aid the downtrodden. I plan to discuss this at length in a separate blog entry, but Ethan Watters has a fascinating book called Crazy Like Us on the globalization of the American views on mental health and mental illness that do not always translate as well or as universally as we might like to think.

RECAP: TWO VIEWS OF CARE

Aid the Downtrodden: the system is the problem that needs to be fixed; moral authority is rightly placed in the individual. The system only holds down the individual. The system is moral or immoral (and produces morality or immorality); the individual is not ultimately responsible for any immorality: the system is.

Help the Broken: the individual is the problem that needs to be fixed; moral authority is embedded in the system via its Creator. Each individual has a place in the system, if they will accept it. The individual is moral or immoral (and produces morality or immorality); the system is not responsible for any immorality: individuals are.

Here are a few examples that I believe show how these differences sometimes play out.

DAVID BROOKS and ALLEN FRANCES

NYTimes columnist David Brooks’ piece “The Psych Approach” elicited a response from Allen Frances (Don’t Blame Everything on Psychology) that allows me to illustrate my thinking. 

I’ll start with a quote from Frances’ response to Brooks’ article:

What Brooks doesn't know about psychology is a lot. Everything he says about it has a shallow ring, is misinformed, and displays the same bias and ulterior motive. Brooks is a complacent apologist for the status quo. Whenever events scream out that there is an obvious defect in one of his cherished social policies, Brooks comes to its defense with a muddled pop psychological explanation -- hoping in the process to deflect attention away from any serious policy discussion of what has gone wrong and what can be done to correct it. The consistent tactic is to rationalize a failing public policy by putting all the blame on messed up individual psychology.

Fairly hostile. One wonders what horrible social policy Brooks was defending and how he was blaming individual psychology. From Brooks’ article:

In the past several decades, policy makers have focused on the material and bureaucratic things that correlate to school failure, like poor neighborhoods, bad nutrition, schools that are too big or too small. But, more recently, attention has shifted to the psychological reactions that impede learning — the ones that flow from insecure relationships, constant movement and economic anxiety.

Attention has shifted toward the psychological for several reasons. First, it’s become increasingly clear that social and emotional deficits can trump material or even intellectual progress. Schools in the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, are among the best college prep academies for disadvantaged kids. But, in its first survey a few years ago, KIPP discovered that three-quarters of its graduates were not making it through college. It wasn’t the students with the lower high school grades that were dropping out most. It was the ones with the weakest resilience and social skills. It was the pessimists.

Second, over the past few years, an array of psychological researchers have taught us that motivation, self-control and resilience are together as important as raw I.Q. and are probably more malleable. . . . 

Schools are now casting about, trying to find psychological programs that will help students work on resilience, equanimity and self-control.

As I read his argument, children are having trouble managing their response to chaotic and/or impoverished home environments, and schools are trying to bolster children’s coping skills in the face of these challenges. It seems, well, caring. But Frances appears infuriated.

What's wrong with this picture? First off, correlation doesn't mean causality. The kids with traumatic childhoods are also independently likely to have many other obstacles -- economic, environmental, and genetic -- to achieving good school performance.

But the real problem. In Brooks' proposed solution, the kids need somehow to be made more psychologically healthy so that they can cope resiliently with the [sic] their difficult school and life situations. This call for government psychological engineering is surprisingly discrepant with Brooks' usual conservative ideology, but it does serve his larger purpose of distracting attention from the enormous and unprecedented societal and economic inequalities that confront our children and are also ripping apart our civil fabric. Improving our kids performance in school won't come from some vague, quixotic psychological fix. It requires they have better lives and better schools and that means us becoming a fairer society.

Brooks supports the idea of attempting to fix the broken, but for Allen that is not acceptable. The only acceptable thing is to understand the children as downtrodden and fix the system. Coping mechanisms will only gloss over the real issues. Who is being more caring? Is Brooks more caring because he believes psychological programs can help traumatized children cope and perhaps have a better life outcome than they might othewrise have had, or is Frances more caring because he wants to fix the underlying issue and provide real life improvement for these children? I think the truly compassionate response is to say we need both viewpoints pursued, and neither is fundamentally immoral.

JONATHAN HAIDT and CHRIS HEDGES

Jonathan Haidt, one of the primary formulators of MFT, recently published a book called, The Righteous Mind, which I have read. In it, he lays out the broad theory of MFT and offers a wide-ranging discussion on the moral conflicts he sees as embedded in our political conflicts. He confesses in the book to having adjusted his own political identity from one that was unabashedly liberal to what he considers centrist. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist and political advocate of left religious liberalism in the US. In 2002, he published a book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, that I read at that time. His writing had always interested me and I’ve enjoyed his perspective. I was shocked and dismayed to read Hedges’ review of The Righteous Mind, “The Righteous Road to Ruin.” Hedges bizarrely and unfairly mischaracterized the content of Haidt’s work and engaged in a sort of character assassination by offering as Haidt’s opinion quotes from The Righteous Mind where Haidt was clearly describing the opinions of others. Haidt composed a reply: “Chris Hedges Joins the Tea Party.”

It seems to me, now, that what Hedges is railing against is his sense that Haidt is abandoning the downtrodden by not actively condemning the Conservative viewpoint he articulates in his book, and that this omission is as much a sin (of inaction) as the original (to Hedges) immoral viewpoint. This is from Hedges' book review:

Haidt lists six primary concerns of those he considers morally whole—care, liberty, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity. He believes liberals, because they do not sufficiently value fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity, are morally deficient. The attributes he champions, however, when practiced among social conservatives, often mask a rapacious cruelty to the weak and oppressed. Slaveholders in the antebellum South, courteous and chivalrous to their own class, church going, fiercely loyal to the Confederacy, in short morally whole in Haidt’s thesis, created a hell on earth for African-Americans. One could say the same about many German Nazis and members of most cults. Haidt, although he acknowledges this dilemma in his moral constructions, would do well to ask himself whether there is something deeply flawed in a model of moral behavior that a slaveholder, a member of a cult or a fascist could attain.

It is perfectly clear from Haidt’s work that he in no way considers liberals morally deficient. I can’t decide if Hedges misapprehends the difference between normative (how people should act) and descriptive (how people do act) work in morality or if he rejects descriptive work—Haidt clearly states that he is trying to be descriptive and not normative in his work. But Haidt’s silence on the immorality of the Conservative viewpoint he describes is what I feel induced Hedges to condemnation and contempt. Hedges needs moral systems “practiced among social conservatives” to be labeled immoral because they “often mask a rapacious cruelty to the weak and oppressed,” or, as I would formulate it, privilege the system and fail to pay moral attention to the downtrodden.

CHARLES MURRAY and THOMAS EDSALL

I read Charles Murray’s recent book, Coming Apart, with much interest. He juxtaposes the cultural world of the 1950s he grew up in and compares it on many measures with today. He argues that while the elites have continued with an essentially 1950s social morality, the non-elites have abandoned the moral choices that would allow them to succeed. 

Murray offered two solutions to the problem he raises. Murray proposes that these elites “preach what they practice,” in opposition to their professed morality of tolerance which (he suggests) has influenced the non-elites to behavior that is not in their best interest. Secondly, and this is advice where Murray has practiced what he preaches, he believes the educated elite should move out of their “Super Zips,” their high-IQ, high-quality education, culturally-homogenous, safe enclaves and live in socioeconomically mixed neighborhoods. I didn’t see that Edsall addressed this recommendation, which was one of Murray’s few concrete offerings.

As I read it, Murray sees the small-town America life he experienced in the 1950s as the ideal of America, though he explicitly mentions that it should be minus the rampant sexism and racism. This was a world where the president of Maytag lived near the piano teacher and the sons of executives (like Murray) mingled with the sons of linemen (like my father), living in the same neighborhoods (or close by), going to the same schools, drinking the same beer, driving the same cars, watching the same television shows, embracing the same wider culture. A large part of his concern, from my perspective, is that the culture of the elites and the culture of the non-elites are too far apart for mutual trust and prosperity, and that by “rubbing elbows,” that mutuality and respect can return. Murray sees the non-elites as broken by following the wrong prescription for a happy life, and that it can be fixed by the elites living among the non-elites. Elites would then understand the challenges the non-elites face better. Also, this would help build a community with more shared values and habits, a community that would also share the same risks, environment, schools, roads, shops, policing &etc.  This exposure would also show the non-elites what it takes to prosper: self-discipline and a sort of moral regularity. Murray has considerable concern about the US beginning to produce a self-sustaining class of elites whose isolation both feeds and reproduces their privilege, something that was not true in the 1950s.

Thomas Edsall, in his article “What to Do About Coming Apart?”, offers this: “

Murray alleges that those with higher IQs now exhibit personal and social behavioral choices in areas like marriage, industriousness, honesty and religiosity that allow them to enjoy secure and privileged lives. Whites in the lower social-economic strata are less cognitively able – in Murray’s view – and thus less well-equipped to resist the lure of the sexual revolution and doctrines of self-actualization so they succumb to higher rates of family dissolution, non-marital births, worklessness and criminality. This interaction between IQ and behavioral choice, in Murray’s framework, is what has led to the widening income and cultural gap.  

A great deal of Edsall’s article explicates Murray’s other books and controversies and the policies they encouraged, which seems a warning from Edsall for Liberals to take Murray seriously. Edsall reads Murray as believing that the problem is the lower average intelligence of the non-elites and the problematic morality of the individuals of the non-elite classes (blaming the downtrodden) and refusing to acknowledge that it is actually the system to blame. Murray’s prescriptions, elites preaching what they practice and elites moving into socioeconomically mixed neighborhoods, do not match Edsall’s reading, and I think Edsall has missed the point of Murray’s thinking because he is too morally troubled by Murray’s perceived placing of blame on the downtrodden.

Edsall prefers Walter Russell Mead’s take on the challenges facing America:

 The 21st century, Mead adds,

“must reinvent the American Dream. It must recast our economic, social, familial, educational and political systems for new challenges and new opportunities. Some hallowed practices and institutions will have to go under the bus. But in the end, the changes will make us richer, more free and more secure than we are now.”

Edsall concludes, approvingly,

Mead’s predictions may or may not prove prescient, but it is his thinking, more than Murray’s, that reflects the underlying optimism that has sustained the United States for more than two centuries — a refusal to believe that anything about human nature is essentially “intractable.” Mead’s way of looking at things is not only more inviting than Murray’s, it is also more on target.

I can’t help thinking Edsall finds Mead’s take preferable to Murray’s prescription because of his sense that the system is in error and the system must be fixed, and that proposing to fix individuals is simply fundamentally anathema to his cultural worldview, even if that might improve the quality of their lives.

A month or so after the above, Edsall offered an article in the New York Times called “The Reproduction of Privilege” that seemed to me to be entirely in line with Murray’s findings that we are seeing the creation of a permanent class of elites (something Murray clearly does not approve of and thinks should not happen), though in his case Edsall makes no attempt to offer any solutions. 

THE TRADE-OFFS REALITY WHEN IT COMES TO DEFINITIONS OF CARE

There are trade-offs between differing cultures, good and well-being achieved in one that cannot be achieved in another, and ills that are engendered in one that are not in another. The problem for those too embedded in the moral viewpoint of their own culture is that they are blind to the possibility that good and well-being could be achieved in the other culture and that the people embedded in that other culture (and its moral viewpoint) could possibly be good people with good intentions and good lives.

I think that it is important to note that from the Liberal cultural viewpoint, what they consider brokenness is best diagnosed and treated by professionals. Brokenness for them tends to be a biological issue requiring something akin to medical aid. From the Conservative cultural viewpoint, brokenness can be a result of a rupture in the individual’s relationship with the moral authority or the system it has created, which other members of the system (or the moral authority itself) can indeed help heal without reference to professionals. It can also be that professional treatment, even if considered valid or of potential assistance, is unavailable due to lack of resources, and so what aid is possible is rendered. 

An experience I had became the impetus for my thinking on the difference of care between Liberals and Conservatives. Many years ago now, a member of a liberal Quaker meeting (which is peopled by cultural Liberals) lost a family member. I read about it in a Quaker newsletter. It was a short piece, but it made it clear that this family member had suffered from addiction issues and mental illness and had died rather young as a result of medical complications relating to poor self-care, or at least that is how I remember it now. It was several months before I saw this person and, though feeling somewhat self-conscious because of the length of time that had passed, expressed my condolences. I was thanked, and informed that I was the first fellow Quaker to do so. Frankly, I was stunned.

More recently, while attending an evangelical Quaker congregation’s worship (which is peopled by cultural Conservatives), an infrequent and fairly new attender stood up in the middle of “open worship” and informed the congregation that a family member had died suddenly, very young, of unknown causes just a few days before. The worship service stopped, congregation member encircled this person with silent and vocal prayer, and the community rallied around to help raise money for a funeral, organize a service, and generally render aid to this person and the family, though neither this person nor any of the family were technically members of the congregation.

I do not think these examples are atypical. I am not a proper member of either the Conservative or Liberal cultures, but I had sort of bought into the rhetorical moralizing and anticipated that the Liberals would be open, accepting and, well, nice and the Conservatives would be closed, groupish, and cold. That was precisely the opposite of my experience. There were absolutely exceptions in either direction, with a few really warm Liberals and a few really cold Conservatives, but it appears to me that being warm, friendly, and welcoming is simply more valued as a way of expressing oneself and representing one’s group among Conservatives. Among the Liberals, it was left to individuals to connect with me or not and there was no successful effort to meaningfully express welcome to me as an individual. This is, perhaps, what Jonathan Haidt means when he insists that Liberals are less groupish, but I perceive a different sort of groupishness that, for one thing, requires members (and visitors) to Liberal religous groups not mind being left to their own devices to an extent than makes me uncomfortable when I experience it. 

It appears to me that the Liberal culture, which prides itself on its individualism and where members seem to have a strong sense of the importance of personal agency, can fail to render aid unless they perceive the person to be downtrodden and even in those cases will tend to prefer to act to change the system that they perceive to be immoral and not perceive that the individual can be aided much personally. The downtrodden, from this perspective, need a moral system within which they will naturally lead happier, healthier and more rewarding and rewarded lives. Another aspect to keep in mind about the downtrodden is that they are not actually equal, being suppressed from full capacity by the system, and so will not be perceived to be in real competition for the resources Liberal culture prizes.

The Liberal project of aiding the downtrodden requires broadly able people—not broken ones—to render and sustain such aid. I suspect part of the reticence to even express condolences, much less render more direct aid, to a fellow Quaker who had lost a family member under these circumstances is the dual sense that (1) a fellow liberal Quaker is able and that (2) the one who was lost was not able, and thus an embarrassment and a drain on societal resources. They would have had every opportunity (not being downtrodden) to succeed, and they had not done so. This embedded perspective, rarely articulated, turns ableness into an acceptable, meritocratic status test. More able (financially, mentally, physically) means higher status. Too low in these, and one is presumed to be less capable of contributing meaningfully to society, and less capable of leading a life worth living. It undergirds, with conceptions of the primacy and possibility of personal control, Liberal ethical support for assisted suicide (persons of diminished or about-to-be-diminished capacity mentally or physically deserve the right to not experience life in such a diminished capacity). It is one backdoor through which left-wing support for programs such as eugenics enter into Liberal thought. It is also a currently-acceptable line of reasoning for aborting babies that are forecast to be statistically less likely to be mentally and/or physically able than the average, and for aborting babies if the mother/parents are less mentally/physically and/or financially able  than they believe they need to be. [One example of this thinking explicated here: Pregnant at 49.]

Conversely, the Conservative project of aiding the broken does not require unbroken people to render such aid or place all that much emphasis on ableness, and one will find, at least among the social conservatives I have been embedded with, much language around mutual brokenness (I’ve been where you are) and a general sense of it being acceptable to be less intelligent, less handsome, less wealthy than others. A life worth living is not as much measured by ableness as it is by fulfilling familial, communal and societal roles and expectations. The trade-off here is that there seems to be less of an embedded sense of “personal power” and anyone who finds the roles allotted impossible or undesirable to fulfill will not feel welcome.

PARSING CARE AS A MORAL VERB

So let’s return to MFT’s care/harm moral foundation:

This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.

It is necessary that we will privilege one kind of caring over another, that we must use a sort of moral algebra to calculate what moral challenges to embrace and what moral challenges to ignore. Our cultures help us determine what is important and what is not. We cannot possibly concern ourselves, as individuals and as cultures, with absolutely every possible moral concern. Coalitional concerns for the downtrodden override coalition-maintaining concerns for members of the coalition who are broken and in need of aid. From this viewpoint, advocating the teaching of coping mechanisms to “traumatized children” deserves a contemptuous blog-entry trouncing. Who is being kind? Who is being gentle? Who is being nurturing? Which is more important, social justice or charity?

One of the things Arthur Brooks argues in Who Really Cares? Is that Conservatives are more charitable than Liberals because Liberals ideologically believe in their tax dollars as functioning as their charitable work. I would argue that the Liberal moral habit is to aid the downtrodden in a hands-off way, for instance through government programs and through political advocacy, and to not commit themselves or their resources directly to individuals because of their sense that the real issues involved are systemic issues and that individual challenges are best met not by direct intervention through personal charity, but by changing “the system” or, in the case of “true” brokenness, by the careful intervention of professionals. I would argue they see their tax dollars as more appropriately aiding the properly downtrodden than charity does.

Conservatives get in the biggest trouble with Liberals when they conceive of something as brokenness that requires healing that Liberals do not conceive of that way at all, for instance homosexual behavior or pornography. Conversely, Liberal promotion of downtrodden groups they perceive in need of elevation will baffle and annoy Conservatives who perceive no real need there.

Let’s look at MFT’s Dictionary which was

 (created by Jesse Graham and Jonathan Haidt) -- For use with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program (www.liwc.net), this dictionary provides information on the proportions of virtue and vice words for each foundation on whatever corpus of text you are interested in. (http://moralfoundations.org/index.php?t=othermaterials)” 

These are the virtue words for the care/harm foundation: 

safe* peace* compassion* empath* sympath* care caring protect* shield shelter amity secur* benefit* defen* guard* preserve

Can I categorize these words as  either a downtrodden care concern or a broken care concern? Perhaps safe, protect, shield, shelter, secur*, benefit, defen*, guard and preserve are more indicative of a concern for the downtrodden. One of the characteristics of downtrodden care versus broken care is that the downtrodden recipient of care is generally someone to be elevated and helped by someone who is not downtrodden. There is an inherent chivalry in this sort of care. Broken care has more of a concern of aiding with less of a sense of the one offering aid necessarily being any less broken. Words that seem specific to concern for the broken include compassion, particularly in its specific meaning as "suffering with." The other words (peace, empth*, sympath*, care, caring, amity) seem equally applicable to both. Who deserves care and what constitutes harm are not trivial questions, and a part of a cultural viewpoint is to determine how one calculates this moral balance. It is interesting to note that words for “take care of your own” would not be included under "care" in MFT, but separated out into the “binding” (culturally- and overtly-approved by Conservatives only) foundations of Loyalty/betrayal and Authority/subversion.

One more look at my Moral Authority Group-Grid matrix with broken versus downtrodden:

I propose that Activist cultural emphasis on the moral authority of the individual will prevent acceptance of theories of aid that focus on the brokenness of the individual, while Mechanist cultural emphasis on the moral authority of the supra-human agency they perceive creating the received system will prevent acceptance of theories of aid that focus on the way the system harms individuals: the downtrodden. Individualist cultural concerns around the tyranny of the majority will conflict with Communitarian cultural concerns about group-defined correct behaviors. Each perspective has a validity that deserves to be recognized, an internal coherence and consistency that should not be denied, and insight to offer to the quest for truth. As Richard Shweder offers: “the knowable world is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all points of view at once, and empty if seen from nowhere in particular.”

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(1) Richard Shweder, Why Do Men Barbecue?