Eight years ago, when Jonathan Haidt, PhD, began to write his best-selling book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion," the topic seemed particularly timely.
"I made up that title in 2008, when it seemed America was descending into the most intense political partisanship I'd ever seen," he says. "Unfortunately, things have gotten so much worse since then."
It's not just a deadlocked Congress or battling presidential candidates — ordinary Americans have become more polarized as well.
"There is rising anger, hostility and distrust," Haidt says. "If you look at what people in each party think of people in the other party, it has gotten steadily worse since the mid-1990s."
Haidt, a social psychologist and professor of ethical leadership at the New York University-Stern School of Business, has spent the past two decades studying the psychology of morality and moral emotions, most recently focusing on how liberals' and conservatives' different moral values — and the resulting misunderstandings between the two groups — can lead to political polarization and distrust.
In his talk at APA's 2016 Annual Convention in Denver, he will discuss the increasing incivility and intolerance he sees in U.S. politics and culture, and what he believes psychologists can and should be doing to address that problem.
Haidt's "moral foundations theory" lays out six principles that, to varying degrees, undergird most people's moral values and judgments:
- Care/harm, which underlies values such as kindness, gentleness and nurturance.
- Fairness/cheating, which underlies justice and rights.
- Loyalty/betrayal, which underlies values such as patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group.
- Authority/subversion, which underlies deference to authority and tradition.
- Sanctity/degradation, which underlies religious ideals of striving to live in a noble way.
- Liberty/oppression, which underlies values of autonomy and opposition to oppression.
In general, he says, liberals' moral sense rests primarily on the care/harm, fairness/cheating and liberty/oppression foundations, while conservatives' moral worldview is based on all six foundations. Because each group has difficulty understanding the others' morality they often demonize each other.
In his book, his public talks and through his nonprofit organization civilpolitics.orgopens in new window, Haidt aims to encourage people to engage with and try to understand their opponents' political views.
In the same vein, he wants to encourage psychologists to engage in these questions as well.
"This is the urgent national problem in our politics, on campus, between races," he says. "Psychology should be right there at the forefront, studying it, developing treatments and making things better."
