![]() But being as polarized as America is now is dangerous, he said. The mid-20th century period when polarization was low was an anomaly in history, Haidt said, and it's unlikely we'll get back to that point. ![]() There is debate over whether the American public, not just the political elite, is increasingly polarized, but either way, the result has been a combative climate in Washington, D.C. What that means is that major votes are now almost entirely along party lines. "The good news is that the House is now so polarized that it can't get any worse." Looking back at political polarization in Congress in the last century, "the bad news is that things get worse slowly and then they get worse quickly," Haidt said. In the days of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam war, there were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. ![]() The danger, Haidt said, comes from humans' innate tendency toward tribalism. The best predictor of how much a conservative will hate flag-burning is how strongly he or she feels that some things are sacred, he said. Even flag-burning falls under the realm of sanctity. In the realm of sexual purity, for example, conservatives are much more likely than liberals to care about sexual sanctity and issues like remaining a virgin until marriage, Haidt said. Leftist anarchists, for example, sometimes rally around the slogan "no gods, no masters."įinally, conservatives worry about issues of sanctity, while liberals are more likely to take a "nothing is sacred" position. Hierarchy and authority tend to be more important on the right - consider religious beliefs that "God is in charge" - while the left prefers to subvert authority. The second conservative-only value is authority. "It's because of these sorts of arguments that come from the left quite often that the right has a field day charging the left with treason," Haidt said. John Lennon's "Imagine," in which he sings about national borders melting away, is an example. People on the political right feel more strongly about group loyalty than people on the left, who tend to be ambivalent about groups, Haidt said. The first conservative-only belief is loyalty and betrayal. These social beliefs occur along a continuum, with the moral factors on a continuum of importance as well.) (In these studies, conservatism and liberalism refer to social beliefs, such as beliefs about gay marriage, not economic beliefs such as how much someone likes the free market. īeside these three more-or-less shared values, Haidt has identified three more that matter only to conservatives. But the left tends to talk more about businesses and the rich as oppressors, as in the Occupy Wall Street movement, which protests the wealthiest "1 percent," while the right worries about government oppression, as in Tea Party protests festooned with "Don't Tread On Me" flags. Likewise, Haidt said, absolutely no one likes to feel oppressed. Both are ways to think about fairness, but that doesn't mean the left and right can't have screaming fights over which is more moral. Conservatives worry more about proportionality, asking if everyone is putting in the work to get their benefits. Liberals, for example, worry more about inequality for inequality's sake. How these issues manifest can depend a bit on ideology. Liberals tend to care about harm and care most, and conservatives least, but everyone takes these issues into consideration. The first three - harm and care, fairness and justice, and liberty versus oppression - motivate both liberals and conservatives, he said. In fact, Haidt has added four more moral dimensions to the mix, bringing the grand total of basic moral drivers to six. Haidt and his colleages, however, have found evidence that humans base their moral code on far more than "does it hurt someone?" or "is it fair?" The first psychologists to study the psychology of ideology and morals focused on two main issues: harm versus care, and fairness and judgment.
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