Hope for Liberaltarians

Kerry Howley | September 21, 2007

I've been away trying to convince some college students of the moral rightness of selling off their body parts, so I'm a bit late to the blogospheric Haidt discussion. If you've yet to read moral philosopher Will Wilkinson's essay on Haidt, you should check it out:

Haidt’s studies, which involve confronting subjects with often bizarre moral scenarios (there is plenty of material about incest and dead animals) and evaluating their responses, suggest that while Democrat-leaning liberals draw almost exclusively from harm and reciprocity, Republican-leaning conservatives draw more from the whole range of moral emotion. “Conservatives have many moral concerns that liberals simply do not recognize as moral concerns,” Haidt and collaborator Jesse Graham write in a forthcoming paper for Social Justice Research. “When conservatives talk about virtues and policies based on the ingroup, hierarchy, and purity foundations, liberals hear talk about theta waves,” Haidt and Graham’s term for imaginary transmissions from space.

Most intriguing is the possibility of systematic left-right differences on the purity dimension, which Haidt pegs as the source of religious emotion. In a fascinating chapter in his illuminating recent book, The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt explains how a primal biological system—the disgust system—designed to keep us clear of rotten meat, expanded over our evolutionary history to encompass sexual norms, physical deformations, and much more. Haidt asks us to “Imagine visiting a town where people wear no clothes, never bathe, have sex ‘doggy-style’ in public, and eat raw meat by biting off pieces directly from the carcass.” Disgusting? No doubt. Immoral? If your thought is, “Well, they’re not violating anyone’s rights,” then, Haidt predicts, you probably didn’t vote for Bush.

I'm just finishing Haidt's book, but I've been especially struck by how unstable any conservative/libertarian alliance ought to be from a psychological perspective. At yourmorals.org, I score 0 out of 5 on the purity dimension, .3 on the authority dimension, and .3 on the loyalty dimension, all sentiments conservatives seem to hold dear; my moral sentiments are almost entirely calibrated toward harm and fairness, averse to tribalism and tradition. Wilkinson scores very similarly; our responses out us as extreme liberals. (Ron Bailey doesn't seem too worried about purity or authority either.) Extrapolating from your own scores is never a great idea, but it doesn't seem like a great leap to expect that libertarians will be less concerned with respect for authority than avoidance of harm. Self-described libertarians aren't charted on the results page, so commenters should post their scores.

The purity/disgust dimension, which I'm apparently deaf to, is highly relevant to pieces I've done on organ and tissue markets--markets most decent people probably find impure and disgusting. Haidt has done heaps of research on the evolution of disgust as a moral emotion, and morally relevant disgust responses emerge as quite culturally malleable, subject to rapid change. One study Haidt cites shows a rapid increase in disgust attitudes toward smokers in the recent past, for example, which suggests a certain sensitivity to argument and reason.

The fluidity of this emotion should be obvious from a historical perspective, since few of us would find interracial marriage, gay sex, and life insurance as repugnant as our 19th century counterparts; we now find racists disgusting, not miscegenation. This is good news for anyone facing a future of kidney failure, simply because the disgust some feel toward a market might be recast as disgust at letting thousands of people die kidneyless. Wilkinson quotes Leon Kass as saying, "Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder," a sentence as lovely as it is entirely beside the point. The interesting question is: Shudder at what, and the what seems to be highly culturally contingent.

Comments

|9.21.07 @ 5:36PM|#

FWIW I scored 3.8 on harm, 3.6 on fairness, 0.4 on loyalty, 0.3 on authority, and 0.0 on purity. That sounds about right.

T|9.21.07 @ 5:46PM|#

Ouch. I am apparently unconcerned about harm.

1.8/3.9/0.8/0.5/0.4

Damn. I would have thought I'd do a little better on the harm index. Well, screw y'all apparently. As long as it's done fairly...

|9.21.07 @ 6:01PM|#

H 1.9; F 2.5; L 1.0; A .9; P .6

Wow, I'm a prudish fascist. Who knew? That makes me want to go put the harm on someone, since it looks like I don't care about that. Maybe I'll use the taser on Dan T after all.

Brian E|9.21.07 @ 6:04PM|#

Cue creepy comments about Kerry's "purity" score.

Perhaps if we asked liberals about smoking and obesity and scored it under "purity", they'd look a bit more like the conservatives. I'm still not sure what my morals have to do with my approach to government. I'm actually quite conservative: I think abortion is wrong and have never, ever smoked a cigarette or a joint, and both of these have precisely zip to do with my opinion of whether government should be involved in these areas.

In other words, I'd march for freedom to smoke on private property (or drug legalization), except for the fact that I hate those goddamned smokers and wouldn't want to march anywhere near a crowd of them.

The only value of studies of this kind are in exposing the degree to which the average person lacks the maturity to separate their personal views and their theory of government.

Harm 2.6/Fairness 3.6/Loyalty 1.3/Authority 2.4/Purity 0.8

|9.21.07 @ 6:12PM|#

As an anti-authority libertarian, I refuse to take a survey that requires registration.

|9.21.07 @ 6:13PM|#

Here goes-

H - 1.9
F - 3.3
L - 2.0
A - 1.0
P - 1.1

20 years in the US Navy and look at those loyalty & authority scores. Who'd a thunk it?

|9.21.07 @ 6:29PM|#

I score 0 out of 5 on the purity dimension, .3 on the authority dimension, and .3 on the loyalty dimension, all sentiments conservatives seem to hold dear; my moral sentiments are almost entirely calibrated toward harm and fairness, averse to tribalism and tradition. Wilkinson scores very similarly; our responses out us as extreme liberals.

*smirk*

Robert Frost once said, "I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old."

What kind of odds can I get that Kerry Howley will grow up to be Michelle Malkin?

Mad Max|9.21.07 @ 6:31PM|#

"Haidt asks us to 'Imagine visiting a town where people wear no clothes, never bathe, have sex "doggy-style" in public, and eat raw meat by biting off pieces directly from the carcass.'"

Fraternity Row?

Alternate joke: I guess the Libertarian Party finally got its candidates elected.

|9.21.07 @ 6:37PM|#

Didn't know I was such an authoritarian. Probably happened because I think little kids should respect their elders, at least until they grow a little common sense.

Nice to know there are women more impure than myself.

H - 3.9
F - 3.9
L - .8
A - 1.5
P - .1

thoreau|9.21.07 @ 6:41PM|#

Hmm, this may sound like an easy reflexive dismissal, but I do wonder about the relevance of a study that asks people about either implausible or at least rare events, and tries to gauge their approach to morality and ethics from that.

Hypotheticals can certainly be interesting, but I wonder if we use the same mental processes with unusual matters that we use with situations that we encounter more frequently. I remember some of those convoluted hypothetical discussions that I, like everyone else, had in college (hell, we've had some of those discussions in blog comments too). Often somebody would be asked why his stance on some crazy hypothetical was (at least apparently) inconsistent with his stance on more common matters. Usually some mental gymnastics would ensue. I wonder if this means that we use different processes on scenarios that we encounter frequently.

Just a thought.

SIV|9.21.07 @ 6:48PM|#

As an anti-authority libertarian, I refuse to take a survey that requires registration.

Well you don't have to register under your identity.

I find it frightening that so many purported "libertarians" score so high on "fairness".
I only scored above 1.0 on authority and loyalty.

|9.21.07 @ 6:52PM|#

Another thing to consider is just because something "disgusts" you, it doesn't follow that you'd naturally conclude government should ban it. Reading Kerry's post, it struck me as many of the things she described actually do "disgust" me, but as a libertarian I have no desire to codify my personal disgust system. I'm not big on the "def sag" style of wearing your drawers. Teenie bob and rap offend me. Hippies turn my stomach. Certain kinds of interracial relationships do in fact turn me off (and dating patterns in the US seem to suggest I am far from the minority on that). Public sex would turn me off. I hate when people talk with their mouth full of food. I'm a sticker for proper grooming. The list goes on and on. And I know plenty of libertarians who are the same way. In short, what makes libertarians unique is not our tolerance for "disgust" but rather, our belief that "disgust" and politics have nothing to do with each other.

LarryA|9.21.07 @ 7:00PM|#

"Conservatives have many moral concerns that liberals simply do not recognize as moral concerns," Haidt and collaborator Jesse Graham write in a forthcoming paper for Social Justice Research.

Well, yes. But the reverse is also true. Talk to a conservative about how horrible it is to enslave animals in circuses and rodeos, or how terrible it is to genetically modify crops, or how the wealthy don't pay their share of taxes, and the conservative will "hear talk about theta waves" too.

Wilkinson scores very similarly; our responses out us as extreme liberals.

I think this is the "If you don't think my way you're wrong + 'wrong'='liberal'" bias. If the left put up a similar test, we'd all score "'wrong'='conservative.'"

Any "test" like this should include a glossary to define terms the authors take for granted. In the question "Whether or not someone failed to fulfill the duties of his or her role" I wonder how many folks thought the author was likely talking about "women should be subservient" type roles.

Other interesting questions:
One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal.
Are conservatives vegans?

It can never be right to kill a human being.
Self-defense?

When the government makes laws, the number one principle should be ensuring that everyone is treated fairly.
Equal opportunity, or equal outcome?

|9.21.07 @ 7:00PM|#

Often somebody would be asked why his stance on some crazy hypothetical was (at least apparently) inconsistent with his stance on more common matters. Usually some mental gymnastics would ensue. I wonder if this means that we use different processes on scenarios that we encounter frequently.

Yeah, Mom called it putting things in perspective. The test is full of absolutes and in life you rarely encounter those. I liken morality to a fog that we grope our way through, trying to avoid damage to ourselves and others. It evolves in ways you wouldn't have predicted in your youth. Hell, if you could have predicted it, you'd have changed your mores then and there.

|9.21.07 @ 7:01PM|#

SIV-

I took "fairness" to mean equality before the law. I guess it could be construed as supporting welfare or wealth redistribution too, which is why the survey is a bit flawed.

|9.21.07 @ 7:03PM|#

I very, very quick test to find out someones political views:

"What is most important to you out of these three: Liberty, Equality, or Order?".

|9.21.07 @ 7:10PM|#

"Whether or not someone failed to fulfill the duties of his or her role" I wonder how many folks thought the author was likely talking about "women should be subservient" type roles.

Funny, I interpreted it as whether they were doing the job they agreed to. Is he a good engineer? Not, Is he a good husband? Social roles never even entered into my mind. But others could read that much differently.

|9.21.07 @ 7:25PM|#

This ongoing debate on the underlying morals of "liberals" versus "conservatives" misses one crucial point: do those people believe that the government should be enforcing those morals? I suppose I would get a high score on the purity test, but I have no desire to impose my sense of purity on anyone else.

|9.21.07 @ 7:28PM|#

Great comments (except the Malkin one...seriously uncalled for.) One thing I should have added: Haidt's book is built around the idea that these sentiments drive our affiliations and actions; that we're far less rational than we might like to think, and many of our reasons for following a particular course of action are probably pure confabulation. It's a thesis he develops over 200 pages, so it's not as abrupt a connection as it may seem in my post. The point of the "test," I think, is to show in a very crude way that left/right affiliations cluster around certain sentiments.

|9.21.07 @ 7:37PM|#

re: Brandybuck

I was actually going to mention that very point - although I had a perfectly normal libertarian distribution on the 'moral foundations' scale, the 'moral foundations sacredness scale' suggested that I highly valued purity. I would suggest that something like this would be a common marker for libertarians, who draw a distinction between personal and public morality that conventional liberals and conservatives generally do not.

|9.21.07 @ 7:54PM|#

disgust responses emerge as quite culturally malleable, subject to rapid change

When I was 4 I thought coconut was disgusting. Now that I am 5 I think it nice!

|9.21.07 @ 7:56PM|#

I strongly believe that surveys of this sort tell us a great deal about the people who answered them at the time of the test. Everyone else, and even the same people at another time, not so much.

I do think that the current version of libertarian would get along better with the current version of liberal than you all would with the current version of political conservative. Liberals and leftists are at the moment most concerned with stopping the war and the associated limits to civil liberties by the Bush adminstration, and secondly with social issues like the drug war and abortion. In the next administration, that could very well change.

Of course, libertarians will ALWAYS party liberal.

|9.21.07 @ 8:15PM|#

Being Libertarian has nothing to do with whether one is disgusted or not by various behaviors, only whether one wants to use violence to stop it.

Someone could be "conservative" by being disgusted by gay sex but Libertarian through and through in the belief that homosexuality should be a purely private matter free from violent coercion.

|9.21.07 @ 8:23PM|#

H - 4.3
F - 3.8
L - 2.1
A - 1.4
P - 0.5

I am very loyal to my friends, so that's not a total surprise. I wonder where I got the "high" authority score from, though, since I am a pretty fierce individualist.

twv|9.21.07 @ 9:54PM|#

My moral notions are in no way exhausted by my politics, so I answered many of these questions without trying to make them fit some libertarian-only focus. Thus my scores were

H: 2.5
F: 3.4
L: 1.6
A: 2.1
P: 1.6

Well, that's not quite right. On the "authority" dimension, had I interpreted "authority" as univocally meaning "rightful ability to command or defend" (which depends entirely on the rightness of an authority; all of us are authorities of our own domains) then I would have come off a bit higher in this aspect of the quiz. As it is, I know that some people automatically think of "authority" as "traditional repository of unquestionable standing," or somesuch nonsense, and so weighed my answers accordingly.

Did everyone else take the test thinking ONLY of the political realm? I thought the point was to track general moral beliefs against one's alleged politics. My general moral beliefs really are much wider than my politics. It's hard to see how any libertarian's could not be. But then, I believe in THIN libertarianism and THICK morality. I believe this even though I would appear to be something of a moral skeptic to most conservatives. Oh, well. I have never believed OTHER people's moral notions to be very tidy!

Franklin Harris|9.21.07 @ 10:13PM|#

Without having yet taken the test, I don't think it's any surprise that most of my closest friends are either liberals or libertarians. The conservatives may know more about economics (although, usually, it's due just to prejudice than actual knowledge), but I have far fewer common frames of reference with them when it comes to religion, morality, art, or just about anything else.

Franklin Harris|9.21.07 @ 11:23PM|#

HARM: 2.3
FAIRNESS: 2.3
LOYALTY: 0.6
AUTHORITY 1.0
PURITY: 0.3

|9.21.07 @ 11:37PM|#

you are fascinating

|9.21.07 @ 11:54PM|#

Harm: 1.6 Suck it up
Fairness: 3.3 Huh? Life isn't fair and I totally hate when the government tries to even the playing field. Again, suck it up.
Loyalty: 1.8 I trust you. A little bit.
Authority: 2.1 F**k the man, but I wouldn't mind being the man.
Purity: 2.4 And I drink A LOT.


Interesting and meaningless.

|9.22.07 @ 12:39AM|#

Where's joe's score?

|9.22.07 @ 12:53AM|#

Kerry Howley:

I've been away trying to convince some college students of the moral rightness of selling off their body parts,...

Kerry is my kind of geek-principled and interesting.

Steve|9.22.07 @ 3:06AM|#

Harm: 1.3
Fairness: 2.1
Loyalty: 2.3
Authority: 2.1
Purity: 0.0

Some of the loyalty and authority questions weren't relevant.

If I'm already a soldier, I damn well will obey an "immoral" order all the way to 5.0 rather than eat a bullet from the battalion commander's sidearm.

I also wish to 5.0 that people who claim 9/11 was an inside job would "just shut the hell up," but I'm not sure that means I'm loyal to groups.

I'm not likely to join groups in the first place (particularly any that include meetings); what does that mean?

Overall, this quiz had a push-poll kind of feel to it.

|9.22.07 @ 5:33AM|#

Extrapolating from your own scores is never a great idea, but it doesn't seem like a great leap to expect that libertarians will be less concerned with respect for authority than avoidance of harm. Self-described libertarians aren't charted on the results page, so commenters should post their scores.

Extrapolating the representative "libertarian" from a sample of Reason readers and editorial staff isn't a very great idea, either. First, it was never a secret that the brand of libertarianism promoted by Reason and it's readers has a decidedly leftish cast - is it a surprise that a survey of Hit & Run posters and Reason editorial staff would yield a result that indicated libertarians have more of a liberal than conservative orientation?

I suspect if the readership of Lew Rockwell or Liberty, communities which have at least as legitimate a claim to being representative of libertarians as Reason and it's readership do, were to take the same survey, the skew would be in the opposite direction.

Secondly, I submit that as a gauge of libertarian affiliation, participation in libertarian activism is at least as indicative as reading Hit & Run. My anecdotal observation has been that of the people I've met who post at Hit & Run, none of them were involved in any significant form of libertarian activism, and of the people I've known who are actually participants in any libertarian activism, few of them were readers of Reason.

Additionally, I'll support my anecdotal observation with the sign-up statistics from the Free State Project, a group that presumably has libertarian sympathies.

Note that as "channels" to the FSP, Reason isn't listed with any greater frequency than sites such as boing-boing or Slashdot, despite the fact that the FSP has advertised fairly heavily in Reason, both in the print edition and the web site.

In short, I seriously question the proposition that Reason and it's readership have much of a claim to being the definitive representative of libertarians, or the libertarian movement in general.

Jim Nelson|9.22.07 @ 6:17AM|#

Is is just me, or do these morality tests remind anyone of Philip K. Dick's / Bladerunner's Voight-Kampff machines?

You're at a dinner party and the host serves boiled dog. What do you do?

|9.22.07 @ 8:40AM|#

Pig, I suspect you are right. I also suspect you are still just a pig.

|9.22.07 @ 9:18AM|#

Harm --3.5
Fairness --3.0
Loyalty --2.4
Authority --2.0
Purity --1.1


Not surprised my 'purity' was so low. Too many tattoos and too much alcohol.

|9.22.07 @ 10:32AM|#

You're at a dinner party and the host serves boiled dog. What do you do?

I've ordered dog in a restaurant (Pusan, ROK). What does that mean, if anything, morally.

Fluffy|9.22.07 @ 10:47AM|#

"I suspect if the readership of Lew Rockwell or Liberty, communities which have at least as legitimate a claim to being representative of libertarians as Reason and it's readership do, were to take the same survey, the skew would be in the opposite direction."

You seriously think readers of Lew Rockwell's blog would skew towards respect for authority? Give me a break. If anything, the resistance to authority there is much more visceral than it is here. Here the editors write articles exposing police errors during drug-related SWAT attacks. At the LRC blog, people want to beat the cops with tire irons.

The only significant difference I perceive between Reason's libertarianism and the libertarianism of other groups is that Reason is atheistic. That might have some slight impact on the "purity" scores, but that's about it.

|9.22.07 @ 10:48AM|#

As a conservative and a libertarian, and as a professional quantitative analyst, I can tell you that this survey means absolutely nothing. The questions could be reworded so that liberals would be the one's scoring high on disgust, etc.

Also, what does morality have to do with government theory. I hold the steadfast belief that it is immoral to fog your mind with drugs, but that doesn't mean I think it should be illegal to do so...

I think it's immoral to lie, but it shouldn't be against the law. I mean, I'm so conservative that I think it's immoral to get fat, but I'm not in favor of the government regulating food consumption. The association is silly.

|9.22.07 @ 12:16PM|#

To expand on Ralphy's point, the alliance between conservatives and libertarians has been one of policy. It is only as thin or thick as policy agreement goes.

The very essence of liberalism is to employ 'collective action' as a solution to imbalances or harms they perceive. That bridge can't be reasonably crossed.

|9.22.07 @ 12:36PM|#

"You seriously think readers of Lew Rockwell's blog would skew towards respect for authority? Give me a break. If anything, the resistance to authority there is much more visceral than it is here. Here the editors write articles exposing police errors during drug-related SWAT attacks. At the LRC blog, people want to beat the cops with tire irons."

Very true. There are some at LRC who would probably have traditional attitudes on purity, and in some sense toward the idea of tradition (since they view tradition as being libertarian), but deferential attitudes never toward authority. Many of the writers at Lew Rockwell say things about cops and soldiers that would never be said by the writers at Reason in a million years.

|9.22.07 @ 1:06PM|#

This study, and the others like it that keep coming in and showing the same thing, cannot possibly be true.

Because it is important to me, on an emotional level, to believe that liberals are more authoritarian than conservatives.

I'll bet this study was done at a college, and, well, you know what they're like.

|9.22.07 @ 1:15PM|#

Authority is not the same thing as government.

Fairness is not the same thing as government redistribution.

From what I've read at the Lew Rockwell site, I would guess that would score very high on authority. They seem to take the rightful authority of, for example, religious leaders, fathers, and business owners very, very seriously.

Fluffy|9.22.07 @ 2:34PM|#

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/

Joe, scroll through the blog items right now and count the number of items that:

1. Call cops murderers.

2. Impugn military action. They're not only anti-Iraq war today; they're also taking shots at the Falklands war.

3. The number of anti-Federal Reserve posts that claim that Fed policy favors the wealthy.

4. Posts that insult prominent fundamentalists like Dobson.

5. Out and out anarchist posts

Come on, man.

I think you're confusing authority with autonomy.

|9.22.07 @ 2:43PM|#

Fluffy,

What does any of that have to do with what I wrote?

I made a point that their respect for authority cannot be judged by their respect for government, and you respond with evidence that they have little respect for government.

Uh...ok.

|9.22.07 @ 2:47PM|#

I think YOU, Fluffy, are confusing authority for government.

The Branch Davidians and People's Temple adherents, to take two extreme examples, had a whole lot of respect for authority, but very little respect for government.

|9.22.07 @ 4:19PM|#

Harm: 2.4
Fairness: 3.4
Loyalty: 1.1
Authority: 2.0
Purity: 2.3

What's funny is that on the "sacredness survey," my authority and purity scores leaves both liberals and conservatives in the dust... 6.0 and 7.4, respectively.

Fluffy|9.22.07 @ 4:30PM|#

Well, Joe, I included the bit about hating Dobson for a reason. That seems to take care of your "religious leaders" part.

That seems to leave us with "fathers" and "business leaders". I don't see anything at the site about the authority of fathers, honestly, unless you think that homeschooling is about exercising authority and not about resisting it. I also don't see anything about the authority of business leaders, unless you consider it to be an act of authority when you buy a candy bar.

|9.23.07 @ 4:54AM|#

At least those guys seem to have respect for the er, authority of the Bill of Rights.

|9.23.07 @ 10:01AM|#

Fluffy,

I doubt that many readers of Lew Rockwell dot com consider James Dobson to be their religious leader.

unless you think that homeschooling is about exercising authority and not about resisting it. Yes, it is - it is the assertion of parental authority and resistance to state authority. Many of its proponents, on these threads and elsewhere, are quite straightforward about this objective.

unless you consider it to be an act of authority when you buy a candy bar Or unless you consider the authority of a boss in his workplace to be authority.

Are you playing dumb? These are very obvious points.

|9.23.07 @ 10:02AM|#

Fluffy,

Have you ever heard the statement "We have no king but Jesus," coming from Patriots during and prior to the War of Independance?

Resistance of authority AND an appeal to authority.

|9.23.07 @ 10:14AM|#

More hope for liberaltarians: as expected by sane people everywhere, the appropriations bills coming out of the Democratic Congress contain far less pork, far fewer earmarks and less overall spending on earmarks, than those that came out of the Republican Congress for the past six years.

www.boston.com

|9.24.07 @ 1:24PM|#

I'm still waiting for a good explanation of what the results on this morality test have to do with actual political cooperation with Reds or Blues. Sure, self-identified liberals may not care much about "purity" or "disgust", but they cheerfully vote for Blue pols (Kerry, Clinton, to name a few) who are adamantly against gay marriage as just one example. Even the mainstream statists sometimes allow a little difference between what they believe (or say they believe) and what they want the law to impose.

And let's not even get into the inevitable shifts in the Blue and Red attitudes towards authority and such once the Blues take power again.