Dr. Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. His mission is to use research on moral psychology to help people understand each other and to help important social institutions work better.
This is him speaking back in 2006 about his work on Moral Foundations Theory (Seems almost quaint now). Since the talk, he added a sixth "channel"- Liberty/Oppression, which is denoted on the graphic.
From Wikipedia: "Haidt has written three books for general audiences: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2006) explores the relationship between ancient philosophies and modern science; The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012) examines how morality is shaped by emotion and intuition more than by reasoning, and why differing political groups have different notions of right and wrong; and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (2018), co-written with Greg Lukianoff, explores the rising political polarization and changing culture on college campuses, and its effects on mental health.”
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion. The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is the conscious mind, and the elephant is the unconscious. Moral reasoning is many times a post-hoc fabrication, made up to justify your decisions and judgments after your intuition has already weighed in. If you want to talk to someone about a moral or political issue, talk to the elephant first, not the rider. Everyone cares what others think of them; it is an evolutionary advantageous trait used to gauge our status within a group.
Our minds ask “Can I believe it?” when we want to believe something, and “Must I believe it?” when we don’t. In brief, the theory proposes that several innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world, and conflicting within nations too.
The six foundations are:
the Care/Harm module (the instinct to protect others);
the Fairness/Cheating module (the instinct to punish cheating):
the Loyalty/Betrayal module (feeling ties to your ‘tribe’):
the Authority/Subversion module (knowing when to obey):
the Purity/Contamination module (disgust for revolting things) and:
the Liberty/Oppression module (keeping dominant individuals in the group ‘in check’).
Summaries of his work in greater detail can be found here:
Source for graphic.
