Summary Of 'Moral Roots Of Liberals And Conservatives' By Jonathan Haidt

The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives Summary

Jonathan Haidt begins his Ted talk by explaining that “being open to new experiences” predicts which ideal, liberal or conservative, an individual believes in. Haidt describes a scenario in which two individuals travel to Italy to see Michelangelo’s David; while one individual “admires the beauty of the human form,” the other individual is uncomfortable with viewing a naked statue. He explains that liberals desire change and innovation while conservatives prefer stability and order. Moreover, Haidt admits that his audience shares the same political stereotypes and, therefore, are trapped in their own way of thinking, much like a “Moral Matrix.” He then asks his audience to choose the red pill over the blue and step outside their

He then lists the five foundations of morality: harm/care, fairness/ reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, purity/sanctity. To explain how much these five foundations of morality change as individuals grow, Haidt shows the results of a questionnaire taken by nearly thirty-thousand people that he and his colleagues posted on www.yourmorals.org. After viewing the results, Haidt explains that, in most societies, individuals do not disagree on harm/care and fairness/reciprocity, even though they may disagree on what is harmful and fair, they disagree on in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, purity/sanctity. He goes on to explain that “cooperation decays without punishment.” He describes an experiment by Fehr and Gatcher published in the magazine Nature in which individuals played a game in which they could put money in a pot and that money would be divided among all the players. While initially all the players cooperated, they began to not cooperate quickly after the first round. However, after the seventh-round Fehr and Gatcher informed the players that they could punish those who did not participate. The level of