This week we've been exploring psychologist Jonathan Haidt's research on moral thinking. In another current diary, csquared asks a question based on experiences with his/her family: "Why are otherwise caring people racist/homophobic?" Haidt's research suggests that group identity and loyalty play a role in moral reasoning, and many people have different rules for Us and Other. But how do we decide who is Us and who is Other?
More below the fold....
Moral Equations and Othering
This week Morning Feature has explored Jonathan Haidt's research on moral reasoning. Haidt posits five basic moral principles: (1) Avoid harm and care for others; (2) Fairness and reciprocity; (3) Group identity and loyalty; (4) Obedience to authority; and, (5) Personal purity. His research suggests that people who identify themselves as progressives tend to weight the first two principles more highly than the rest, while people who identify as conservatives weigh all five principles about equally.
On Wednesday I offered those differences in terms of moral equations, to explore why many progressives often find it so frustrating to discuss morality with conservatives. Put simply, we can agree on the facts, apply those facts logically, and still reach different moral decisions because we're plugging those facts into different equations. Because conservatives value group identity and loyalty as a cardinal virtue - while progressives don't - then all other things being equal, conservatives see no moral dilemma in: "It's OK if You're in My Group."
Yesterday we explored whether and how progressives apply group identity and loyalty in our responses to President Obama. Where the facts are in doubt most progressives seem prone to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt, even in situations where we wouldn't have given former President Bush the same benefit of the doubt. While I think there are non-group-based reasons to be less distrustful of President Obama than we were of former President Bush - we haven't caught President Obama in repeated intentional lies and bad judgments yet - it remains that we tend to be more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Us, rather than to Others.
Some have proposed that the difference is simply that progressives have a bigger Us - all of humanity, perhaps all life - whereas conservatives are more willing to identify and marginalize Others. In light of csquared's diary, it raises an interesting question:
Who is Us and who is Other?
I'm generally suspicious of theories or hypotheses that set me or people like me "above" other humans. I don't like to think of myself as morally exceptional, and indeed that's one reason I give people the benefit of the doubt - I assume they're honest and reasonable - until and unless I have specific evidence to the contrary. At a most basic level, I try to be honest and reasonable, and I don't think I'm morally exceptional, thus I assume most other people also try to be honest and reasonable. Until I have some specific reason to suspect an individual isn't like "most other people" in that regard, I give him/her the benefit of the doubt.
Similarly, because I don't think I'm morally exceptional, I don't think we progressives are superior beings who've evolved beyond group identity and loyalty. Most of us weigh it as secondary - a means rather than an end in itself - but that's not the same as claiming we've transcended it altogether. So I don't think progressives' Us includes all of humanity, and as evidence I cite our discussions about ... conservatives. We have an Us/Other dichotomy there, and while we may still weigh that identity and loyalty as lesser moral principles than harm/care and fairness, we're kidding ourselves if we think we don't weigh it at all.
But how do we identify our Us, and the Other, in a given situation? Who defines Us, and who defines Other? Certainly there are obvious physical traits and behaviors, but how do we decide which are relevant in terms of group identity?
Othering has received a lot of study in psychology, sociology, and philosophy, and the evidence suggests that any Us/Other dichotomy is a social construct. Racists long claimed that racism was "normal" because those of a different race are obviously physically different from Us. That's a comfortable theory for racists, but it's not consistent with the evidence. After all, most of Us have obvious physical differences too, but we usually don't consider our differences Us/Other dividers.
In fact, once you get above very small groups, the Us/Other dividers are almost entirely social constructs. There may be biological differences, and those differences may be relevant in very limited ways; if you'd like to have children, it's useful to know both whether you are male or female, and whether a prospective partner is male or female. But we layer onto those all sorts of other assumptions and role expectations, and the research suggests the ways we do that have more to do with trying to define Us than with any concern with or for the Other.
That is, it's possible that a very small group of Us will be uniquely similar along some relevant axis. The humans who live at Casa Crissie share some common experiences unique to life here at Casa Crissie, and we could define an Us - a household - by those shared experiences. But once you get much bigger than that, you're unlikely to find enough unique similarities to justify an Us. Either some of Us will be dissimilar, or our similarities won't be unique to Us. How then to define an Us?
Define an Other, and we are not-Other.
If we don't have enough unique similarities to define an Us, we humans get around that by defining an Other, people who aren't Us. That we are not-Other becomes part of the definition of Us. But there's an obvious problem in this Us-as-not-Other formula, inherent in why we're using the formula to begin with: there aren't enough unique similarities among Us to define an Us, so logic suggests we'll share a lot of characteristics with the Other. Some of Us do X, but some Others also do X. Some of Us like Y, but some Others also like Y. Some of Us are Z, but some Others are also Z. Oops.
But no worries, because as a pattern-creating and story-telling species we're very good at manipulating stimuli to fit the experiences we want. So we create patterns and tell stories about Us and Others, and we do that by exceptionalizing and generalizing along the Us/Other divide:
- If an Us manifests a negative trait, we exceptionalize it. He/she is a single bad actor and that negative trait doesn't define Us.
- If an Us manifests a positive trait, we generalize it. Because he/she is one of Us, his/her positive trait is typical of Us.
- If an Other manifests a negative trait, we generalize it. He/she isn't a single bad actor; his/her negative trait is typical of the Others.
- If an Other manifests a positive trait, we exceptionalize it. He/she is an exceptional Other and that positive trait doesn't define the Others.
The implications are obvious. Our definition of Us will include only positive traits, with negative traits attributed to "a few bad apples." Conversely, our definition of Other will include only negative traits, with positive traits attributed to "a few exceptions."
Voila! We've manufactured an Us to be proud of, if only in our own patterns and our own stories.
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Speaking of patterns and stories, it's Friday and that means it's time to look to patterns in the stars for stories of why you should hide in your closet all weekend:
Gemini - Last weekend wasn't as awful as you'd feared, which means you're due this weekend.
Cancer - All of those good things you've hoped for will happen ... to a Sagittarius.
Leo - There's often more than a linguistic relationship between beer and boor. Just sayin'.
Virgo - Your special qualities should be alphabetized and categorized by Sunday.
Libra - That lampshade didn't cover much in the video, in case you haven't seen it.
Scorpio - You probably don't have swine flu, but some poor pig has Scorpio Flu.
Sagittarius - Don't tease the Cancers. Just pretend to be very surprised.
Capricorn - If there were only one of you, you'd be a very bad conspiracy movie.
Aquarius - That picture on the wall isn't staring at you. It's staring with you.
Pisces - Paranoia didn't work well last week. This week pretend they're all out to help you.
Aries - It's in that box in the back of the closet under the old blankets. Whatever it is.
Taurus - Great job with the video camera. We won't tell the Libras you did it. Oops.
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Happy Friday!