You are downtown about to cross a busy street when you see a 300lb man slap a grandmotherly lady hard enough to make her fall over the hood of a car. What do you feel?

Nothing?

I doubt it. You are probably instantly furious. It is obviously an unfair fight. Your moral code has been violated. I’m sure you want to do something to make things right, or find someone who will.

This isn’t a logical reaction. It’s emotional. It could be that the grandmotherly lady had poisoned the 300lb man’s children and he had been looking for her for two years. You don’t really know what happened, so you really aren’t making a logical decision when you decide you want to help the grandmotherly lady.

It’s important to realize this: moral decisions are emotional.

What I am about to say is based on the work of Dr. Haidt, who outlined the moral differences between liberals and conservatives in a TED talk.  Here is a blog post that summarizes his moral foundations and provides a link to his TED talk for more detail: The Five Foundations of Morality – A Pocket Guide

You may already be familiar with Dr. Haidt’s five foundations of morality, but if you aren’t you should at least read the pocket guide above.  The rest of what I’m going to say may not make much sense if you don’t.

It doesn’t matter if you are liberal or conservative, grandmother slapping is very likely to produce a moral response in you.  Liberals and conservatives share the harm/care moral foundation, and grandmother slapping would violate that.

There are five moral foundations – conservatives have all five:

• harm/care
• fairness/reciprocity
• in-group/loyalty
• authority/respect
• purity/sanctity

Liberals have only two:

• harm/care
• fairness/reciprocity

Because some of us see issues involving these foundations as moral issues and some of us don’t, it can make communicating more difficult. I see this problem manifesting two different ways:

1. I may think we are having a discussion based on logic because I don’t recognize the issue as a moral issue.  You may be reacting emotionally to what I am saying because for you, it is a moral issue.  You may decide that I am not as good a person as you.  Instead of communicating, you judge me as immoral.
2. You may be trying to tell me something assuming I see the moral right and wrong of what you are saying, but I am interpreting everything you say with only logic.  From my perspective, what you are saying is illogical… but it really isn’t meant to be logical.  Morality isn’t logical. Instead of communicating, I judge you as unintelligent.

Once you can understand that different issues will be perceived by liberals and conservatives differently, you can understand that how you try to communicate can be just as important as what you communicate.  If you trigger a moral response and then try to discuss something logically, what you have done makes about as much sense as slapping someone’s grandmother in front of them and then trying to talk about the weather.

Even if you don’t feel even a hint of the emotion that goes into a moral code violation because your moral code is different, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there for someone who’s morality is different than yours.  It definitely is there.

I also realize that this is only one factor that goes into shaping someone’s opinion.  Understanding these moral differences will not give you 100% understanding into why someone thinks a particular way.  But it is a very important factor because an individual’s moral framework operates at a low level.  It is one of the layers that will affect your thinking before you even realize you are thinking about something.

So, for a few practical examples:

If you are a liberal and you want to talk to a conservative about how Trump has trashed the deficit… don’t.  If you insult Trump you are violating the authority/respect moral code because he is president.  And because politics have become divisive and conservatives value being part of a team more than liberals you will have violated the in-group/loyalty moral code too.  So you have just caused moral outrage in the person you are trying to talk to – twice.  Before you even state the first fact you have pissed them off and forced them to react emotionally.   To successfully talk about the deficit, talk about the deficit.  Don’t bring up Trump.

It’s a little easier to explain this for liberals, as I have done above.  Liberals have less channels in their moral code, so their primary concern is how to not trigger a moral code violation.

For conservatives, since you have more channels in your moral code, you will have to be concerned more with recognizing that you have moral values that liberals don’t have.  You will have to take the initiative to avoid morally triggering yourself, basically.

So, for the example above, if a liberal tries to talk to you about how Trump has trashed the deficit and you feel the comments about Trump starting to trigger moral outrage, then refuse to acknowledge any of the comments about Trump.  Tell your liberal friend that you are perfectly happy to discuss the deficit, but that you are not willing to discuss Trump.

You will also have to realize that having a purely logical discussion about anything that you have moral concerns about will put you at a disadvantage unless you are willing to bring your strong moral feelings into the discussion.  Liberals will not place any value on in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, or purity/sanctity.  They won’t naturally see what you see.  They will argue only with what facts are apart from that, completely ignoring those issues.  If your primary counter argument relies on protecting one of those moral foundations and you don’t bring it up, you won’t be able to effectively answer the argument.  So, for example, if your liberal friend insists on discussing how Trump trashed the deficit, and you feel that it is important that we respect our president – then you will have to bring that up if you chose to discuss Trump and the deficit.

It sounds complicated.  Maybe it is.  But learning how to communicate with each other, even with our differences, is important.

Because if we don’t our future isn’t too bright: The Black and White Path

And I think it’s important to always keep in mind that liberals and conservatives need each other: The Evolutionary Purpose of Liberals and Conservatives

 

---

2019-04-23 Updated title of link to “The Black and White Path”