One of major conflict in society stem from the different opinion between liberals, who emphasize freedom and the value of individual, and conservatives, who place great value on tradition and self-sacrifice for the whole society. Although in Thailand we cannot attribute all social conflicts directly to this cause, some controversies, such as social welfare, also have some relationship with this problem, especially the matter of how to define the meaning of "justice". The article adresses the problem of radical difference of morality between leberals and conservatives.
The author briefs the research of Haidt and Graham which proposes the explanation why liberals and conservatives think differently. Haidt suggests that there are "five psychological foundations of morality" (Haidt (2007)) which influence our belief about what is right or wrong, namely harm, fairness, loyalty, respect and purity. Then, the researchers asks people to do self-evaluation whether they are liberal or conservative and determine which components are important when they decide if something is right or wrong. The research shows that people who consider themselves as leberals place emphasis on harm and fairness more than the latter three items, whereas other group who identify themselves as conservatives regard all five items important. Haidt explains further that because justice(fairness) accounts for one-half of morality for liberals whereas it accounts for only one-fifth of that of conservatives, as a result, both groups usually have misunderstanding on the motives of each other which often ending up as conflict in society.
This reseach provides not only the scientific explanation of the different mode of thinking between liberals and conservatives, but also gives the framework that could lead to more understanding between the two groups. Each group should acknowledge the difference between their morality and seek the compromising acceptance between them.
__________
References
Shermer, M. (2009, December). Political Science: The Psychological Differences in the U.S.'s Red-Blue Divide. Scientific American. Retrived December 3, 2009 from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=political-science-skeptic
Haidt, J. and Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: conservatives havemoral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research. Retrived December 3, 2009 from http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mft/index.php
Thursday 3 December 2009
2 comments:
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A very thought provoking post.
ReplyDeleteDo these results show that morality is not really about what is right or wrong, or do they show that some people are psychologically determined to make the right or the wrong moral judgements? I mean, is there some basis to morality stronger than mere personal opinion, or even group opinion?
As you've probably guessed, I also like the fact that Liu explicitly points out that one of the deep issues is 'how to define the meaning of "justice" ' (¶ 1).
Please take some time to think about and respond to this post. It raises some issues that we will be addressing in the class reading we start next Monday, and I decided it is also relevant to the next chapter of Quest, which we will take an initial look at tomorrow.
I believe that morality is relative, not absolute. I agree with the article that it is psychological factors rather than the absolute righteousness or truth that shape our sense of moral. Actually I am very skeptic about the notion of the so-called universal truth.
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