Obama won. Romney lost. Now what?
Now, of course, begins the hard work of actually tackling the country’s many social and economic problems—a task made even harder by intense partisanship. How can liberals and conservatives respond to climate change and fix the economy when it doesn’t even seem like they can have a civil conversation?
To get at an answer, we turned to moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt. For years, Haidt, the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at the New York University Stern School of Business, has studied the psychological bases of our moral and political views. He has been especially interested in why morality varies across cultures—and even within the same country. This interest has led him to consider whether ideological differences between liberals and conservatives in the United States reflect deeper psychological differences between them. Through studies with tens of thousands of people, Haidt and his colleagues have identified six distinct “moral foundations” that underlie the moral and political judgments people make around the world. And, sure enough, Haidt and his colleagues have concluded that liberals and conservatives build their political views off of these foundations in different ways.
Liberals, studies show, place greater value on the moral foundations of care for others and fairness; conservatives, on the other hand, care more than liberals about the moral foundations of group loyalty, respect for authority, and “sanctity,” meaning an aversion to unpure or disgusting things. (Both groups rely on the foundation of liberty, though in different ways.) So does this simply mean that liberals are from Mars and conservatives are from Venus, doomed to conflict and misunderstanding? Not necessarily. Along with highlighting our differences, Haidt’s work has also suggested how liberals and conservatives can bridge these differences and learn from each other—ideas he explores in his recent book, The Righteous Mind (and which he also shares in a New York Times op-ed published today).
I spoke with Haidt this morning to get his morning-after-Election-Day analysis of how the country can move forward in the wake of an intensely partisan election year.
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