Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and researcher who investigated the question of "what is morality?" To do so, he went to various places in a variety of cultures and gave questionaires asking people about questions of right and wrong. From this research emerged five dimensions of morality (with explanations from moralfoundations.org):

• Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
• Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives]
• Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it’s “one for all, and all for one.”
• Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
• Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

There are additional candidates for possible moral foundations, including, most prominently:

• Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty. Its intuitions are often in tension with those of the authority foundation. The hatred of bullies and dominators motivates people to come together, in solidarity, to oppose or take down the oppressor. We report some preliminary work on this potential foundation in this paper, on the psychology of libertarianism and liberty.

  
  

  
  

According to MFT, these foundations lead people to have different moral priorities and can help explain why people disagree about certain moral issues. He argues that people use reason primarily to justify their moral intuitions and to persuade others to adopt those same intuitions.

Intersection with Politics

Haidt has shown convincing evidence that moral foundations theory gives clues as to why people identify as politically on the left or right. For example, the right are more interested in questions of authority/subversion, and loyalty/betrayal, while the left are more interested in questions of fairness/cheating and care/harm.

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Moral Dumbfounding

Haidt explains that moral dumbfounding is when "a person makes a moral judgment in a particular situation, admits to being unable to adequately defend that judgment or decision with reasons and arguments, but still remains obstinately and steadfastly committed to that intial judgment." (Citation here.) This derived from a set of experiments in which people were asked to respond to challenging moral dilemmas that were deliberately built to push reason and intuition away from each other: morally shocking dilemmas that are rationally solvable in easy ways.

Here are the five dilemmas (citation here):

1) The Heinz Dilemma   In Europe, a woman was near death from a very bad disease, a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium for which a druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make.  The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about half of what it cost.  He told the druggist that his wife was dying, and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later.  But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it."  So, Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.  Was there anything wrong with what he did?  

2) The Cannibalism Story  Jennifer works in a medical school pathology lab as a research assistant. The lab prepares human cadavers that are used to teach medical students about anatomy. The cadavers come from  people who had donated their body to science for research. One night Jennifer is leaving the lab when she sees a body that is going to be discarded the next day. Jennifer was a vegetarian, for moral reasons. She thought it was wrong to kill animals for food. But then, when she saw a body about to be cremated, she thought it was irrational to waste perfectly edible meat. So she cut off a piece of flesh, and took it home and cooked it. The person had died recently of a heart attack, and she cooked the meat thoroughly, so there was no risk of disease.  Is there anything wrong with what she did?  

3) The Incest Story  Julie and Mark, who are brother and sister are traveling together in France. They are both on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy it, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other.  So what do you think about this?  Was it wrong for them to have sex?  

4) The Roach Task:      Experimenter asks: Do you like apple juice? if "Yes":  Good. if "No" :  OK, then, I have some water. Experimenter brings the appropriate beverage, a napkin, a cup, the roach container, and the tea ball to table.   OK, I have here a (can of apple juice/carton of spring water), which I'm going to pour into this glass [pour it into glass].  Would you be willing to take a sip of the juice/water? [wait for S to take sip].  OK, now I have here in this container some sterilized cockroaches.  We bought some cockroaches from a laboratory supply company [show box and label].  The roaches were raised in a clean environment.  But just to be certain, we sterilized the roach again in an autoclave, which heats everything so hot that no germs can survive.  I'm going to dip this cockroach into the juice/water, like this. Now, would you take a sip of the juice/water?   Moral Dumbfounding     

5) The Soul Task:      I have a piece of paper here. If you agree to sign it, I'll give you two dollars, for real. If you sign it, you can then rip up the paper immediately, and keep the pieces yourself.  So take a look at this [hand S the "contract", which says:

 I, _____________________,   hereby sell my soul, after my death,  to _____________________,  for the sum of _____.  ___________________ (signed)    

Note: This form is part of a psychology experiment. It is NOT a legal or binding contract, in any way. 

Haidt and colleagues wanted to investigate the degree to which people respond to moral questions based on moral reasoning or moral intuitions, and found, overwhelmingly, that people do not respond with moral reasoning as much as they do with gut instinct: known as "moral intuition." The abstract from the relevant study reads:

Are moral judgments based on reason, or on intuition and emotion?  Thirty participants were presented with a classic moral reasoning dilemma, and with four tasks that were designed to put intuition and reason into conflict. It was hypothesized that participants’ judgments would be highly consistent with their reasoning on the moral reasoning dilemma, but that judgment would separate from reason and follow intuition in the other four tasks. This prediction was supported. In the four intuition stories (but not in the reasoning dilemma)  judgment preceded reasoning, judgments were based more on gut feelings than on reasoning, and participants more frequently laughed and directly stated that they had no reasons to support their judgments. This phenomenon -- the stubborn and puzzled maintenance of a judgment without supporting reasons -- was dubbed “moral dumbfounding.”  The existence of moral dumbfounding calls into question models in which moral judgment is produced by moral reasoning. These findings are linked to other dual-process theories of cognition. 

Moral dumbfounding suggests, then, that we are dual-beings with an emotional core and a rational core, which Haidt and Dan Heath compare to an elephant and a rider:

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There are significant implications from this human duality theory. In particular, if you want to improve political persuasion, the way to do it is with emotional persuasion, not with rational argumentation.

Critiques

Perhaps the strongest critique of MFT is that it is overstated: yes, people have moral foundations, and yes, those impact politics, but there is far more room for individual context and agency than this theory sometimes leads people to believe. One can be a conservative who values care/harm, just as one can be a leftist who believes in authority. 

Additional critiques include: 

1. Western bias: Critics argue that MFT primarily focuses on Western cultures and might not be as applicable or relevant in non-Western cultural contexts. The theory's foundation is rooted in Western individualistic societies, which could limit its universality and cross-cultural validity.

2. Simplification of moral complexity: Critics contend that MFT reduces the complexity of moral reasoning to a small set of fundamental dimensions. It might oversimplify the intricate and multifaceted nature of human morality, potentially neglecting important nuances in how people actually make moral judgments.

3. Questionable empirical evidence: Some researchers have questioned the empirical basis of MFT, suggesting that its theoretical framework doesn't always align with real-world data or may not fully capture the intricacies of human moral decision-making.

4. Political biases: Critics argue that MFT may be influenced by Jonathan Haidt's own political biases, leading to potential favoritism of certain moral foundations over others. This could raise concerns about the theory's objectivity and neutrality.

5. Limited emphasis on reasoning: MFT focuses on moral intuitions, emotions, and psychological foundations but pays less attention to moral reasoning. Critics argue that moral judgments often involve reflective reasoning, which the theory does not fully account for.

6. Categorization of moral foundations: Some researchers suggest that the division of moral foundations into specific categories (e.g., care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation) may not accurately capture the full spectrum of moral considerations.

7. Lack of predictive power: While MFT provides valuable insights into moral psychology, critics argue that it may not offer strong predictive power in understanding real-world behavior and attitudes in specific situations.

8. Neglecting social and cultural factors: Critics claim that MFT doesn't adequately address how social and cultural factors influence moral development and moral variations across different groups and societies.

Test Your Learning

Jonathan Haidt compares our brains to what?

1. A machine and a lion
2. Two partners, each contributing to building a home
3. An elephant and a rider
4. Three penguins: one focused on survival, one focused on food and shelter, and one focused on belonging.

What is moral dumbfounding?

1. When people make poor moral decisions. 
2. When people cannot speak because they see an immoral act take place.
3. Any emotional response to an act of either great morality or great immorality.
4. The inability to explain your reasons for your moral intuitions.

Haidt's experiments suggest which of the following?

1. We are primarily emotional beings, not rational ones--especially on questions of morality.
2. We are primarily rational beings, not emotional ones.
3. We are equally rational and emotional.
4. Our rational selves are more powerful than our emotional beings at birth, but become less powerful over time.

Which of the following is the best explanation of "care/harm?"

1. Gentleness, nurturance
2. Justice, rights
3. Leadership, order
4. Self-sacrifice, heroism

On which of the following do the political right focus more?

1. Loyalty
2. Care
3. Purity
4. Authority