Morality on five axis, Jonathan Haidt
harm reduction, reciprocity and fairness, purity, respect for authority, and in-group loyalty
Jonathan Haidt talking about his work as a moral psychologist. His big insight is that people experience moral intuitions along five axes: harm reduction, reciprocity and fairness, purity, respect for authority, and in-group loyalty. Of those five axes, highly educated upper-middle-class Westerners, and in that group liberals more than conservatives, tend to define only the first two axes, harm reduction and fairness, as really about morality, and think of the other three as being matters of personal preference or emotional reaction rather than right and wrong; in contrast, most people outside that fairly small class feel that all five axes are of comparable moral importance. In political matters, he argues that liberals are disadvantaged by speaking this impoverished language of morality: most people feel that in-group loyalty, purity, and respect for authority are matters of fundamental importance, and liberals don't give those concerns the weight they deserve - to create a more appealing message, liberals would need to talk more about those issues.
