Moral Psychology - Human Psychology - Lecture Slides, Slides of Psychology

Download Moral Psychology - Human Psychology - Lecture Slides and more Slides Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! The dark side: Why Moral Psychology is the greatest source of evil Docsity.com Morality as harm reduction: “Morality is an informal public system applying to all rational persons, governing behavior that affects others, and has the lessening of evil or harm as its goal.” (Gert, Stanford Encycl. of Phil.) “If, as I believe, morality is a system of thinking about (and maximizing) the well being of conscious creatures like ourselves, many people's moral concerns are frankly immoral.” (Harris, 2008) Docsity.com The Intuitionist View • Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.... (Hume, Treatise) • The ultimate ends of human actions can never, in any case, be accounted for by reason, but recommend themselves entirely to the sentiments and affections of mankind. (Hume, Enquiry) Docsity.com The Intuitionist view 1) Intuitive primacy (but not dictatorship) 2) Moral thinking is for social doing 3) Morality binds and builds 4) Morality is about more than harm and fairness Docsity.com The Social Intuitionist Model (Haidt, 2001) A’s Intuition A’s Judgment A’s Reasoning B’s Intuition B’s Judgment B’s Reasoning 2 3 4 1 Four main processes: 1) the intuitive judgment link 2) the post-hoc reasoning link 3) the reasoned persuasion link 4) the social persuasion link Two rare processes: 5) the reasoned judgment link 6) the private reflection link 5 6 Docsity.com The collapse of compassion Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2006 Statistical Lives Condition: • Food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than 3 million children. • In Zambia, severe rainfall deficits have resulted in a 42% drop in maize production from 2000. As a result, an estimated 3 million Zambians face hunger. • Four million Angolans — one third of the population— have been forced to flee their homes. • More than 11 million people in Ethiopia need immediate food assistance. Docsity.com • It is a terrible thing to admit, but the more information we consume about Darfur, the less shocking each piece of new information seems. And surely that is a part of the problem. Ignorance is not the only ally of indifference; sometimes knowledge, too, blunts the heart and the will. • --Richard Just, 2008, review of books about Darfur Docsity.com The Intuitionist view 1) Intuitive primacy (but not dictatorship) 2) Moral thinking is for social doing 3) Morality binds and builds 4) Morality is about more than harm and fairness Docsity.com Rationalization of evil • You must think of humanity as one great body, but one that requires constant surgery. Need I remind you that surgery cannot be performed without cutting membranes, without destroying tissues, without the spilling of blood? Thus we must destroy whatever is superfluous. These are unpleasant acts, granted, but we do not find any of this immoral. You see, all acts that further history and socialism are moral acts. • --Lazar Kaganovich, letter to his American nephew Docsity.com The Intuitionist view 1) Intuitive primacy (but not dictatorship) 2) Moral thinking is for social doing 3) Morality binds and builds 4) Morality is about more than harm and fairness Docsity.com The Myth of Pure Evil (Baumeister, 1997) • 1) The evil one is purely evil; has no intelligible motive, beyond an enjoyment of harming, or a lust for power. • 2) The victim is purely good, and did nothing to bring about victimization. • 3) The Evil one is an outsider, not part of our group. • 4) Evil is the antithesis of order, peace, stability • 5) Anyone who raises doubts about the purity of either side is in league with evil (e.g., dissent is treason) Docsity.com The Myth of Pure Evil (Baumeister, 1997) • 1) The evil one is purely evil; has no intelligible motive, beyond an enjoyment of harming, or a lust for power. • 2) The victim is purely good, and did nothing to bring about victimization. • 3) The Evil one is an outsider, not part of our group. • 4) Evil is the antithesis of order, peace, stability • 5) Anyone who raises doubts about the purity of either side is in league with evil (e.g., dissent is treason) Docsity.com A) The Causes of Terrorism • Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self- appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. • --G. W. Bush, Address to Congress, 9/20/01 Docsity.com Traditional Psychological Approaches • A) Psychopathology? [No] • B) Rational choice? [for govt. yes; bomber no] • C) Psychoanalytic theories, [little support] • D) Sociological theories? e.g., Social learning, Frustration-aggression, Relative deprivation, Oppression [little support] • E) Group Process theories: T is the product of “group psych within idiosyncratic subcultures that coalesce in reaction to circumstances they perceive as intolerable” [yes] Docsity.com Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism” • “Fascism sees in the world not only those superficial, material aspects in which man appears as an individual, standing by himself, self-centered, subject to natural law, which instinctively urges him toward a life of selfish momentary pleasure; it sees not only the individual but the nation and the country; individuals and generations bound together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.” Docsity.com Morality re-defined: “Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible” (Haidt, in press, Handbook of social psych) Docsity.com The Intuitionist view 1) Intuitive primacy (but not dictatorship) 2) Moral thinking is for social doing 3) Morality binds and builds 4) Morality is about more than harm and fairness Docsity.com Racist Jeopardy Round 1 • A: These people are cheap, greedy, pushy, clannish, wealthy • Q: Who are the Chinese (in Indonesia), the Indians (in East Africa), the Copts (in Egypt)? • More generally: “Middlemen” or trading sub- cultures (including Jews in Europe) Docsity.com Racist Jeopardy Round 2 • A: These people are lazy, violent, superstitious, unintelligent, musical, and religious, and they speak colorfully • Q: Who are the Irish? (in Boston, c.1840) • More generally: Impoverished peasant sub- cultures (including rural Southern Blacks) Docsity.com How liberalism became a dirty word • --Jews and Italians of Brooklyn flee old neighborhoods • --1972, threat of forced busing of Brownsville Blacks into Canarsie; Canarsians derided as racist for resisting • --Rieder: Canarsians were racist, but that is not a full explanation • -- “Black crime and family breakdown was real; the high life was so highly visible...” Docsity.com Racism is (in part) a moral judgment that liberalism condemns as the greatest possible sin • -- “Law and order is not as simple as a code word for racism; it is a cry as things begin to break up, for stability, for stopping history in mid dissolution.” • --”For Canarsians, [Liberalism] had become associated with profligacy, spinelessness, malevolence, masochism, elitism, fantasy, anarchy, idealism, softness, irresponsibility, and sanctimoniousness.” Docsity.com Racism and the Myth of Pure Evil • 1) The racist is purely evil; has no intelligible motive, beyond an enjoyment of harming, or a lust for power. • 2) The victim is purely good, and did nothing to bring about victimization. • 3) The racist is an outsider, not part of our group. • 4) Racism is the antithesis of order, peace, stability • 5) Anyone who raises doubts about the purity of either side is in league with evil (e.g., justifying racism is treason) Docsity.com The Moral Psych Alternative: • Racism/Prejudice almost invariably involve moral judgments, mostly based on the Ingroup, Authority, and Purity foundations Docsity.com Social Group Attitudes Jerry Falwell on homosexuals: “Any sex outside of the marriage bond between a man and a woman is violating God's law. Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions...I truly cannot imagine men with men, women with women, doing what they were not physically created to do, without abnormal stress and misbehavior...We will see a breakdown of the family and family values if we decide to approve same-sex marriage, and if we decide to establish homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.” Authority Docsity.com Social Group Attitudes Jerry Falwell on homosexuals: “Any sex outside of the marriage bond between a man and a woman is violating God's law. Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions...I truly cannot imagine men with men, women with women, doing what they were not physically created to do, without abnormal stress and misbehavior...We will see a breakdown of the family and family values if we decide to approve same-sex marriage, and if we decide to establish homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.” Purity Docsity.com Social Group Attitudes White Supremacist Groups (National Vanguard, National Alliance) “Our civilization is in obvious decline...Crime is becoming pervasive, and citizens in our major metropolitan areas have become inured to the multiple daily murders, assaults, robberies, and rapes, and regard them with little surprise...there is only one solution for this chaos. Eugenics, or racial hygiene, says that we can so arrange our society so as to reverse this degenerative process, so that the best elements of our population will have the most children...We need blood-based nations and natural racial communities, and an end to the racial mixing that amounts to genocide of the White race.” –Kevin Strom Docsity.com Social Group Attitudes White Supremacist Groups (National Vanguard, National Alliance) “Our civilization is in obvious decline...Crime is becoming pervasive, and citizens in our major metropolitan areas have become inured to the multiple daily murders, assaults, robberies, and rapes, and regard them with little surprise. There is only one solution for this chaos. Eugenics, or racial hygiene, says that we can so arrange our society so as to reverse this degenerative process, so that the best elements of our population will have the most children...We need blood-based nations and natural racial communities, and an end to the racial mixing that amounts to genocide of the White race.” –Kevin Strom Purity Docsity.com The Intuitionist view 1) Intuitive primacy (but not dictatorship) 2) Moral thinking is for social doing 3) Morality binds and builds 4) Morality is about more than harm and fairness Docsity.com Conclusions/implications • “One of this book’s aims is to replace the thin, mechanical psychology of the enlightenment with something more complex, something closer to reality. A consequence of this is to produce a darker account. But another aim of the book is to defend the enlightenment hope of a world that is more peaceful and more humane, the hope that by understanding more about ourselves we can do something to create a world with less misery. • --Glover, p. 7 Docsity.com