The Morality of Politics

If you ever feel like your arguments about politics with family and friends just come down to shouting matches and name-calling contests, with no real progress on one side or the other, you might want to check out Haidt's theories on Moral Psychology. The author of The Rational Tail and the Emotional Dog, which I think is the best psychological paper I ever read, Haidt is building a massive reputation for his recent discoveries on why liberals and conservatives always seem to be talking past each other.

Haidt has actually been at this sort of this for a while. All the way back in 2007, he was building up research on moral foundations theory, which became the foundation of his recent book The Righteous Mind, which is highly recommended. As he explains,

In moral psychology and moral philosophy, morality is almost always about how people treat each other. Here's an influential definition from the Berkeley psychologist Elliot Turiel: morality refers to "prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other."