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DOI: 10.1126/Science.1137651 , 998 (2007); 316 Science Jonathan
The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology Jonathan Haidt Science 316, 998 (2007); DOI: 10.1126/science.1137651 This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. If you wish to distribute this article to others, you can order high-quality copies for your colleagues, clients, or customers by clicking here. Permission to republish or repurpose articles or portions of articles can be obtained by following the guidelines here. The following resources related to this article are available online at www.sciencemag.org (this infomation is current as of February 15, 2012 ): Updated information and services, including high-resolution figures, can be found in the online version of this article at: on February 15, 2012 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/316/5827/998.full.html Supporting Online Material can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2007/05/15/316.5827.998.DC1.html A list of selected additional articles on the Science Web sites related to this article can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/316/5827/998.full.html#related This article has been cited by 84 article(s) on the ISI Web of Science www.sciencemag.org This article has been cited by 35 articles hosted by HighWire Press; see: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/316/5827/998.full.html#related-urls This article appears in the following subject collections: Psychology http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/collection/psychology Downloaded from Science (print ISSN 0036-8075; online ISSN 1095-9203) is published weekly, except the last week in December, by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. -
Gene-Culture Coevolution, Group Selection, and the Evolution of Cooperation
EC_2018_A12 Gene-Culture coevolution, group selection, and the evolution of Cooperation The Evolution of Cooperation How can altruism / cooperation evolve? 1 EC_2018_A12 Levels of Selection "although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe (...) an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another.” (C. Darwin, Descent of Man, 1871) Levels of Selection Individuals (“basic” [Neo]Darwinism) Genes (“Selfish-gene” Sociobiology) Groups? Multilevel selection? Higher-level adaptations? Genetic Group Selection? “Naïve group selectionism”: The probability of survival of individual living things, or of populations, increases with the degree with which they harmoniously adjust themselves to each other and to their environment. This principle is basic to the concept of the balance of nature, orders the subject matter of ecology and evolution, underlies organismic and developmental biology, and is the foundation for all sociology. (Allee et al. 1949) “The good of the species” (Wynne-Edwards) 2 EC_2018_A12 Levels of Selection Migration, genetic drift, etc: Intergroup effects weaker than intragroup, interindividual selection. Intra x intergroup differences X Wilson DS & Wilson EO (2007) Rethinking the theoretical foundation of sociobiology Multi-level selection/ limits in kin selection theory/ “major transitions” Eusociality: Kin Selection X Individual selection + preadaptations. (communal nests) Nowak, Tarnita & Wilson, “The Evolution of Eusociality”, Nature 2010 (X Abbot et al [+100!], Nature 2011) “Major Transitions” in Evolution Maynard Smith & Szathmáry 1997 “Apart from the evolution of the genetic code, all these transitions involve the coming together of previously independent replicators, to cooperate in a higher-level assembly that reproduces as a single unit.” 3 EC_2018_A12 Natural selection & the evolution of cooperation Cooperation is needed for evolution to construct new levels of organization. -
How People Think About Fairness and Why It Matters for Equitable Budgets
How People Think About Fairness and Why It Matters for Equitable Budgets Jason Lakin May 2019 1. BACKGROUND Ideas about justice, fairness, altruism, and redistribution are at the core of the work we do around government budgets at the International Budget Partnership. Along with other global and national civil society organizations, we believe that tax and expenditure policies should allow everyone, and not just the rich, the opportunity to lead a dignified life. Yet the progressive policies necessary to yield such an outcome are perpetually contested and achieving them depends on significant support from the public. It is a foundational assumption of this paper that building support among a broader public for progressive policies is one among several important facilitating conditions for reform. Support for redistributive policies is partly kindled by self-interest – e.g., we might expect that it will come from those below the median in income (or wealth) who will benefit the most – but, in most cases, self-interest is not enough to motivate widespread support for redistribution. This is because either (1) the intended beneficiaries do not constitute a majority of the population, (2) despite constituting a majority, the beneficiaries do not support these policies for other reasons, or (3) even when the beneficiaries are a majority, the alliances needed to introduce and maintain these policies require support from smaller groups who have disproportionate power and influence over the political system and will not directly benefit from them. Thus, creating a moral case for fair budget policies – one that can galvanize a broad coalition – is integral to achieving progress. -
What Disgust Does and Does Not Do for Moral Cognition Jared Piazzaa
What Disgust Does and Does Not Do for Moral Cognition Jared Piazzaa, Justin F. Landyb, Alek Chakroffc Liane Youngd, Emily Wassermand a Lancaster University, Department of Psychology b University of Chicago Booth School of Business cCharlie Finance Co., San Francisco, CA dBoston College, Psychology Department 2 1. Introduction Disgust is typically characterized as a negative emotion associated with the rejection of distasteful or contaminating objects (Rozin and Fallon 1987). The physiological aspects of disgust involve nausea and loss of appetite, and the bodily expression of disgust includes behaviors (e.g., gagging, vomiting) designed to orally block or expel noxious substances (Ekman and Friesen 1971; Royzman, Leeman and Sabini 2008; Rozin, Haidt and McCauley 2008; Yoder, Widen and Russell 2016). The canonical elicitors of disgust are well documented: many people report feeling nauseous or sick at the sight or smell of oral contaminants (e.g., rotten food, bodily waste) and/or disease vectors (e.g., blood, skin maladies, sexual fluids, certain animals; Curtis, Aunger and Rabie, 2004; Haidt, McCauley and Rozin, 1994; Olatunji et al. 2007). It is uncontroversial that disgust can also be evoked in the context of a moral offense. What remains controversial is disgust’s role or relevance within a moral context. When Armin Meiwes, the Rotenburg Cannibal, was discovered to have eaten the severed penis of his voluntary victim, before killing him and consuming his flesh over the next ten months, the story of this crime undoubtedly aroused disgust (and horror) in many of us. The relevant question is not whether we felt disgust about this crime—for most of us, human penis is not on the menu, and the thought of Meiwes’ preferred cuisine is deeply distasteful. -
Newsletter Vol
RESEARCH EXCELLENCE • POLICY IMPACT Summer 2020 Newsletter Vol. 41, No. 1 COVID-19 Magnifies Race and Health Disparities IPR research unmasks disparities and offers ideas to address them 50-State COVID-19 Survey showing that African iStock American, Asian American, and Hispanic respondents’ worries about getting the virus were at least 12 points higher (>70%) than for White respondents (58%). (See pp. 7 and 24.) A Pioneering Approach to Understanding Health Disparities Since its founding in 1968, another significant period of social unrest, IPR’s researchers have tackled disparities in many insidious and persistent forms, whether racial, wealth, gender, education, social, health, or others. In 2007, a new generation of IPR researchers came together, with unique expertise in emerging academic areas like “psychobiology” or “biological anthropology.” Their idea was to Only 30% of Chicago’s residents are African “We are seeing dramatic inequities in the risk bring together the social, life, and biomedical American, yet as of late July they comprised of infection, and the risk of death, across the sciences to study how social, racial, and 43% of those who have died from COVID-19, U.S. and especially in Chicago,” said IPR economic disparities “get under a person’s according to Chicago’s Department of Public biological anthropologist Thomas McDade, skin.” To do this, they founded C2S, which Health. Both African American and Latinx who directs IPR’s Cells to Society (C2S): The McDade now directs, as a catalyst for probing residents are also getting sick from COVID-19 Center on Social Disparities and Health. how these social connections matter to human at higher rates than White residents. -
The Origins of Faith; If Humans Are Hard-Wired to Be Moral, What Is the Point of Religion?
Page 1 2 of 990 DOCUMENTS New Scientist September 1, 2007 The origins of faith; If humans are hard-wired to be moral, what is the point of religion? BYLINE: Helen Phillips SECTION: FEATURES; Cover Story; Pg. 32-36 LENGTH: 3094 words RELIGION occupies a strange position in the world today. Religious belief is as powerful as ever, yet religion is under attack, challenged by science and Enlightenment thought as never before. Critics like Richard Dawkins would have us believe that it is a delusion, and a dangerous one at that. He is one of many thinkers who are challenging the traditional view of religion as a source of morality. Instead, they argue that it provides a means for justifying immoral acts. Their views have recently been bolstered by evidence that morality appears to be hard-wired into our brains. It seems we are born with a sense of right and wrong, and that no amount of religious indoctrination will change our most basic moral instincts. Many biologists are not convinced by such radical views, however. Recent years have seen a flurry of activity by researchers who want to assess the effects of religion on human behaviour. It is a fiendishly difficult area for science, but they are starting to address the issue by looking at how religion might have evolved, what purpose it has served, and whether it really can make you a moral person - or an immoral one. As a result of this work a new view is emerging that challenges simplistic ideas about the link between religion and morality. -
The Threat of Terrorism and Support for the 2008 Presidential Candidates: Results of a National Field Experiment
CURRENT RESEARCH IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp.html Volume 14, No. 1 Submitted: September 1, 2008 First Revision: September 14, 2008 Accepted: September 19, 2008 Published: October 2, 2008 THE THREAT OF TERRORISM AND SUPPORT FOR THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES: RESULTS OF A NATIONAL FIELD EXPERIMENT Robb Willer & Nick Adams University of California, Berkeley ABSTRACT How do concerns about terrorism affect the way Americans view the 2008 presidential candidates? How would an event that increases the prominence of terrorism, like a threat or attack, affect the 2008 election? Past theory and research are ambivalent on these questions. In this paper we empirically investigate the effects of exposure to a journalistic account of an imminent terror threat in a national (N = 1,282), internet-based field experiment. Overall, we find that exposure to terror threats increased concerns about "homeland security" without affecting candidate preferences. However, analysis of politically moderate respondents - a substantial subset of the total sample (40%) with a high rate of undecided, likely voters - showed that this group expressed significantly lower support for Senator John McCain when exposed to the terror threat than in the control condition. These findings converge with past research suggesting that Americans' views of the war on terror have changed significantly (Davis and Silver 2004) and that terror threats may serve as "anti-rally" events for candidates with unpopular foreign policies, especially among moderate or undecided voters (Bali 2007). We conclude by proposing a more general model of the effects of external threats on leader preferences suggested by past and present research. -
Jonathan Haidt Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion I
Jonathan Haidt Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion I study morality from every angle I can find. Morality is one of those basic aspects of humanity, like sexuality and eating, that can't fit into one or two academic fields. I think morality is unique, however, in having a kind of spell that disguises it. We all care about morality so passionately that it's hard to look straight at it. We all look at the world through some kind of moral lens, and because most of the academic community uses the same lens, we validate each other's visions and distortions. I think this problem is particularly acute in some of the new scientific writing about religion. When I started graduate school at Penn in 1987, it seemed that developmental psychology owned the rights to morality within psychology. Everyone was either using or critiquing Lawrence Kohlberg's ideas, as well as his general method of interviewing kids about dilemmas (such as: should Heinz steal a drug to save his wife's life?). Everyone was studying how children's understanding of moral concepts changed with experience. But in the 1990s two books were published that I believe triggered an explosion of cross-disciplinary scientific interest in morality, out of which has come a new synthesis—very much along the lines that E. O. Wilson predicted in 1975. The first was Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error, in 1994, which showed a very broad audience that morality could be studied using the then new technology of fMRI, and also that morality, and rationality itself, were crucially dependent on the proper functioning of emotional circuits in the prefrontal cortex. -
The Intelligence of the Moral Intuitions: Comment on Haidt (2001)
Psychological Review Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 2003, Vol. 110, No. 1, 193–196 0033-295X/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.110.1.193 COMMENTS The Intelligence of the Moral Intuitions: Comment on Haidt (2001) David A. Pizarro and Paul Bloom Yale University The social intuitionist model (J. Haidt, 2001) posits that fast and automatic intuitions are the primary source of moral judgments. Conscious deliberations play little causal role; they are used mostly to construct post hoc justifications for judgments that have already occurred. In this article, the authors present evidence that fast and automatic moral intuitions are actually shaped and informed by prior reasoning. More generally, there is considerable evidence from outside the laboratory that people actively engage in reasoning when faced with real-world moral dilemmas. Together, these facts limit the strong claims of the social intuitionist model concerning the irrelevance of conscious deliberation. Within social psychology, the nineties was the decade of auto- when told a story in which there is consensual sex between adult maticity. Influential work from researchers such as Bargh (1994) siblings, many people (though not all) will insist that it is wrong, and Greenwald and Banaji (1995) inspired a host of research even though they cannot articulate their reasons for this view. documenting the unconscious nature of much of human beings’ Haidt argued that this research supports the more general conclu- social judgment and behavior. In addition, research over the sion that our moral judgments are not based on moral reasoning. past 20 years has added vastly to psychologists’ knowledge of We are sympathetic to many of the claims that Haidt (2001) emotion’s role in judgment and decision-making (e.g., Forgas, made. -
A Response to Jonathan Haidt's the Righteous Mind
Journal of Public Deliberation Volume 15 Issue 3 Article 3 2019 Embedded Public Reasoning: A Response to Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind Michael J. DeMoor The King's University, Edmonton, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, and the Political Theory Commons Recommended Citation DeMoor, Michael J. (2019) "Embedded Public Reasoning: A Response to Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind," Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 15 : Iss. 3 , Article 3. Available at: https://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol15/iss3/art3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Public Deliberation. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Public Deliberation by an authorized editor of Public Deliberation. Embedded Public Reasoning: A Response to Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind Abstract Jonathan Haidt is a moral psychologist whose influential book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, explains the origins of our political disagreements. The aim of the book is to encourage understanding and civility in our public life. Deliberative democrats also have a significant stake in understanding the sources of our disagreements and see rational deliberation as the key to civility and democratic legitimacy. However, Haidt’s empirical studies give reasons to suggest that the “faith” of deliberative democrats in reasoning may be misplaced, particularly as that faith tends be inflected in terms of a “Kantian” moral psychology. This article analyzes four different explanatory “stories” that Haidt weaves together: (1) a “causal” evolutionary account of the development of morality; (2) a “causal” story about the psychological mechanisms explaining human action; (3) a “causal” story about the historical and cultural determinants of our political attitudes; and (4) a “normative” story about the grounds and justification of human action. -
The Psychology of Moral Reasoning
Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 3, No. 2, February 2008, pp. 121–139 The psychology of moral reasoning Monica Bucciarelli∗ Centro di Scienza Cognitiva and Dipartimento di Psicologia University of Turin Sangeet Khemlani and P. N. Johnson-Laird Department of Psychology Princeton University Abstract This article presents a theory of reasoning about moral propositions that is based on four fundamental principles. First, no simple criterion picks out propositions about morality from within the larger set of deontic propositions con- cerning what is permissible and impermissible in social relations, the law, games, and manners. Second, the mechanisms underlying emotions and deontic evaluations are independent and operate in parallel, and so some scenarios elicit emo- tions prior to moral evaluations, some elicit moral evaluations prior to emotions, and some elicit them at the same time. Third, deontic evaluations depend on inferences, either unconscious intuitions or conscious reasoning. Fourth, human beliefs about what is, and isn’t, moral are neither complete nor consistent. The article marshals the evidence, which includes new studies, corroborating these principles, and discusses the relations between them and other current theories of moral reasoning. Keywords: moral reasoning; deontic reasoning; intuitions; inferences; moral dilemmas. 1 Introduction principal psychological theories of how individuals make moral evaluations. We then describe the new theory. We Is it morally wrong to take a paper-clip from your office? present the evidence corroborating it, including some new Is it morally wrong to steal money from your co-worker? experimental results. Finally, we consider the general na- Is it morally wrong to stab your employer? In the ab- ture of reasoning about moral propositions. -
The False Allure of Group Selection | Conversation | Edge 19/06/2012 16:34
The False Allure Of Group Selection | Conversation | Edge 19/06/2012 16:34 To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves. Get Edge.org by Email Tuesday, Jun 19, 2012 HOME CONVERSATIONS ANNUAL QUESTION EVENTS NEWS LIBRARY ABOUT THE FALSE ALLURE OF GROUP SELECTION WHAT'S RELATED An Edge Original Essay People Steven Pinker [6.18.12] Steven Pinker Johnstone Family Professor, Department Of... Stewart Brand Founder, The Whole Earth Catalog; Co- founder, The... Conversations at Edge [+] A History of Violence Edge Master Class 2011 By Steven Pinker [9.27.11] Language and Human Nature A talk by Steven Pinker [9.30.09] The Stuff of Thought "The Experiment Marathon": A conversation [photo credit: Max Gerber] By Marcy Kahan, Steven Pinker [10.14.07] "I am often asked whether I agree with the new group selectionists, and the questioners are always Preface to Dangerous Ideas surprised when I say I do not. After all, group selection sounds like a reasonable extension of By Steven Pinker [12.31.06] evolutionary theory and a plausible explanation of the social nature of humans. Also, the group selectionists tend to declare victory, and write as if their theory has already superseded a narrow, reductionist dogma that selection acts only at the level of genes. In this essay, I'll explain why I think Beyond Edge that this reasonableness is an illusion. The more carefully you think about group selection, the less sense Stevenpinker.com it makes, and the more poorly it fits the facts of human psychology and history." Books [+] STEVEN PINKER is a Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology; Harvard University.