Welcome to part I of a three-part series on the topics of moral (attachment) dumbfounding and moral modules. Lets get started.
I recently finished reading psychology professor Jonathan Haidt’s 2012 book entitled The Righteous Mind—Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. I appreciated Haidt’s observation that there are essentially six moral modules that people use to think and reason with:
- Care/harm
- Liberty/oppression
- Fairness/cheating
- Loyalty/betrayal
- Authority/subversion
- Sanctity/degradation
I have written and blogged often about cognitive scientist (turned political commentator) George Lakoff’s two moral modules or cultural cognitive maps: the conservative Strict Father model and the liberal Nurturant Parent model. In his book Haidt does mention Lakoff’s work and suggests that Lakoff’s Nurturant model generally agrees with his Care/harm moral module, and that Lakoff’s Strict model agrees in large part with his Authority/subversion module. But Haidt goes much further. Haidt suggests that liberals tend to only use two moral modules: Care/harm and Liberty/oppression, whereas conservatives use all six but with some degree of emphasis on the Authority/subversion and Sanctity/degradation moral modules. (By comparison, Haidt suggests that libertarians depend heavily on just one moral module: Liberty/oppression.) What fascinated me was Haidt’s observation that it is easier to motivate and move conservatives because they can be reached by way of six moral modules whereas liberals tend to be reached via only two moral modules. Both Haidt and Lakoff (in their respective work) point to President Reagan’s “Reagan Democrats” as an example of how it is easier to bring liberals over to the conservative side (because conservatives do use the Care/harm and Liberty/oppression moral modules) but not vice versa.
In many ways Haidt’s work greatly expands on the work of Lakoff in the area of moral modules or moral maps. But the showstopper for me was Haidt’s description of what he calls moral dumbfounding. I keyed in on the topic of moral dumbfounding (which I’ll describe in more detail in part II) because I believe I have encountered a similar phenomenon, which I would call “attachment dumbfounding.” And, yes, I would say that there is a connection between the two. The goal of this blog post series is to propose a connection between moral and attachment dumbfounding. In addition, in part II of this series I’ll sketch out a research project designed to look at a possible connection between the two. Part III will end the series by looking at the practical implications of looking at moral modules within such areas as counseling and philanthropy (both areas close to my heart). Before we look at moral dumbfounding (and by extension, attachment dumbfounding), let me take a short side trip here and mention Steven Pinker’s book The Blank Slate.
In his book, Haidt mentions the work of MIT “mind researcher” Steven Pinker. Haidt spends a lot of time talking about Pinker’s 2003 book entitled The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. In my 2011 book Bowlby’s Battle, I briefly mention in the conclusion the idea that postmodernism (or what Jungian analyst Anthony Stevens describes as the Standard Social Model) is that ideology that has greatly undermined theories—like Bowlby’s theory of attachment—that draw upon the idea that there is something we can correctly call biologically mediated and expressed human nature. In his book, Pinker makes it clear that ideologies like postmodernism, relativism, and the Standard Social Model (today used by many sociology departments in the US) are in fact Blank Slate ideologies. Simply, the Blank Slate ideology holds that the idea of an innate, biologically mediated human nature is a myth designed to bring about oppression mainly in the form of biological determinism. Notice how Haidt’s Liberty/oppression moral module is being employed here. And, yes, postmodernism has been labeled a liberationist ideology. Postmodernism strives to liberate us from body and biology. I should also point out that Pinker paints B.F. Skinner—arguably the father of behaviorism—as being a rabid “Blank Slater” (for lack of a better term). It was Skinner who boasted that, through the use of behavioral techniques, he could turn anyone (e.g., any blank slate) into anything he desired—lawyer, doctor, bum, criminal, etc. (a theme sent up for comedic effect in the 1983 Dan Aykroyd – Eddie Murphy movie Trading Places). Pinker alerts us to the fact that many learning theories (which are widely used in the field of education) also espouse a Blank Slate worldview that sees children as empty vessels waiting to be filled with information (and not necessarily knowledge or wisdom). I’d be remiss if I did not point out that John Bowlby (in his trilogy on attachment theory) held a dim view of both Skinner’s behaviorism and Blank Slate learning theories because they did tend to negate the importance of innate behavioral systems like attachment.
I’m about two thirds of the way through Pinker’s book and I’m at a section where Pinker draws on Haidt’s work extensively. I guess you could say that there’s a bit of recursive feedback loop going on here between Haidt’s Righteous Mind and Pinker’s Blank Slate. It happens. What both researchers point to is the idea that much of what drives the various moral modules is biology. And not biology in general, but biological intuitions. Here’s where I see the connection with Bowlby’s work come in: I would propose that Bowlby’s innate biologically mediated attachment behavioral system gives rise to certain forms of attachment intuition, an intuitive knowing that comes from the body which says that we should be cared for and kept from harm as we go out and explore or map the world, especially social worlds. See! Haidt’s first moral module mentioned above—Care/harm.
OK, so, how does moral dumbfounding come in? Well, both Pinker and Haidt use the same moral narrative in their respective books to start us thinking about the subject. I get the impression that Haidt developed this moral narrative as a part of his research studies. Now, fair warning, this narrative is a bit morally tough to read, but I think that that was the idea, to really trigger the various moral modules. It’s the same idea behind the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) used to assess attachment patterns in adults: ask questions with heavy attachment themes (like “who raised you as a young child?”) so that the attachment behavioral system is well triggered during the interview. Here’s the moral narrative I’m talking about (which I’m taking from Haidt’s book at page 38):
Julie and Mark, who are sister and brother, are traveling togther 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 the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie is 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?
So, what’s your reaction to the above moral narrative? Was it wrong for them to have sex? What’s your gut or your intuitions telling you? I’ll let you ponder the above moral narrative while we wait for part II wherein we will look at what Dr. Haidt’s research reveals.
