WHAT IS OUR APPROACH?

 

FAIRNESS AND COMPASSION

 

“I met Jonathan Haidt in 2007. I was teaching public administration at Syracuse University; he was a social psychologist at the University of Virginia. I had just written a book about happiness, and organized a conference on the topic at the American Enterprise Institute, where I was a visiting scholar (and where later, I became president). Jon had written a book called The Happiness Hypothesis a couple of years earlier, which I read and loved. I invited him to my little conference, and we hit it off immediately. Later, Jon told me he was nervous about that conference. Why? Because AEI is known as a conservative outfit, and Jon considered himself a bona fide progressive. He didn’t know how he would be treated, but he was pleasantly surprised that the event wasn’t really ideological at all, and no one cared if he was a liberal or not. The interaction came at a pivotal period for Jon in his career. While he was at AEI talking about happiness, his new research was looking at what is known as “moral foundations theory,” which specifically addresses how conservatives and liberals differ in their moral views. Haidt was finding that certain ideas of morality are innate and that “the worst idea in all of psychology is the idea that the mind is a blank slate at birth.”* His research showed that we are in fact born with particular moral foundations that make it easy for us to learn certain ideas of right and wrong, and hard to learn others. Using survey data for hundreds of thousands of individuals, Haidt was finding that there are in fact five innate moral values that exist among humans of all races and cultures, which he calls the “five foundations of morality.” 2 They are: (1) fairness, (2) care for others, (3) respect for authority, (4) loyalty to one’s group, and (5) purity or sanctity. (Later, he added liberty to the list.) Haidt’s research has shown that of these five moral foundations, the first two—fairness and care—are nearly universal. Except for sociopaths, almost everyone—conservative or liberal, young or old, religious or nonreligious—believes in fairness and compassion to others.”

— Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt by Arthur C. Brooks
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