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Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind III: The Social Nature of Moral Judgment
Wednesday, July 11th, 2012
Robert Wechsler
The Ethics of Gut Reactions
According to Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012), our morality is driven by our gut reactions, particularly about disgust. Disgust, based in senses (bad smells, yucky tastes, gross textures), extends to feelings of disrespect for people who offend our values, especially people who do something we consider unfair. Our reasoning generally supports our gut reactions with what Haidt calls "post hoc fabrications."
Those involved in politics tend have a far higher threshold of disgust when it comes to officials' ethical misconduct. And elected officials tend to be more expert at making post hoc fabrications.
The best way to see how important emotions are to ethics is through people whose emotions are limited, for example, psychopaths and those who have had damage to their ventromedial prefontal cortex. Those with damage to their ventromedial prefontal cortex feel no emotions and yet do well on moral reasoning tests. But their lack of emotions leaves them without the guidance necessary to make ethical decisions. Nothing feels right or feels wrong. We need that feeling of disgust or compassion to make ethical decisions.
It is because psychopaths lack the emotions involved in compassion and shame that they cannot act ethically. They say and do whatever gets them what they want.
But feelings themselves are not enough, because we can justify our feelings (such as entitlement, revenge, or loyalty to a family member or a colleague), even when they allow us to act wrongly. Why do we feel called upon to explain our feelings? Haidt explains that, with respect to our preferences, it's enough to simply say, "I don't like it" or "I don't want to." But this is not sufficient when it comes to others doing something that has nothing to do directly with us. Not liking or wanting is meaningless in such situations. So we turn to moral reasoning. He writes:
Haidt argues that moral judgment is, therefore, social in nature. "Moral talk serves a variety of strategic purposes such as managing your reputation, building alliances, and recruiting bystanders to support your side." This is why moral judgment is so different in poor and healthy ethics environments. In a healthy ethics environment, one manages one's reputation by being open, responsibly handling one's conflicts, seeking professional advice, and acknowledging one's mistakes. In a poor ethics environment, one manages one's reputation through denial, accusation, cover-ups, and the insistence that one is a person of integrity.
In a healthy ethics environment, alliances are not built on the strategic manipulation of language, but on the basis of shared democratic values. And in a healthy ethics environment, people try to recruit only those who share these values, rather than those whose partisan or personal loyalties take precedence over the responsible handling of conflicts by oneself and one's colleagues.
The social nature of moral judgment can work for or against good conduct. People can come to an official's defense, insisting that she followed the law and is a woman of integrity. Or, more benefically for the community, people can share their outside viewpoint with an official whose blind spots prevent her from seeing the situation clearly. They can provide her with viewpoints she couldn't see for herself, thereby triggering new reactions and intuitions that will allow her to change her mind. People occasionally do this themselves, but it is rare. We need others, especially those we trust, not to support our misunderstandings and misperceptions, but to challenge and correct them.
However, this isn't always easy, because these others tend to employ rational arguments, while the official is being guided by emotions. Haidt uses the metaphor of an elephant (emotions, intuition) and its rider (reason). You usually have to appeal to the elephant, who quickly leans one way or the other, not the rider, who has little control once the elephant has leaned. This is why many government ethics professionals try to get officials past their immediate emotions by asking them to consider what their mother would think if they were to engage in a certain kind of conduct. This is an emotional rather than rational approach. and therefore often has a better chance to steer the elephant in the right direction.
Our Inner Lawyer
The main way reasoning can work is if it is the reasoning of a neutral professional, for example, an ethics officer. In fact, another metaphor that Haidt uses to describe the relationship between our ethical reasoning and our emotions is the lawyer-client relationship. It is our inner lawyer that manufactures arguments to serve our gut reactions. Many government attorneys help officials' inner lawyer manufacture these arguments. An ethics officer is more likely to explain why and how the inner lawyer is wrong.
But even ethics officers should consider providing what Haidt recommends: respect, warmth, and openness to hearing what the official has to say before stating one's own case. "Empathy is an antidote to righteousness," Haidt says, while recognizing the difficulty of empathizing across a moral divide. For example, it may be difficult to empathize with an official who insists on his integrity and attacks the individual who has made allegations against him, when the ethics officer knows that these allegations are reasonable and feels that the official is unfairly turning the situation into a personal attack on his political opponents. But it certainly makes it more likely that the official will be open to a different point of view if the ethics officer listens well and shows respect and understanding for his plight, before providing his advice.
As Haidt says, "if there is affection, admiration, or a desire to please the other person, then the elephant leans toward that person and the rider tries to find the truth in the other person's arguments." If an official rejects, or has no reason to please, the individual providing ethics advice, the advice will make very little difference. Unfortunately, many of the people with whom an official has close ties, or desires to please, are the people least likely to give the official valuable ethics advice, because they are too much like the inner lawyer, seeking arguments to justify rather than improve the official's conduct.
Reputation vs. Truth
The inner lawyer metaphor comes together with the social nature of moral judgment in Haidt's conclusion to his third chapter and the beginning of his fourth chapter:
Haidt draws from this a principle for designing an ethical society: "make sure that everyone's reputation is on the line all the time, so that bad behavior will always bring bad consequences." Another way Haidt puts this is, "Design institutions in which real human beings, always concerned about their reputations, will behave more ethically."
This is the argument for tough ethics enforcement. But it assumes that ethics is more about bad behavior than it is about wrong behavior. It accepts the government's official's gut reaction to defend his reputation as a good person, which is what causes so many of the problems in government ethics. An ethics program that provides for enforcement, but focuses on training, advice, disclosure, and discussion, has at least a chance to take government ethics out of the damaging criminal enforcement paradigm into the creation of an ethics environment where gut reactions will be about acting responsibly (and thereby creating a good reputation for oneself and for the government as a whole out of right behavior) rather than about the skewed emotions that try to create a good reputation out of wrong behavior, via the pretzel logic of legal justifications and even more damaging denials, accusations, and cover-ups.
To work, ethics programs that depend primarily on officials' concern for their reputation have to have serious criminal penalties and a great deal of authority and resources. Such programs are very expensive and disruptive to a local government.
Continue with the next post on this book.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
According to Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012), our morality is driven by our gut reactions, particularly about disgust. Disgust, based in senses (bad smells, yucky tastes, gross textures), extends to feelings of disrespect for people who offend our values, especially people who do something we consider unfair. Our reasoning generally supports our gut reactions with what Haidt calls "post hoc fabrications."
Those involved in politics tend have a far higher threshold of disgust when it comes to officials' ethical misconduct. And elected officials tend to be more expert at making post hoc fabrications.
The best way to see how important emotions are to ethics is through people whose emotions are limited, for example, psychopaths and those who have had damage to their ventromedial prefontal cortex. Those with damage to their ventromedial prefontal cortex feel no emotions and yet do well on moral reasoning tests. But their lack of emotions leaves them without the guidance necessary to make ethical decisions. Nothing feels right or feels wrong. We need that feeling of disgust or compassion to make ethical decisions.
It is because psychopaths lack the emotions involved in compassion and shame that they cannot act ethically. They say and do whatever gets them what they want.
But feelings themselves are not enough, because we can justify our feelings (such as entitlement, revenge, or loyalty to a family member or a colleague), even when they allow us to act wrongly. Why do we feel called upon to explain our feelings? Haidt explains that, with respect to our preferences, it's enough to simply say, "I don't like it" or "I don't want to." But this is not sufficient when it comes to others doing something that has nothing to do directly with us. Not liking or wanting is meaningless in such situations. So we turn to moral reasoning. He writes:
-
I can't call for the community to punish you simply because I don't
like what you're doing. I have to point to something outside of my
own preferences, and that pointing is our moral reasoning. We do
moral reasoning not to reconstruct the actual reason why we
ourselves came to a judgment; we reason to find the best possible
reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our judgment.
Haidt argues that moral judgment is, therefore, social in nature. "Moral talk serves a variety of strategic purposes such as managing your reputation, building alliances, and recruiting bystanders to support your side." This is why moral judgment is so different in poor and healthy ethics environments. In a healthy ethics environment, one manages one's reputation by being open, responsibly handling one's conflicts, seeking professional advice, and acknowledging one's mistakes. In a poor ethics environment, one manages one's reputation through denial, accusation, cover-ups, and the insistence that one is a person of integrity.
In a healthy ethics environment, alliances are not built on the strategic manipulation of language, but on the basis of shared democratic values. And in a healthy ethics environment, people try to recruit only those who share these values, rather than those whose partisan or personal loyalties take precedence over the responsible handling of conflicts by oneself and one's colleagues.
The social nature of moral judgment can work for or against good conduct. People can come to an official's defense, insisting that she followed the law and is a woman of integrity. Or, more benefically for the community, people can share their outside viewpoint with an official whose blind spots prevent her from seeing the situation clearly. They can provide her with viewpoints she couldn't see for herself, thereby triggering new reactions and intuitions that will allow her to change her mind. People occasionally do this themselves, but it is rare. We need others, especially those we trust, not to support our misunderstandings and misperceptions, but to challenge and correct them.
However, this isn't always easy, because these others tend to employ rational arguments, while the official is being guided by emotions. Haidt uses the metaphor of an elephant (emotions, intuition) and its rider (reason). You usually have to appeal to the elephant, who quickly leans one way or the other, not the rider, who has little control once the elephant has leaned. This is why many government ethics professionals try to get officials past their immediate emotions by asking them to consider what their mother would think if they were to engage in a certain kind of conduct. This is an emotional rather than rational approach. and therefore often has a better chance to steer the elephant in the right direction.
Our Inner Lawyer
The main way reasoning can work is if it is the reasoning of a neutral professional, for example, an ethics officer. In fact, another metaphor that Haidt uses to describe the relationship between our ethical reasoning and our emotions is the lawyer-client relationship. It is our inner lawyer that manufactures arguments to serve our gut reactions. Many government attorneys help officials' inner lawyer manufacture these arguments. An ethics officer is more likely to explain why and how the inner lawyer is wrong.
But even ethics officers should consider providing what Haidt recommends: respect, warmth, and openness to hearing what the official has to say before stating one's own case. "Empathy is an antidote to righteousness," Haidt says, while recognizing the difficulty of empathizing across a moral divide. For example, it may be difficult to empathize with an official who insists on his integrity and attacks the individual who has made allegations against him, when the ethics officer knows that these allegations are reasonable and feels that the official is unfairly turning the situation into a personal attack on his political opponents. But it certainly makes it more likely that the official will be open to a different point of view if the ethics officer listens well and shows respect and understanding for his plight, before providing his advice.
As Haidt says, "if there is affection, admiration, or a desire to please the other person, then the elephant leans toward that person and the rider tries to find the truth in the other person's arguments." If an official rejects, or has no reason to please, the individual providing ethics advice, the advice will make very little difference. Unfortunately, many of the people with whom an official has close ties, or desires to please, are the people least likely to give the official valuable ethics advice, because they are too much like the inner lawyer, seeking arguments to justify rather than improve the official's conduct.
Reputation vs. Truth
The inner lawyer metaphor comes together with the social nature of moral judgment in Haidt's conclusion to his third chapter and the beginning of his fourth chapter:
-
Why did we evolve an inner lawyer, rather than an inner judge or
scientist? Wouldn't it have been most adaptive for our ancestors to
figure out the truth … rather than using all that brainpower just to
find evidence in support of what they wanted to believe? That
depends on which you think is more important for our ancestors'
survival: truth or reputation. Suppose the gods were to flip a
coin on the day of your birth. Heads, you will be a supremely honest
and fair person throughout your life, but everyone around you will
believe you're a scoundrel. Tails, you will cheat and lie whenever
it suits your needs, yet everyone around you will believe you're a
paragon of virtue. Which outcome would you prefer?"
Haidt draws from this a principle for designing an ethical society: "make sure that everyone's reputation is on the line all the time, so that bad behavior will always bring bad consequences." Another way Haidt puts this is, "Design institutions in which real human beings, always concerned about their reputations, will behave more ethically."
This is the argument for tough ethics enforcement. But it assumes that ethics is more about bad behavior than it is about wrong behavior. It accepts the government's official's gut reaction to defend his reputation as a good person, which is what causes so many of the problems in government ethics. An ethics program that provides for enforcement, but focuses on training, advice, disclosure, and discussion, has at least a chance to take government ethics out of the damaging criminal enforcement paradigm into the creation of an ethics environment where gut reactions will be about acting responsibly (and thereby creating a good reputation for oneself and for the government as a whole out of right behavior) rather than about the skewed emotions that try to create a good reputation out of wrong behavior, via the pretzel logic of legal justifications and even more damaging denials, accusations, and cover-ups.
To work, ethics programs that depend primarily on officials' concern for their reputation have to have serious criminal penalties and a great deal of authority and resources. Such programs are very expensive and disruptive to a local government.
Continue with the next post on this book.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
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