Liberals Can't Admit to Thinking Like Conservatives

How do we decide what is right and wrong? Psychologist Jonathan Haidt's theory is that humans have a small number of fundamental, intuitive "moral foundations," such as sanctity, loyalty, authority, fairness, and an axis he calls care/harm. A corollary to this theory is that liberals tend to reason overwhelmingly on the fairness and care/harm factors, denigrating or ignoring other foundations that most other people consider as vital as the Big Two. In a talk for Edge, he once likened this to a restaurant that only serves sugar, or salt:

For reasons that may be obvious, Haidt has become caught up in the culture war between conservatives and liberals, because his work reframes the abundance of social psychology papers that have been produced purporting to show that conservatives are horrible people, frightened, authoritarian, and all-around downright awful. Haidt's work suggests instead that conservatives are people who rely on a broader array of moral foundations than do liberals.