Jonathan Haidt

See: Moral Intuitionism, Liberal Moral Rule, Conservative Moral Rule, Moral Judgement.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt
- Jonathan Haidt (born October 19, 1963) is a professor at New York University Stern School of Business. For 16 years he taught psychology at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on the psychological bases of morality across different cultures and political ideologies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. He was awarded the Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology in 2001.^[1] His book The Happiness Hypothesis examines ten "great ideas" dating from antiquity and their continued relevance to the happy life. Part of his research focused on the emotion of elevation.

(Haidt, 2012) ⇒ Jonathan Haidt. (2012). “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” Vintage,

(Kesebir & Haidt, 2010) ⇒ Selin Kesebir, and Jonathan Haidt. (2010). “Morality.” In: Handbook of Social Psychology, 5th edition.
- ABSTRACT: This chapter assesses the state of the art in moral psychology from a social-psychological perspective. We begin with the story of the “great narrowing” — the historical process in which morality got reduced from virtue-based conceptions of the good person down to quandaries about what people should do. We argue for a return to a broader conception of the moral domain that better accommodates the diverse and often group-focused moralities found around the world. Our review of the empirical research is organized under three principles: 1) Intuitive primacy (but not dictatorship); 2) Moral thinking is for social doing; and 3) Morality binds and builds. We argue that kin selection and reciprocal altruism are just two of many evolutionary processes that shaped human morality. We show how a broader and more group-focused conception of morality fits with emerging ideas about multi-level selection, and with new discoveries about the rapid pace of genetic evolution and the importance of intergroup competition during the last 10,000 years. We close by applying this broader moral perspective to religion and politics.
- AUTHOR KEYWORDS: morality, evolution, politics, ethics, moral judgment, moral psychology, emotions.

(Haidt, 2007) ⇒ Jonathan Haidt. (2007). “The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology." science 316, no. 5827 (2007): 998-1002.
- QUOTE: People are selfish, yet morally motivated. Morality is universal, yet culturally variable. Such apparent contradictions are dissolving as research from many disciplines converges on a few shared principles, including the importance of moral intuitions, the socially functional (rather than truth-seeking) nature of moral thinking, and the coevolution of moral minds with cultural practices and institutions that create diverse moral communities. I propose a fourth principle to guide future research: Morality is about more than harm and fairness. More research is needed on the collective and religious parts of the moral domain, such as loyalty, authority, and spiritual purity.

(Haidt, 2006) ⇒ Jonathan Haidt. (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis." Basic Books, 2006. ISBN:0465028020
- BOOK OVERVIEW: This is a book about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world’s civilizations - to question it in light of what we now know from scientific research, and to extract from it the lessons that still apply to our modern lives. It is a book about how to construct a life of virtue, happiness, fulfillment, and meaning.
- QUOTE: True love is passionate love that never fades; if you are in true love, you should marry that person; if love ends, you should leave that person because it was not true love; and if you can find the right person, you will have true love forever. You might not believe this myth yourself, particularly if you are older than thirty; but many young people in Western nations are raised on it, and it acts as an ideal that they unconsciously carry with them even if they scoff at it ... But if true love is defined as eternal passion, it is biologically impossible.

(Greene & Haidt, 2002) ⇒ Joshua Greene, and Jonathan Haidt. (2002). “How (and Where) Does Moral-Judgment Work?.” In: Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(12). doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(02)02011-9
- ABSTRACT: Moral psychology has long focused on reasoning, but recent evidence suggests that moraljudgment is more a matter of emotion and affective intuition than deliberate reasoning. Here we discuss recent findings in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including several studies that specifically investigate moraljudgment. These findings indicate the importance of affect, although they allow that reasoning can play a restricted but significant role in moraljudgment. They also point towards a preliminary account of the functional neuroanatomy of moraljudgment, according to which many brain areas make important contributions to moraljudgment although none is devoted specifically to it.
- AUTHOR KEYWORDS: moral psychology, affective neuroscience, emotion, morality, moraljudgment, social behavior, reasoning.

(Haidt, 2001) ⇒ Jonathan Haidt. (2001). “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment.” In: Psychological Review, 108(4). [doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.108.4.814]
- ABSTRACT: Research on moral judgment has been dominated by rationalist models, in which moral judgment is thought to be caused by moral reasoning. The author gives 4 reasons for considering the hypothesis that moral reasoning does not cause moral judgment; rather, moral reasoning is usually a post hoc construction, generated after a judgment has been reached. The social intuitionist model is presented as an alternative to rationalist models. The model is a social model in that it deemphasizes the private reasoning done by individuals and emphasizes instead the importance of social and cultural influences. The model is an intuitionist model in that it states that moral judgment is generally the result of quick, automatic evaluations (intuitions). The model is more consistent than rationalist models with recent findings in social, cultural, evolutionary, and biological psychology, as well as in anthropology and primatology.