- Joined
- Mar 14, 2017
So I've been thinking about this a while, and wanted some input:
I recently found this site yourmorals.org (a project by Jonathan Haidt if you've heard of him) which attempts to gauge your moral values based on 5 categories, and then compares them to the results of everybody else based on their self-declared political leanings.
What's so interesting about this is that there's a massive correlation between morality and political beliefs, take this graph as an example:
As you can see, there's a pattern here. People who claim to be liberal score much higher on tests rated for empathy or fairness, but conservatives have a higher score on tests that measure loyalty, authority and purity (These terms are defined better on the site itself)
And its not just morality, there's a huge range of different quizzes that show a clear difference in many other aspects that fall along political lines.
So what does this mean? Well the fact that this trend is consistent throughout a bunch of different countries suggests that it's not cultural, people seem to naturally fit into this pattern.
If this is biological in nature, is there a reason we evolved this? I think there's a strong argument for that. Just like how our range of body types is a way of evolutionarily hedging our bets so that we survive regardless of climate, it makes sense that we exhibit a range of morals.
After all, we'd never have explored the world if we played it conservative and safe all the time, but equally it's a good thing that some people chose not to take risks, because some explorers simply died on their journey.
Anyway, the fact that its completely intrinsic to us could be encouraging, perhaps acknowledging that our species requires a bit of both sides could be a way to bring people closer together.
Leave thoughts etc below, feel free to post your own results for any of the quizzes you find interesting. I would like to see if anybody can score all 5's.
I recently found this site yourmorals.org (a project by Jonathan Haidt if you've heard of him) which attempts to gauge your moral values based on 5 categories, and then compares them to the results of everybody else based on their self-declared political leanings.
What's so interesting about this is that there's a massive correlation between morality and political beliefs, take this graph as an example:
As you can see, there's a pattern here. People who claim to be liberal score much higher on tests rated for empathy or fairness, but conservatives have a higher score on tests that measure loyalty, authority and purity (These terms are defined better on the site itself)
And its not just morality, there's a huge range of different quizzes that show a clear difference in many other aspects that fall along political lines.
So what does this mean? Well the fact that this trend is consistent throughout a bunch of different countries suggests that it's not cultural, people seem to naturally fit into this pattern.
If this is biological in nature, is there a reason we evolved this? I think there's a strong argument for that. Just like how our range of body types is a way of evolutionarily hedging our bets so that we survive regardless of climate, it makes sense that we exhibit a range of morals.
After all, we'd never have explored the world if we played it conservative and safe all the time, but equally it's a good thing that some people chose not to take risks, because some explorers simply died on their journey.
Anyway, the fact that its completely intrinsic to us could be encouraging, perhaps acknowledging that our species requires a bit of both sides could be a way to bring people closer together.
Leave thoughts etc below, feel free to post your own results for any of the quizzes you find interesting. I would like to see if anybody can score all 5's.
