A Politics & Moral Psychology Blog Exploring Political Attitudes Through Moral Psychology

15Oct/110

Liberals vs. Conservatives:innocent until proven guilty?

If you are uncertain if a criminal is innocent or guilty, is it better to err on the side of innocence or guilt?  Given that proof is continuous, not categorical, how much bias toward innocent until proven guilty should one have?  A friend of a friend recently asked is this question to a group of [...]

17Jul/110

Libya as a moral war (except for libertarians)

Many people believe that war and violence are inherently immoral, and some psychologists have begun to explore the idea that celebrating heroism is an antidote to the problem of evil. In contrast, other psychologists have highlighted the dark side of moral conviction (Skitka & Mullen, 2002) and the notion of idealistic evil (Baumeister, 1997) to [...]

18Jun/112

Relative vs. Absolute Good Choices for Liberals, Conservatives, and Libertarians

Awhile ago, I read about a survey given to Harvard Medical school students about whether they would prefer to live in a world where they had a higher absolute amount of some beneficial good or a higher relative amount.  For example, participants had a choice of living in a world where they make $100,000 and [...]

23Apr/113

Liberals place more value on being funny than conservatives and libertarians.

I’ve been watching a lot of comedy central lately and have been wondering why there does not appear to be a conservative equivalent, just as there is no popular liberal equivalent to conservative AM talk radio.  Perhaps liberals value being funny more than conservatives?
To test this idea, I thought I’d look at the data from [...]

28Aug/102

Why do we study the psychology of libertarians?

We recently submitted a paper for publication about libertarian morality, along with co-authors Spassena Koleva, Jesse Graham, Pete Ditto, and Jonathan Haidt.  The paper leverages our broad set of measures to tell a story about libertarians, which converges with previously reported findings about liberals and conservatives.  Specifically, all ideological groups demonstrate the same patterns whereby [...]

4Jul/104

Appreciating American Libertarians – Insight from Ted Conover’s Book, Rolling Nowhere

I just finished Ted Conover’s book, Rolling Nowhere, which I definitely recommend to anyone interested in understanding the human condition.  In fact, I’d recommend any/all of Conover’s books, where he assumes roles as diverse as a prison guard, illegal immigrant, and in this book, a train jumping hobo. Personally, psychology is always more convincing when [...]

16Oct/092

J Street vs. The Weekly Standard: Is it possible to be pro-peace and pro-Israel?

A group called J Street has recently sought to question the wisdom of military action by the Israeli government.  Their influence is supposed to be a counterbalance to the traditionally hawk-ish Israel lobby embodied by AIPAC.  Many lobbying groups which oppose military action by Israel identify with the groups that Israel has conflicting interests with or [...]