The Experiential Economy
I recently wrote/created (though the graphic design is not mine) the below infographic for Good Magazine in an issue dedicated to societal trends. The idea here is that the material economy (which produces physical goods like cars and electronics) is being replaced by the experiential economy (which produces experiences like food and vacations). The psychological [...]
The Moral Foundations of ThinkProgress, Alternet, Daily Kos, & the NY Times
Over the past couple years, Jon Haidt has had press articles from various liberal leaning press organizations, including these articles from ThinkProgress, Alternet, Daily Kos, and the New York Times.
One of the great things about doing internet research is that web servers automatically collect information that makes it very easy to do cross-sample validation. This information can also be used [...]
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 [...]
Equity trumps Equality in arguments about taxation
It is more effective to advocate for progressive taxation using arguments about equity or deservingness rather than arguments about how unequal American society has become.
I have written about this before, using different data, but with renewed attention being paid to rising inequality, leading liberals to continue to push for rising taxes for the rich, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Personality profiles of readers vs. non-readers and saving your local bookstore.
I recently attended the Los Angeles Times Book fair, which was held at USC this year. For anyone who lives close to Los Angeles, I would highly recommend it, as over a 2 day period, I saw Andrew Breitbart, Larry Flynt, Father Greg Boyle, Steve Lopez, and countless other interesting people speak about books they [...]
When Ingroup Love does not equal Outgroup Hate
Recently, Jon Haidt wrote a an opinion piece about the death of Bin Laden, which points out that people are expressing love for their ingroup, it does not necessarily translate to hate of other groups. As I’ve said before, few things in psychology are categorically one thing or the other, and certainly there is a [...]
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 [...]
Why doesn’t Ron Paul use the word ‘America’ much?
A colleague of mine forwarded me this article in the New York Times, which compared the presidential candidates’ usages of various terms. Some words require more context, but what struck him (and me, after I saw it) in this graph is the fact that Ron Paul doesn’t use the words America or American very much, [...]