http://www.polipsych.com Exploring Political Attitudes Through Moral Psychology Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:02:14 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I'm off to SPSP 2010 and will be presenting the below poster at the morality and justice pre-conference.  It's based on a scale I found measuring separate war and peace attitudes (Vander Linden et. al, 2008) at the main political psychology conference 2 years ago.  The concept is pretty simple...I found scales ... http://www.polipsych.com/2010/01/27/separating-pro-peace-from-anti-war-attitudes-using-moral-psychology-measures/ I just finished Methland, by Nick Reding, an in-depth portrait of the fall and hopeful rise of a small American town, Oelwein, Iowa, and a few individuals touched by the meth epidemic there.  What makes the book most powerful are the portraits that Reding is able to draw of the ... http://www.polipsych.com/2010/01/15/methland-by-nick-reding-moral-maximizing-and-the-drug-war/ I recently read this blog post by Justin Wolfers defending the use of United States gross domestic product rather than measures of subjective well being (e.g. gross national happiness) to measure how well our country is doing.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with this debate, you can see this below video or this ... http://www.polipsych.com/2010/01/05/united-states-gross-domestic-product-vs-gross-national-happiness/ As a liberal social psychologist who has helped create a science of positive psychology course at the University of Southern California, I could not help but be interested in Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Bright-Sided, which states how the positive psychology approach (in academia, business, health, and economics) has undermined America. ... http://www.polipsych.com/2009/12/18/what-the-positive-psychology-approach-can-learn-from-barbara-ehrenreichs-bright-sided/ Gratitude has been theorized to be a moral emotion, yet it has largely been studied for it's hedonic benefits rather than it's effect on moral reasoning.  I had done some previous analyses on our data at yourmorals.org where scores on the Gratitude quotient scale were positively related to most all ... http://www.polipsych.com/2009/12/13/does-gratitude-promote-a-sense-of-fairness-and-equality/ People who study happiness can be annoying in their pollyannish prescriptions to just look on the bright side of life.  Just ask Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.  So it's always refreshing to see someone put basic research findings (being grateful ... http://www.polipsych.com/2009/12/10/gratitude-video-from-conan-obrien-and-louis-ck/ I bought Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue.  As someone interested in moral confabulation, Sarah Palin is an a great case study.  She has a very visceral intuitive sense of her own moral opinions (e.g. her opinion on Israeli settlements)...yet she often seems to have no preconceived notion of the ... http://www.polipsych.com/2009/11/20/reading-palins-going-rogue-expanding-the-liberal-moral-imagination-lederach-wright/ Sarah Palin, in contrast to the Obama administration, believes that Jewish settlements in disputed territory should be allowed to expand.  She is very clear about this belief in her recent interview with Barbara Walters.  But does she understand the reason for these beliefs?  Consider the below statement..."I believe that the ... http://www.polipsych.com/2009/11/18/sarah-palin-confabulates-that-jewish-people-will-be-flocking-to-israel/ A few years ago, I was fortunate to catch a talk by Jon Haidt at the Gallup Positive Psychology Summit where he gave a wonderful talk about moral foundation theory, which seeks to determine the fundamental systems of morality.  I sought to use his scale in my work and using ... http://www.polipsych.com/2009/11/13/what-are-the-basic-foundations-of-morality/ Recently, a professor expressed the opinion that the purpose of social psychology is to publish first-rate research in journals.  Personally, I do not feel that social psychology is an end, in and of itself, but rather a means.  It is true that one of the primary means that psychology gets ... http://www.polipsych.com/2009/10/27/reasons-to-be-the-opposite-sex-a-social-psychology-classroom-demonstration/