Tem

11: OCT 6

Assigned

• Haidt, Chapter 5, "Beyond WEIRD Morality" (17)
• Writing exercise: How WEIRD is Morality?

Brief Survey on Student Engagement in Hybrid course delivery

• Please take the following anonymous survey.

Final Stage of Sapolsky Writing Assignment

• Stage 4: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [1]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. Up to 10 points, in Points.

• Back evaluations are due Thursday, October 8, 11:59pm.

Some samples from Henrich's, "The Weirdest People on Earth"

• p. 25: "Who Am I?" task. Show charts
• p. 28: sociocentric vs. individualistic
• p. 34: guilt vs. shame
• p. 44: impersonal honesty research (recall Ariely).

Haidt, Chapter 5, "Beyond WEIRD Morality"

WEIRD Morality

• WEIRD morality is the morality of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic cultures

• just as likely to be bothered by taboo violations, but more likely to set aside feelings of disgust and allow violations
• only group with majority allowing chicken story violation.
• "the weirder you are the more likely you are to see the world in terms of separate objects, rather than relationships" "sociocentric" moralities vs. individualistic moralities; Enlightenment moralities of Kant and Mill are rationalist, individualist, and universalist.
• survey data on East/West differences in sentence completion: "I am..."
• framed-line task 97

• Kantian and Millian ethical thought is rationalist, rule based, and universalist. Just the ethical theory you would expect from the culture.

A 3 channel moral matrix

• Schweder's anthropology: ethics of autonomy, community, divinity 99-100 - gloss each...

• claims Schweder's theory predicts responses on taboo violation tests, is descriptively accurate.
• ethic of divinity: body as temple vs. playground
• vertical dimension to values. explains reactions to flag desecration, piss Christ, thought exp: desecration of liberal icons. (Note connection to contemporary conflicts, such as the Charlie Hebdot massacre.)

Making Sense of Moral/Cultural Difference

• Haidt's Bhubaneswar experience: diverse (intense) continua of moral values related to purity. (opposite of disgust). Confusing at first, but notice that he started to like his hosts (elephant) and then started to think about how their values might work. Stop and think about how a mind might create this. Detail about airline passenger.
• Theorizing with Paul Rozin on the right model for thinking about moral foundations: "Our theory, in brief" (103)
• American politics often about sense of "sacrilege", not just about defining rights (autonomy). Not just harm, but types of moral disgust.
• Stepping out of the Matrix: H's metaphor for seeing his own cultural moral values as more "contingent" than before, when it felt like the natural advocacy of what seem true and right. Reports growing self awareness of liberal orientation of intellectual culture in relation to Shweder's view. Social conservatives made more sense to him after studying in India.

Small Group Discussion

• Discussion questions:

• Does it make sense to talk about "stepping out of a matrix"? Is this a temporary thing? What value might it have in your experience?
• Do you have a parallel story to Haidt's? (Mention travel experiences.)