FEB 15

11: FEB 15(Heavy reading day)

Assigned

• Haidt, Chapter 5, "Beyond WEIRD Morality" (17)
• Henrich, Joe. Prelude and Chapter 1, "WEIRD Psychology" from The WEIRDEST People in the World (1-37)

In-class Topics

• Method Point: Layers of Explanation
• Release of SW1 Scores and Comments

SW1 - Evolution of Morality

• SW1 results are coming to you this evening. A couple of specific points:

• The general level of writing was good. You should not impose a grade distribution on the numbers. They mostly reflect an assessment relative to the rubric. 13/14s are great, 12 is pretty good, 11 ok, 8s, 9s, and 10s - great opportunity for improvement. Seriously, it would not be difficult to move those up. This is not a curve.
• No grades were determined by these results. They are probably accurate to +/-1 point.
• This is not really the end of the assignment, but the beginning of a great opportunity to work on your writing. You can start that process by looking at the scores and reading several peers' essays. Consider visiting the office (zoom or in person) to discuss your writing.

• We are ready to start Back Evaluations. This gives you an opportunity to reward peer commentators who did a particularly good job with their comments. Please focus on comments, not scores. You must complete back evaluations to receive credit for the 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. You must do the back evaluation to receive credit for the whole assignment. Failing to give back-evaluations unfairly affects other classmates.

• Back evaluations are due Thursday, February 17th, 2022, 11:59pm.

Point on Method in the Course: "Layers of Explanation" or "Frames"

• Consider the "disciplinary" layers we have introduced in our study of ethics:

• 1. The Biological - affects individuals directly, but also groups through neo-group selection.
• 2. The Psychological - differences and Structures in our individual psychology for expression moral behaviors. Intuitions vs. Reasoning. Personal life experiences.
• 3. The Political - How our psychology makes us groupish. Physio-politics.
• 4. The Cultural - Differences between cultures, including, for example the remarkable emergence of WEIRD culture. (Joe Henrich, The Weirdest People on Earth) literacy and the brain, Christianity as a driver of culture, catholic church as driver of cultural ideas (the Marriage and Family Plan, impersonal honesty and sociality, etc.)

• Big question from today: How does the cultural frame explain and complicate ethics?

Haidt, Chapter 5, "Beyond WEIRD Morality"

• Introduction

• WEIRD morality is the morality of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic cultures. Noticed that people only a few miles off campus had very different responses to the harmless taboo scenarios. University students (who are WEIRD) were just as likely to be bothered by taboo violations, but more likely to set aside feelings of disgust and allow violations. They were the 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" (Analytic vs. Holistic in Henrich C1)
• "sociocentric" moralities vs. individualistic moralities;
• The Enlightenment moralities of Kant (Duty) and Mill (Utilitarian) are rationalist, individualist, and universalist.
• Survey data on East/West differences in sentence completion: "I am..." (also in Henrich C1)
• 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. (Hmm. So now we discover that some of our "tools" are culturally specific. Is this a problem?)

• Three Ethics are more descriptive than one

• A 3 channel moral matrix - or, How should we theorize (locate) our view in the larger world of human moralities?
• Schweder's cultural 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. (Note: not religiosity or even spirituality, but often is.).
• There is a 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.)

• How I became a pluralist

• 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) - most societies see a vertical dimension in social space. man who robs a bank vs. child sex traffickers
• 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 Schweder's view. Social conservatives made more sense to him after studying in India. [Note: This raises the possibility of a difference between “cultural conservatism (socio-centrism)” and “political conservatism”.]

Small Group Discussion

• Haidt introduces the “Cultural Frame” with the move metaphor of “The Matrix”. Cultures include family and kin, cultures of origin, and national cultures.
• Questions:Does it make sense to talk about "stepping out of a matrix"? Perhaps you have had this experience within US culture as you moved from family culture or the culture of your hometown to college. Or from international travel. Do you have a parallel story to Haidt's? Share with each other some details of the “cultural frames” you inhabit.

Henrich, "WEIRD Psychology," from The Weirdest People on Earth"

• Prelude: Your Brain has been modified by culture

• Example of how reading alters brains. "Literacy thus provides an example of how culture can change people biologically independent of any genetic differences."
• The ‘letterbox’ in your brain
• Literacy in Western Europe - a “cultural package” that includes abilities, but also attitudes toward education, technologies of literacy like printing.
• Note how a “culture of literacy” can cut across other cultures. Right hemisphere bias in facial recognition common to university students across cultures.
• 1517: Protestantism requires literacy. "sola scriptura"
• Showing causal relationship with "quasi-experimental" method "For every 100 km traveled from Wittenberg, percentage of Protestants dropped 10%. Like a "dosage". Also drove female literacy and public education.
• Also seen in literacy rates of Catholic and Prot missionaries to Africa: Protestant missions produce more literacy.
• Point of his book, “The WEIRDEST People in the World,”: WEIRD psychology is the result of a set of cultural adaptations promoted by the Catholic church.
• The movement of “sola scriptura” led to an explosion of literacy, which had numerous cultural effects, but the bigger story of how we became WEIRD starts with the Catholic Churches’ “Marriage and Family Plan” (Chapter 1).

• Chapter 1: WEIRD Psychology

• WEIRD: individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. Tends to look for universal categories, analytic. patient, takes plesure in hard work, sticks to imparial rules or principles, guilt vs. shame

• Major Claim: WEIRD psychology is a product of 600-1000 years of the Catholic Church's modification of our psychology through its "Marriage and Family Plan".

• Really, who are you?

• "Who Am I? task by culture
• Mapping the Individualism Complex vs. Kin-based institutions

• Might be obligated to avenge a murder,
• Prohibited from marrying a stranger / privileged to marry mother’s brother’s daughters.
• Responsible to carry out expensive ancestor rituals.
• Liable for family members crimes.
• Note the italicized moral terms. Moral culture changes with sociocentrism/individualism, as in Haidt.

• Contrast on p. 28. In the Industrial World "everyone is shopping for better relationships." Read specific contrasts.
• Hofstede's scale for measuring individualism/sociocentrism -
• Economic prosperity and Individualism may be in two way causal relationship.
• Note caveats to this research on p. 31. 1. As with physio-politics, not say one cultural package is objectively better than another. [Arguably, individualism and markets got us to the crisi of climate change.] 2. As with physio-politics, the categories mask numerous continuous differences.

• Cultivating the WEIRD self

• Research showing individualists cultivate "consistency across relationships" vs. kin-based "consistency within relationships”.
• Dispositionalism - seeing people's behavior as anchored impersonal traits that influence actions across contexts. The Fundamental Attribution Error (33) is a bias of WEIRD people, not a universal cognitive bias. WEIRD people suffer more from cognitive dissonance because of the type of consistency valued in WEIRD culture.
• Guilt vs. Shame
• Conformity - Solom Asch's experiments in which confederates give incorrect answers to test conformity. WEIRD cultures show lowest conformity. 37-38.

• Stop here for first half.

• Marshmallows Come to Those Who Wait

• "Discounting" as a measure of patience
• Impersonal Honesty -- UN Diplomats research, Impersonal Honesty Game (results at p. 44)
• Universalism and Non-relationalism -- Passengers Dilemma
• Trusting Strangers - GTQ instrument. impersonal trust vs. trust in relationship based networks.
• Impersonal prosociality - correlated with national wealth, better government, less corruption, faster innovation.
• Obsessed with intentions -- Bob/Rob and Andy story. Barrett and Laurence research. Indep. research on Japanese (less focused on intentions)
• Analytic vs. Holistic thinking. Triad Task. abstract rule-based vs. functional relationship. Possible that even some of the Mapuche's "analytic" answers had holistic reasoning. pig/dog pig/husks. Also, attention and memory studies: East Asians remember background/context better that WEIRD people. Americans track the center of attention.

• WEIRD also have great endowment effect, overestimate our talents, self-enhance, enjoy making choices.
• Summary table on p. 56. See bot of p. 57 for a look ahead at the argument he is making about the cultural influence of the Catholic Church.