Does moral foundations theory support the concept of rational irrationality?

I think it does. And I think an understanding of why it does sheds some further light on the difficulty that democratic governments have in dealing with complex economic issues. So, if you don't already know about moral foundations theory and rational irrationality, you might be about to learn something worth knowing.

Jonathan Haidt explains moral foundations theory in ‘The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion’, 2012.  His basic idea is that the virtues that are found in many cultures are related to adaptive challenges of social life that have been identified by evolutionary psychologists. While moral foundations are innate, they are expressed in differing ways and to differing extents in different cultures and by different political groups. Policy concerns of different political groups can be explained to a large extent in terms of the moral mentality of their members.

The concept of rational irrationality was developed by Bryan Caplan in ‘The Myth of the Rational Voter’, 2007. Caplan provides evidence that the views of voters on economic issues differ substantially from those of economists. He attributes this to irrationality. He argues that people actually have a demand for irrationality – that many have an almost religious attachment to irrational beliefs and tend to cling to them until the cost becomes too high. In the political arena an ongoing attachment to irrationality is a predictable response because the cost of clinging to irrational political beliefs is low. There is a miniscule probability that the vote of any individual will be decisive in changing the result of an election. For the individual, voting is likely choosing from a menu and getting the same dish whatever you order.

My reaction on this blog a few years ago was that I didn’t think ‘rational irrationality’ would provide as good an explanation of voter behaviour as some less extreme concepts, such as ‘bounded rationality’ used by Douglass North. My views have changed, however, since I started thinking seriously about moral foundations theory.

The idea of linking moral foundations theory and rational irrationality is not original. Christian Galgano, an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, has published an article entitled: ‘The Righteous Mind of the Irrational Voter: Why good people choose bad policies’, ‘The Oculus’, 10(1). Christian develops what he refers to as a Haidt-Caplan model to explain why voters are rationally irrational. I think he deserves high praise for linking these ideas.

I am not sure how pleased Jon Haidt would be that one of the messages people are taking from his book is that moral concerns lead people to cling to irrational policy positions. He wants readers to understand that we are all deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings tend to drive our political reasoning. His aim is that this understanding should help us all to recognize that our political opponents are good people whose beliefs flow from genuine moral concerns. I agree that that is desirable, but is unlikely by itself to result in better public policies.

So, how do moral concerns lead people to hold on to irrational political beliefs? First, as already noted, there is no incentive for individuals to go beyond sloppy intuitive thinking when their individual views are unlikely to be decisive in changing government policy. Second, as Jon Haidt argues, identification with groups tends to blind people to the wisdom of people outside those groups. Third, even when individuals expect to be held to account for their beliefs, this does not necessarily lead them to dispense with irrational beliefs. In this context, Haidt refers to research by Phil Tetlock about the effects of asking people to justify their beliefs to an audience. As might be expected, this makes individuals think more systematically, but often in a one-sided attempt to rationalize their existing views. They give a more even-handed consideration to alternative points of view only if they do not know the views of the audience and believe that it is well informed and interested in accuracy.

What does moral foundations theory suggest about potential sources of rational irrationality? Haidt identifies six moral foundations:

·         Care/harm makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need.

·         Fairness/cheating is concerned with reciprocity. It makes us sensitive to issues relating to trustworthiness, opportunism and punishment.

·         Loyalty/betrayal makes us sensitive to group interests.

·         Authority/subversion makes us sensitive to issues relating to rank and status.

·         Liberty/oppression makes people notice and resent signs of attempted domination by bullies and tyrants.

·         Sanctity/degradation evolved to help us meet the challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites. It makes it possible to invest objects with irrational and extreme values, which in turn helps to bind groups together.

Irrational beliefs about sanctity seem to me play a large role in public opinion about economic policy in Australia. The collection of poll results posted by Possum Comitatus on Crikey a few days ago provides some good examples. For instance, the percentage of the population opposed to privatisation of Telstra, Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank still far exceeds the percentage in favour, many years after these ‘icons’ were sold. There also seems to be massive opposition to sale of Australian farm land to foreign companies.

What basis do I have to say that such positions are irrational? My only basis (apart from my disagreement with them) is that they are probably contrary to majority expert opinion. Furthermore, in my view, if you put a random sample of people in a situation where they were given the information they need to make informed decisions and ask them to justify their beliefs to an audience whom they could assume to be unbiased and interested in accuracy, then I think many of them would be likely to change their minds.

The main problem I have with moral foundations theory as presented by Jon Haidt is that it doesn’t seem to provide a basis for judging any particular moral feeling to be superior to any other. What basis do we have to say that it is silly for people to cling collectively to a set of irrational beliefs that is impoverishing them? What basis do we have to say that the sense of self-transcendence that a person might feel while engaging in meditation is superior to that which some other person might feel while taking part in a lynch mob? Haidt clearly doesn’t think all moral sentiments are equal, but there is nothing in his model that requires him to give calm philosophical reasoning a higher status than unprocessed emotions.

In my view, while social intuitionism tells us a great deal about morality, we should not disregard the importance of reason and rationality. In Steven Pinker’s discussion of these issues in ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’ (pp 622 -642) he comes out in favour of Alan Fiske’s taxonomy which allows for a rational-legal  mode of social legitimation – a system of norms that is worked out by reason (utilitarianism plays an important role) and implemented by formal rules. Pinker argues that rational-legal reasoning can enable us to strategically deploy moral intuitions in benign ways.

The question that remains to be considered further is how we can employ our reasoning to deal more effectively with the problem of rational irrationality.

Postscript 1:

I have been having second thoughts about my statement that there is nothing in Haidt’s model that would cause him to give calm philosophical reasoning a higher status than unprocessed emotion. This might be an accurate statement, but it probably isn’t appropriate to criticize social psychology on the grounds that it doesn’t help people to make ethical judgements. I imagine that moral foundations theory might provide fairly accurate predictions of how different people would rank different self-transcendence experiences in terms of moral considerations. It also predicts that people are unlikely to cling to irrational beliefs that impoverish them when they have adequate incentives to seek the truth.

However, it seems to me that the role played by reason and rationality is sufficiently important for it to be recognized separately. Perhaps the evolutionary challenges faced in human evolution caused greater respect to be given to those who had a coherent set of moral intuitions, beliefs and behaviours (practical wisdom). There might be reproductive advantages in displaying practical wisdom (the virtue of prudence). In addition, tribes whose leaders showed greater practical wisdom might have adopted superior norms that would have given them an advantage in the struggle for survival. The story still remains essentially Humean or Hayekian, rather than a story about humans consciously constructing the building blocks of human progress.

Postscript 2:
I have also had further thoughts on the circumstances under which beliefs about sanctity could be said to be irrational.  The concept of irrationality seems to apply in relation to beliefs rather than personal values. For example, it might be possible for an individual to value a state-owned enterprise as a national icon without holding any irrational beliefs about it. 
However, Jon Haidt’s studies suggest that our values are likely to have a strong impact on our beliefs. People who view a state owned enterprise as a national icon would be more likely to hold irrational beliefs about what might happen if the enterprise is privatized. For example, they might over-estimate the potential for the enterprise to disappear once privatized, and under-estimate the potential net economic benefits arising from sale of the enterprise.


Some implications of moral foundations theory for social cooperation are discussed in a later post.

Do libertarians have a problem with empathy and disgust?

It seems to me that a high value should be placed on liberty because it enables people with different values to live in peace and to pursue their individual objectives in ways that are compatible and even mutually beneficial. This doesn’t make liberty the only ethical value that matters. It does mean, however, that the onus should rest squarely with those who seek to restrict liberty to show that this will result in net benefits in terms of human flourishing.

I would like to think those views make me a liberal, but that term has been hijacked by others (conservatives in Australia and egalitarians in the United States). I usually label myself as a libertarian, but if Walter Block’s discussion of whether Milton Friedman was a libertarian is definitive, then I definitely don’t qualify. I could not be described as an anarcho-capitalist or a minarchist (my spellchecker wanted to change that to monarchist, which would also be equally true, but beside the point). Perhaps my views could be described as ‘minarchism plus’, but the ‘plus’ involves a lot of things that Walter would consider to disqualify me from being classified as a libertarian. For example, I support government action to issue money that is not backed by gold, central bank control of monetary aggregates, some prudential regulation, a social welfare safety net providing for somewhat more than minimal subsistence needs, some environmental regulation, some anti-trust regulation and even democracy.

According to Walter Block’s classification that probably makes me a classical liberal rather than a libertarian, but I am not sure that Walter’s distinction between classical liberals and libertarians is widely accepted. Rather than attempting to define libertarianism from first principles it might be more appropriate to define it in terms of the values and beliefs of self-labelled libertarians.

Until recently I thought my values would be fairly consistent with those of most self-labelled libertarians. That was before I had read Jonathan Haidt’s book, ‘The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion’ and competed some of the questionnaires on the YourMorals site. The research by Haidt and his colleagues shows, not surprisingly, that the view of fairness/reciprocity displayed by libertarians tends to place a high value on individual liberty. It also shows that libertarians tend to be much like conservatives in terms of issues related to harm/care and much like liberals on issues related to authority/respect and purity/sanctity. (A paper comparing the ethical values of libertarians with those of liberals and conservatives can be found here. The findings have been discussed by Ronald Bailey at reason.com.)

My values in relation to fairness/reciprocity seem to be similar to those of other libertarians, but I appear to be a bleeding heart liberal in terms of the harm/care foundation and a conservative in terms of purity/sanctity.  I think this may have to do with the difficulty of getting people to reveal their values, rather than a real difference in values. Many libertarians (and conservatives) may be reluctant to acknowledge that they feel sympathy for people suffering economic hardships because they are concerned that this might make them vulnerable to higher taxes. I don’t think it does. A decent safety net doesn’t have to involve high taxes if it is appropriately means tested and recipients of benefits are given appropriate incentives to look after themselves.

Something similar might apply in relation to purity/ sanctity. It is, of course, possible to view a behaviour as immoral and yet defend the right of an adult to choose to engage in it, provided that it doesn’t involve interference with the rights of other people. While completing the ‘Moral Foundations Questionnaire’, however, I felt some tension in acknowledging that some behaviour is immoral even though I felt disgusted by it. This makes me wonder whether libertarians (and other liberals) learn to cope with social conservatives who want to make immoral behaviours illegal by downplaying the link between imprudence and immorality. If you agree that disgusting behaviour is immoral, you know that social conservatives are likely to view such agreement as support for making the behaviours illegal. So it may seem to make sense to claim that the behaviour isn’t immoral because no-one is harmed except, perhaps, the person engaging in it.

I think the contraction of morality among liberals to issues relating to rights and obligations may be more apparent than real. Robert Skidelsky argued a couple of years ago that we (people in western societies) know ‘at some level’ that some things are ‘vile’, yet we no longer have ‘the authority and words to say so’. My response was that he had just said that a particular TV program was vile. There should be no problem in   anyone stating that they feel that a TV program, or anything else, is vile, disgusting or immoral. The problem is that some of us are reluctant to do this because social conservatives still want to make immorality illegal when no infringement of rights is involved.

I will return to a discussion of Jonathan Haidt’s book later. In my view it makes an important contribution to understanding of what is wrong with politics.

What are 'courts of common reason'?

‘Courts of Common Reason’ is the title of a book by Howard DeLong (Belcrest Press, second edition, 2011). The book has the subtitle: ‘Awakening the Spirit of 1776 to Form a More Perfect Union’.  DeLong argues that America’s political system falls short of the revolutionary democratic ideals of its founding fathers and suggests how current political practices could be revised to be consistent with those ideals.

The author proposes that a court of common reason be established to determine the ‘common reason of society’ - a phrase used by Thomas Jefferson. The term ‘court’ is used because the proposal involves establishing an advisory jury system, functioning in ‘a controlled setting typical of a court room with unbiased rules governing the presentation of evidence and arguments’ (p 172).

DeLong seems to me to do a good job of establishing that America’s founding fathers viewed democracy as involving more than just representative government. James Madison argued that ‘the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers’. He also asserted, however, that those to whom the people ‘intrust the management of their affairs’ should not be responsive ‘to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests’. Madison would presumably be unimpressed by the tendency for modern politicians to pander to the breezes of passion reflected in public opinion polls.

DeLong’s main source of inspiration, however, is a proposal by Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to John Adams) for simultaneous meetings of wards (small political units within each county responsible for schools, police, roads etc.) to determine the common reason of society:

‘A general call of ward-meetings by their Wardens on the same day thro' the state would at any time produce the genuine sense of the people on any required point, and would enable the state to act in mass, as your people have so often done, and with so much effect, by their town meetings’.

The method which DeLong suggests for identifying the common reason of society would involve random selection of an advisory jury (comprising possibly 0.1% of the adult population) using methodology to mirror important population characteristics as accurately as possible. He envisages that the advisory jury would be divided into sub-juries, each consisting of 12 people, before listening to argument and deliberating. He suggests that the common reason of society would be revealed by the decisions of those sub-juries that achieve unanimity.

DeLong’s reason for proposing sub-juries of 12 people is to reduce the danger of groupthink or mob decision that he considers likely to pose a greater problem in large gatherings. His suggestion that sub-juries should be required to achieve unanimity for their view to be counted is intended to promote considered judgement. I can see merit in sub-juries small enough to enable all members to participate in the discussion, but it seems to me that the requirement for unanimity is too strong. As I see it, if 80% of sub-juries had 10 or more members in support of a proposition that would imply strong support, even if, say, only 50% of sub-juries were unanimous in their support. It would be unfortunate, however, to get bogged down at this point in the detail of how the proposal might be implemented, particularly since the author presents his proposals as a thought experiment.

The author bases his argument for institutional change on the view that the philosophy that common reason should have dominance is presupposed by the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution (including the Bill of Rights).  He suggests that readers ‘suppose, at least provisionally’ that that philosophy is ‘correct’ and asks: ‘What, then, ought we do to better embody that philosophy in our political practice?’

I am not entirely comfortable with that line of reasoning. What does ‘correct’ mean in this context? If it means that the people place high value on having governments serve the ‘common reason’ of society, then we should be asking what evidence there is that current practice falls short of that requirement. Relevant evidence could take two different forms: dissatisfaction with the extent to which democratic governments take account of public opinion in their decision-making processes; or the existence of a gap between public opinion and ‘common reason’ or ‘the cool and deliberate sense’ of the community.  It seems to me there is more evidence of a problem of the latter kind. If that is right, it means that the educative role of the courts of common reason would probably be more important than their role in bringing together information about the views of citizens.

DeLong seems to acknowledge that point when he writes:

‘ordinary polls hardly reveal the “cool and deliberate sense of the community” that should “ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers.” Most citizens have not even thought about many of the issues, much less reflected long and hard to determine their best judgement. What government officials need to know is: What would the American people think if they had the information, interest, time, and ability to consider political issues in a truly deliberative fashion’ (p 166).

I think the opportunity to participate in an advisory jury system that has a good chance of influencing the future directions of public policy would provide participants with incentives that would help overcome rational ignorance and the tendency for people to obtain their opinions from the 'tribes' they identify with. (See this article by Tom Harris for a discussion in the context of climate change policy). Payment for jury service would also help, but could make the exercise costly. DeLong leaves open the question of the length of jury service. There would be trade-offs involved in terms of acquisition of skills in deliberation on public policy issues, allowing participation by a larger proportion of the population and avoiding unnecessary disruption to lives and careers of citizens.

DeLong suggests that the questions and problems that might be put to advisory juries ‘are almost endless’. Examples he suggests include tax policy, medical malpractice liability, misleading advertising, pay rates for politicians, safety and environmental regulation, penalties for criminal offences, immigration policy and eminent domain policy. Towards the end of his book he also suggests that advisory juries could have a role in revision of the American constitution.

In my view Howard DeLong’s proposal for courts of common reason deserves serious consideration as a possible means of helping democracies to work better. It is obvious that the proposal requires more thought before it could be implemented, but it seems to me that people who are concerned about the current performance of democratic governments should be giving a great deal of thought to proposals such as this one.

What are Australians angry about?

In her recently published Quarterly Essay, ‘Great Expectations: Government, Entitlement and an Angry Nation’, Laura Tingle, political editor of the Financial Review, asserts that much of the culture and public discussion of Australians contains ‘some suspicion or assertion that we might be being ripped off, that someone else might be getting preferment’. I had two initial reactions. First, where is the evidence that Australians are more suspicious that they are being ripped off than are people in other countries with comparable living standards? Second, doesn’t Australia’s history of protectionism, crony capitalism and ongoing government support for anti-competitive union practices give us reason to be concerned that we might still be being ripped off?

However, Laura states her purpose as to explore ‘something wider’ than the reasons we have to be ‘underwhelmed by our politicians, by our institutions and by the quality of the services that government provides’. Her aim is to:

‘make the argument that as a nation, a polity, we have not sat down and worked out what exactly we expect “the government” – …  its administrative side, as well as the politicians of the day – to be and to do. We haven’t settled the idea of what we think we are “entitled” to get from government. The only things we seem to have been sure about over the years are that government has not met our great expectations that it will look after us, and that we are nonetheless entitled to be looked after’.

That reminded me of the message in ‘The Good Life and its Discontents’ by an American journalist, Robert Samuelson, published in the mid-1990s:

‘Responsibility poses choices, recognizes limits, and clarifies accountability. Entitlement denies choices, ignores limits, and muddles accountability. Properly construed, responsibility is a fundamental issue that all modern societies must answer in their own way. How much should people do for themselves and how much should government – that is, the people acting as a collective – do for them? What are the respective roles and competencies of individuals, families, social organizations, profit-making enterprises, and government? What answers best fit our traditions, values and common sense?’

Unfortunately, I don’t think the United States has taught us a great deal over the last couple of decades about how to answer those questions. The US still seems to be in the middle of what Samuelson described as ‘an ugly accommodation to reality’. (People who still see the US as characterized by small government may find this difficult to understand. They need to reconsider whether the US is actually characterized by small government. Size of government in the US is now greater than Australia. It would probably be more accurate to characterize the US as a country with inefficient government, rather than a country with small government.)

Much of Laura Tingle’s essay is designed to show that a sense of entitlement has played a strong role in Australia since its inception as a penal colony. The scarcity of labour in the colony apparently gave convict workers a great deal more power than slave labour would be expected to have. They were paid for finishing the job, rather than on the basis of hours worked and were allowed to earn private income when not at their government labours. Education was provided for the children of convicts. Emancipists had legal rights that ordinary people did not have in England at that time.

Laura also shows that disrespect for politicians has been a characteristic of Australia since the middle of the 19^th century when the franchise was extended to almost all adult males. She quotes John Hirst: ‘The people elected parliamentarians who could not look down on them and whom they did not have to look up to’.

The general picture that Laura presents of Australians tending to have an inherited sense of entitlement to be looked after by government is probably correct. Australia could certainly be viewed as an early starter in the ‘entitlement stakes’ – particularly welfare entitlements - and this may mean that more of us have a stronger sense of entitlement to middle class welfare than people in most other countries with comparable living standards.

Laura’s treatment of recent economic history suggests that if Australia is any better placed than any other countries in coming to terms with an entitlement culture this should be attributed to the efforts of the Hawke-Keating government i.e. the government in which Paul Keating was treasurer, rather than the later government in which he was prime minister.  Keating told Australians that they were living beyond their means and that reforms were needed to produce better outcomes for their kids and to provide economic security in the longer term.

Rather than painting a picture of the entire period of the Hawke-Keating and Howard-Costello governments as a reform era, Laura reminds us that the entitlement culture began to return while Keating was prime minister and was fuelled by the expansion of government spending under Howard and Costello. It was appropriate to be reminded that the Howard-Costello government was a big spending government - and only seems fiscally responsible in retrospect because of the strength of revenue growth associated with the mining boom at that time and the subsequent behaviour of the Rudd and Gillard governments.

So what does Laura have to say about Kevin Rudd:

‘Rudd was “Kevin from Queensland”, the bureaucratic nerd who was “here to help”. There was no more discussion about the withdrawal of the state. Government was not just here to give you hand-outs but, once again, to look after you properly. Rudd made public servants fashionable, even trendy. He spoke the incomprehensible language of bureaucracy, and for a time people found that engaging and endearing. Here was what we needed, someone who actually understood the system and could get it working for us’.

As Laura says, Kevin Rudd raised voters’ expectations to a risky degree. It wasn’t all that clear when he was elected in 2007, however, that this was happening. Some of his policies were certainly pie in the sky. It was stupid to propose a carbon trading scheme that was not conditional on action by other countries. The grocery watch and fuel watch schemes were obvious gimmicks. But there was some reason for hope that his ambitious proposals to sort out some of the problems associated with overlap of federal-state responsibilities might have worked. The main problem seemed to be that he turned out to be somewhat lacking in the management skills required of a prime minister.

Some people are angry that Rudd disappointed them. More seem to be angry that he was deposed by his party and that his successor seems incapable of keeping her own promises, let alone leading a government that is capable of living up to the inflated expectations created by Rudd. Some see Julia Gillard as acting like a puppet of the unions and the greens, while pretending to be an advocate of opportunity and responsibility. Laura suggests that there are other things Australians are angry about, including minority government and the uncertainty of the economic and political outlook. She writes:

‘It is wrong to see the anger of the last few years as a “one-off”, which might go away at the next election. The things we are angry about betray the changes that have been taking place over recent decades. As we have seen, politicians no longer control interest rates, the exchange rate, or wages … [etc.]. Voters are confused about what politicians can do for them in such a world. While the levers available to government to protect us have been removed, the expectation that we will still be protected has been fed by the failure of our politicians to explain their new impotence’.

I think Laura is about half right. People would still feel uncertain about the economic situation in Europe and the implications this might have for China and the Australian economy even if politicians still had control of all those ‘levers’. The security that government control of the ‘levers’ appeared to offer was just a mirage.  There are no levers that can enable governments to defy economic reality. And I don’t think uncertainty about the economic situation necessarily translates to anger with government. Good political leaders can win respect for government in uncertain times by taking the public into their confidence.

Laura is right about the need for political leaders to come clean and explain what governments are and are not capable of doing. It is a good sign that Joe Hockey, the shadow treasurer, has recently been making efforts to explain that we cannot have greater government services and more government involvement in our lives with significantly lower taxation. The big challenge posed by the entitlement culture that has developed in all high income countries, it seems to me, is in persuading middle-income earners that they should look after themselves rather than expect governments to accept responsibility for their happiness.