1. DISABLERS What prevents us from acting on our values?
Katharine Baker, PhD
OLLI Spring 2017
Vanderbilt University

2. CLASS COVENANT Listen & Participate Respectfully
no interrupting, share the discussion time, be brief
Honesty, Relevance, Confidentiality
Visual Aids & Handouts
More Lecture & Discussion at End

3. Is It Moral?
A man goes to the supermarket once a week and buys a chicken. Before cooking the chicken, he has sexual intercourse with it. Then he cooks it and eats it.
Is this action moral or not?
Nobody is harmed so it’s not immoral—it’s just gross.
The experience that several of us just had is what is called moral dumbfounding, defined as “the stubborn
and puzzled maintenance of a moral judgment without supporting reasons” (Haidt et al. 2000: 1).
But it seems wrong. We can’t say why but we just know that it is.
This experience demonstrates the emotional or affective or, even better said, intuitive nature of our moral
judgments, which is a foundational assertion of the field of moral psychology, which I’m going to give
you an overview of in this presentation. It is based on the work of Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist
and author of The Righteous Mind and The Happiness Hypothesis.

4. Moral Foundations
Many of us are disgusted by stories such as these because disgust as evolved as a way of helping us avoid
dangerous experiences. For example, we are disgusted by rotting food so we don’t eat it and don’t get sick. This
is an evolutionary adaptation that has become what Haidt calls a moral foundation.
Research has demonstrated that all humans have a small set of innate and universal moral foundations. Haidt
and other researchers identified these foundations by identifying the challenges in life that humans had to
adapt to in order to survive. They then connected those challenges to virtues that are found in some form in multiple
cultures. For example, healthy humans have an innate instinct to care for vulnerable children, and this
accounts for virtues such as caring and kindness and compassion.
To summarize, natural selection favored the people who were able to meet life’s challenges well and
quickly and so the virtues that enabled that effective adaptation evolved and were passed along in succeeding
generations.
I’ve given you a chart that details the moral foundations in case you’d like more information—the main point I
want you to take away is that there is evidence that our morality is innate and universal.
however, as we have all experienced, we have moral dilemmas because our values conflict with others’ values
sometimes. What accounts for the differences in our values is cultural variation. Haidt says that our moral
intelligence is like a tongue with six taste receptors. All humans have the same six taste receptors. Food
preferences vary across the world but they all must please those taste receptors. Morality is culturally
constructed in the same way—we all have the same six moral foundations but the way we express that
morality varies across cultures.
Haidt says: …morality… [is] innate (as a set of evolved intuitions) and learned (as children learn to apply those
intuitions within a particular culture). We’re born to be righteous but we have to learn what, exactly,
people like us should be righteous about. 31
Jonathan Haidt writes in The Righteous Mind: [My research colleague] and I tried to identify the best candidates for being the universal cognitive modules upon which cultures construct moral matrices. We therefore called our approach Moral Foundations Theory. We created it by identifying the adaptive challenges of social life that evolutionary psychologists frequently wrote about and then connecting those challenges to virtues that are found in some form in many cultures (146).
Five adaptive challenges stood out most clearly: caring for vulnerable children, forming partnerships with non-kin to reap the benefits of reciprocity, forming coalitions to compete with other coalitions, negotiating status hierarchies, and keeping oneself and one’s kin free from parasites and pathogens, which spread quickly when people live in close proximity to each other. The first row gives adaptive challenges. If our ancestors faced these challenges for hundreds of thousands of years, then natural selection would favor those whose cognitive modules helped them to get things right—rapidly and intuitively—compared to those who had to rely upon their general intelligence (the rider) to solve recurrent problems. The second row gives the original triggers—that is, the sorts of social patterns that such a module should detect.
The third row lists examples of the current triggers—the sorts of thing that do in fact trigger the relevant modules (sometimes by mistake) for people in a modern Western society. The fourth row lists some emotions that are part of the output of each foundation, at least when the foundation is activated very strongly. The fifth row lists some of the virtue words that we use to talk about people who trigger a particular moral “taste” in our minds (147).

5. CARE/harm Adaptation—protect and care for children
The Care/harm foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children. It makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need; it makes us despise cruelty and want to care for those who are suffering.
Adaptive challenge—protect and care for children
Triggers—suffering, distress, or neediness expressed by one’s child
Emotions—compassion
Virtues—caring, kindness
Baby seals, cute cartoon characters in Disney movies
Adaptation—protect and care for children
Triggers—suffering or neediness of child
Emotions—compassion
Virtues—caring, kindness

6. FAIRNESS/cheating Adaptation—create reciprocal partnerships
The Fairness/cheating foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of reaping the rewards of cooperation without getting exploited. It makes us sensitive to indications that another person is like to be a good (or bad) partner for collaboration and reciprocal altruism. It makes us want to shun or punish cheaters.
Adaptive challenge—reap benefits of two-way partnerships
Triggers—deception, cheating, cooperation
Emotions—anger, guilt, gratitude
Virtues—fairness, justice, trustworthiness
Current triggers: broken vending machines, marital fidelity
Adaptation—create reciprocal partnerships
Triggers—deception, cheating, cooperation
Emotions—anger, guilt, gratitude
Virtues—fairness, justice, trustworthiness

7. LOYALTY/betrayal Adaptation—form cohesive coalitions
The Loyalty/betrayal foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions. It makes us sensitive to signs that show another person is (or is not) a team player. It makes us trust and reward such people, and it makes us want to hurt, ostracize, or even kill those who betray us or our group.
Adaptive challenge—form cohesive coalitions
Triggers—threat or challenge to group
Emotions—group pride, rage at traitors
Virtues—loyalty, patriotism, self-sacrifice
Current triggers: sports teams, nations
Adaptation—form cohesive coalitions
Triggers—threat or challenge to group
Emotions—group pride, rage at traitors
Virtues—loyalty, patriotism, self-sacrifice

8. AUTHORITY/subversion
The Authority/subversion foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forging relationships that will benefit us within social hierarchies. It makes us sensitive to signs of rank or status, and to signs that other people are (or are not) behaving properly, given their position.
Adaptive challenge—forge beneficial relationships within hierarchies
Triggers—signs of dominance or submission
Emotions—respect, fear
Virtues—obedience, deference
Current triggers: bosses, respected professionals such as our doctors
Adaptation—beneficial relationships in hierarchies
Triggers—signs of dominance or submission
Emotions—respect, fear
Virtues—obedience, deference

9. SANCTITY/degradation
The Sanctity/degradation foundation evolved initially in response to the adaptive challenge of the omnivore’s dilemma, and then to the broader challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites. It includes the behavioral immune system, which can make us wary of a diverse array of symbolic objects and threats. It makes it possible for people to invest objects with irrational and extreme values—both positive and negative—that are important for binding groups together (Haidt, ).
Adaption—avoid contaminants
Triggers—waste products, rotting food, diseases
Emotions—disgust, awe
Virtues—temperance, chastity, piety, cleanliness
Taboo ideas: racism, sexual fetishes,
Adaption—avoid contaminants
Triggers—waste products, rotting food, diseases
Emotions—disgust, awe
Virtues—temperance, chastity, piety, cleanliness

10. LIBERTY/oppression Adaptation—resist domination to preserve liberty
After identifying the five foundations that he believes are universal, appearing early in human history, Haidt later added The Liberty/oppression foundation, …makes people notice and resent any sign of attempted domination. It triggers an urge to band together to resist or overthrow bullies and tyrants. This foundation supports the egalitarianism and antiauthoritarianism of the left, as well as the don’t-tread-on-me and give-me-liberty antigovernment anger of libertarians and some conservatives (Haidt, 215).
Adaptation—resist domination to preserve liberty
Triggers—bullies, tyranny
Emotions—camaraderie, defiance
Virtues—egalitarianism, liberty

11. Intuition comes first, strategic reasoning second. Jonathan Haidt
In other words, Haidt sums up this insight as “Intuition comes first and reasoning comes second.”
Because it’s more subtle than emotion, intuition is the best word to describe the dozens or hundreds of rapid,
effortless moral judgments and decisions that we all make every day. Only a few of these intuitions come to
us embedded in full-blown emotions. 53
Haidt says that we engage in moral reasoning not to figure out what is really true, but to prepare for social
interactions in which we might be called upon to justify our judgments to others.
“It is a distinctive fact that about moral judgments that we can’t simply point to our own preferences as
sufficient justification. I can say, ‘I prefer chocolate to vanilla because…I just don’t like vanilla.’ But I cannot
say, “I think we should punish Bob because…I just don’t like him.’ We must offer reasons to others for why
they should join us in condemning Bob, and those reasons must refer to normative claims, not to
anyone’s preferences or self-interest.”
“Moral intuitions arise automatically and almost instantaneously, long before moral reasoning has a chance
to get started, and those first intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning.  If you think that moral reasoning
is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and
illogical people become when they disagree with you.  But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we
humans evolved to further our social agendas – to justify our own actions and to defend the teams we belong
to – then things will make a lot more sense.  Keep your eye on the intuitions, and don’t take people’s
moral arguments at face value.  They are mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly,
crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.”
SO WE ARE INNATELY MORAL AND OUR MORAL FOUNDATIONS ARE TRIGGERED
QUICKLY AND EASILY because they are based on evolutionary responses to threats to our survival
Without thinking, we are disgusted by certain behaviors, like the man with the chicken. Our morality is innate
and automatic.
Haidt reminds us of the basic insight of David Hume, a philosopher in the 1700s, that “reason is and ought only
to be the slave of the passions.” Haidt explains that moral reasoning is something we engage in after an
automatic process has already pointed us toward a judgment or conclusion. This automatic process is
emotional, passionate, intuitive, like the automatic reaction we discussed when we talked about habits.
Haidt explains that there are two basic kinds of cognitive events involved in our moral judgments. One is
‘seeing-that’ and the other is ‘reasoning-why.’ We effortlessly and intuitively ‘see that’ something is true, and
then we work to find justifications, or ‘reasons why,’ which we can give to others.

12. The central metaphor Haidt uses is the image of a rider on an elephant
The central metaphor Haidt uses is the image of a rider on an elephant. He says that “the rider is our
conscious reasoning – the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware.  The elephant is the
other 99 percent of mental processes – the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern
most of our behavior.”
Haidt explains, “The rider acts as the spokes[person] for the elephant, even though he/she doesn’t necessarily
know what the elephant is really thinking. The rider is skilled at fabricating post hoc explanations for whatever
the elephant has just done, and it is good at finding reasons to justify whatever the elephant wants it to do next.
Once human beings developed language and began to use it to gossip about each other, it became
extremely valuable for elephants to carry around on their backs a full-time public relations firm.” (Haidt 54)

13. Introduction to Behavioral Ethics
There are many pressures and biases that may overwhelm our ability to act ethically. The field of behavioral ethics researches why good people do bad things sometimes—why our inner moral GPS leads us astray, as seen in this cartoon. We’re going to watch a video that explains this further. See if you relate to any of the disablers it depicts.
intro to behavioral ethics video? 8 minutes
You can explore these concepts further at this site—as you can see there are videos on many of these biases or pressures.

14. DISABLERS negative emotions cognitive biases psychological pressures
Did you recognize any biases that you’ve experienced in yourself or others?
SOURCES:
Giving Voice to Values, Mary Gentile
Ethics Unwrapped, UT Austin --
negative emotions
cognitive biases
psychological pressures
organizational demands

15. Rationalizations
The human ability to rationalize is perhaps the single most important factor that enables good people to give themselves license to do bad things. Rationalizations are invented explanations that hide or deny true motivations, causes, or actions. They are the excuses people give themselves for not living up to their own ethical standards.
For example, most of us think of ourselves as honest people, yet studies show that most of us often lie a little or cheat a little. In order to maintain our self-image as good people, we unconsciously invent rationalizations to convince ourselves that what we did was not wrong, not really harmful, not our fault, and so on.
Therefore, one of the best things we can do to preserve our moral intent is to monitor our own rationalizations. 
This video will help us recognize the most common rationalizations that we should constantly look for in ourselves.
10 minute video

17. Closing Reflection
“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness Comes as an unexpected visitor. …Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.” Rumi, a Sufi poet