Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt is a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.
From his Q & A with Alison George at Slate:
You've called Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich a very good moral psychologist. What do you mean?--Marshal Zeringue
Gingrich is very skilled at manipulating moral sentiments. He understands visceral morality. In the 1990s, he came up with a list of words Republicans should use when talking about Democrats, including "dirty," "sleazy," "cheating." If you talk about "a dirty idea that will bring us down into the gutter," the words are very powerful. Ronald Reagan was a skilled moral psychologist, too. In fact, for the past 30 or 40 years Republicans have known how to talk in ways that push buttons.
Are Democrats less skilled at pushing buttons?
Democrats talk about programs like social security or Medicare but it's not clear to most voters what Democrats' core moral values are.
What should they do differently?
To get folks to vote for you—and go on voting for you—you need to tap into several of their moral foundations. When Barack Obama and the Democrats were changing the health care system, couldn't they at least have put on a show of worrying about cheaters—a concern that is stronger on the right than on the left? Couldn't they have pretended to care about catching all the doctors and lawyers who are in cahoots with patients to rip off the system?
Politics doesn't sound like the typical terrain for a psychologist. How did you become involved?
I began as...[read on]
