Jonathan Haidt is an American social psychologist who, together with his collaborators, develops this theory. in opposition to the theories of Piaget and Kohlberg by not including these emotional aspects.
Moral foundations theory was first proposed by psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph, who built on the work of cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder. It consists of a psychological and social theory that attempts to explain the origins and variations of moral reasoning based on innate and modular foundations.
Specifically, Jonathan David Haidt, its most important author, was born on October 19, 1963 in New York (he is 55 years old). He is a social psychologist, professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University, and his research focuses on the psychology of morality and moral emotions.
The 6 fundamentals: values and opposites
The theory proposes six foundations of moral reasoning from which people and cultures build their morals. These are: care, justice, freedom, loyalty, authority and purity However, its authors state that more foundations may possibly be included in the future.
This theory has been further developed by a group of collaborators and has been popularized in Haidt’s book entitled The mind of the righteous (The Righteous Mind). From now on we will refer to it as Haidt’s theory of moral foundations.
The 6 fundamentals are made up of a series of values and their opposites, which are the following:
How does the theory arise?
Towards the end of 2000, a group of social and cultural psychologists led by Jonathan Haidt began the systematization of the main findings related to morality from psychology, anthropology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology As a result of this process, Haidt publishes the New Synthesis of Moral Psychology in the journal Science.
origins
Haidt’s theory of moral foundations arises as a reaction against the theory of rationalist development of morality of Lawrence Kohlberg and Jean Piaget.
Kohlberg, based on the work of Piaget, argued that children’s moral reasoning evolves over time, and proposed an explanation through six stages of moral development. His work focuses on justice as a key concept in moral reasoning, considering this a primary cognitive activity; Kohlberg makes his theory a dominant approach to moral psychology. Thus, Haidt finds Kohlberg’s theory unsatisfactory because it does not focus on emotional aspects.
Principles of the theory
Through Haidt’s Theory of Moral Foundations, it is proposed that human morality arises through these principles:
Differences between liberals and conservatives
Initially, the moral foundations of this theory were developed from cultural differences. Later, however, various works with the theory They focused on political ideology
Some authors proposed Haidt’s theory of moral foundations as an explanation of the differences between liberals and conservatives, and suggested these foundations as a basis to explain variations or differences of opinion in political and social matters such as the right to abortion or marriage between homosexual people.
Haidt proposes that liberals emphasize only three moral foundations: care, justice, and freedom; while the conservatives rely on all of them, on all six.
