The Two Moralities

Conservatives, Liberals and the Roots of Our Political Divide

By: Ronnie Janoff-Bulman

Narrated by: Kim Niemi

The left and right will always have strong policy disagreements, but constructive debate and negotiation are not possible when each side demonizes the other. In this book, social psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman provides a new framework for understanding why and how we disagree.

Janoff-Bulman asks listeners to consider the challenging possibility that both liberalism and conservatism are morally based and reflect genuine concern for the country. Moral psychology is an invaluable lens for understanding the roots of political differences. She presents a "Model of Moral Motives" that maps the most fundamental motivations recognized by psychology—approach and avoidance—onto these differences. Liberal morality focuses on providing for the group's well-being and ensuring social justice. Conservative morality focuses on protecting the group from threats and preserving order.

These moralities can account for the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives and for why certain positions resonate on each side of the political spectrum. Why, for example, do conservatives oppose abortion and favor unfettered free markets while liberals favor a woman's right to choose and economic regulation? Understanding that our political differences are rooted in two natural forms of morality can help us begin to detoxify our politics.

©2023 Ronnie Janoff-Bulman (P)2023 Tantor

Interesting psychology; unimpressive scholarship in non-psychological fields

Janoff-Bulman has some intriguing psychological ideas to share in the first half of the book. In her proposal of competing moral frameworks as a basis for political division, I believe she makes an important contribution to the dialogue. However, I was unimpressed by the scholarship she demonstrated in the second half of the book.

For instance, while discussing welfare policy in the United States, she referenced the work of Esther Duflo, claiming (if I recall correctly) that Duflo’s findings indicate that government handouts do not decrease incentives to work as much as conservatives fear. This statement intrigued me so much that I read the entire book Janoff-Bulman had referenced (“Poor Economics”, by Esther Duflo.) Although I found that book to be extremely well-researched, informative, and surprising in its conclusions, nowhere did I find an analysis of welfare policies in the United States. Instead, I found that Duflo’s work focused on very poor people in India, South America, and Africa, and that nowhere did she claim that government handouts (in general) do not have disincentivizing effects. To the contrary, I found that Duflo strongly warned against the kind of sweeping generalizations we are prone to make with regard to the poor, including the very kind of generalization that Janoff-Bulman seemed to be making in this book (i.e., that we need not worry about the counter-productive incentives which government-sponsored welfare programs may create.)

This was the only reference which Janoff-Bulman made that I studied so thoroughly, but the results were disappointing enough that I have all but lost interest in the rest of this book.