Very fascinating piece. I will continue to follow. I’m curious about this practice you identify called “template matching”. What in your view determines the kinds of template someone will use in any given situation? I have read, going back to Gordon Allport’s book on the nature of prejudice, that prejudiced people have a harder time reading other people. So I would predict that such a person would develop a template that sees a lot of harm in violating promises and oaths, whereas someone who is better at reading others would be more forgiving of broken promises and oaths because they would still feel like they understood a person and could understand why they did it. This would suggest there is some underlying moral structure that explains why some templates get formed and others do not. I would imagine that some template formation is also cultural.
That’s a really great point. All humans are born with a basic harm based template, but based on our experiences and upbringing and culture, we elaborate on that template. Different people make different assumptions about who’s vulnerable to harm, who’s capable of perpetrating harm, and what particular acts are harmful.
When you say that we “elaborate” on our basic template, do you mean that all templates are biologically/neurologically/genetically the same, ie, different people aren’t born with different templates? It seems like a good way to test this claim would be with twin studies. Do identical twins raised apart have the same template(s) or not?
Fascinating. I wonder how this aligns with the hypothesis of 'morality as cooperation', or perhaps the research linking political orientations to psychological perceptions of boundaries and hierarchies? I will say though, I do think it generally true that people are poor at articulating their moral intuitions as Haidt observed- and that universities tend to make people not divulge their true moral intuitions because they can't necessarily rationalize them in the 'acceptable' ways of doing so. The ideas you present actually slightly align with my thinking regarding hierarchical thinking and morality; while not nearly as well-written or scientific as this article, see it here https://moralstructure.substack.com/p/the-evolutionary-psychology-of-social?r=hnzyk&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thanks for sending! And yes it connects with MaC. I think cooperation is all about preventing harm, although the authors of that theory (e.g., Curry) usually side more with Haidt and modularity. (I'm not sure why)
I’ve read Haidet’s MFT work in the popular press. Your theory makes sense. I had not noticed the biases in MFT until you pointed them out. Your theory reminds me of a study of infants who were presented with scenarios involving harm perpetrated on a circle by a triangle—very young babies would react when they saw “bullying.” So we do understand and identify victimization very early in life.
Yes exactly! I like that study very much. It’s a perfect demonstration that we are born caring about victimization. Disgust on the other hand, not so much. Kids put all sorts of gross stuff in their mouth when they’re very young!
“Criticize ideas, not the person” is foundational to nearly all groups engaged in productive discourse over any period of time. It’s corporate jargon, it’s taught in the military, but it’s wild to me that it doesn’t seem to be taught in academia.
Great point. The idea is taught in academia, and in our classrooms. But the principal can be hard to follow especially because people get so associated with their own theories!
Ah, Kurt, this was a meta-message for all humans that are seeking the whole truth together in a never-ending quest. I like Thomas Sowell’s ‘no final solutions’ message. In your model, could it be that at times positive outcomes like aesthetic or spiritual or interpersonal joy are more important to measure than harm. Conflict over the most, the best can be potent with very little harm in the equation. Am I on to something or will you file this under ‘the little harm of missing out’ is still more important than the joy of ‘arguing over the best sunset ever seen!’ Thanks for all you do. Best wishes, Randall Paul
First, thanks for your support Randall — and for thinking carefully about the ideas here. You're onto something interesting, and I think it actually helps illustrate the framework. People can argue passionately over the best sunset or the most profound spiritual experience. Those arguments can get heated. But they don't usually feel moral — nobody walks away thinking the other person is a bad person. The moment it does start feeling moral — someone's experience gets dismissed, someone's tradition gets mocked — that's when a victim enters the picture. So the joy cases are actually good evidence for the theory: where there's no perceived victim, there's passion but not outrage. The difference is whether someone seems to be getting hurt--does that feel reasonable?
Yes it does. Thx. If you want to see a hilarious movie about how ruining an aesthetic experience can bring violent rage watch Bullets Over Broadway by Woody Allen. It will show how harm can be viewed very differently depending on the person.
So may reasons to love this piece: from a beautifully understandable explanation of Kuhn’s perspective on paradigm shift, to a textbook application of that explanation to your own theory and your case for it, to the concept of the theory itself.
Thoughts and questions it inspires:
1. I’m curious how you see this connecting to construal level theory? Is the “psychological distance” that theory articulates perhaps explainable through the level of alignment on harm? Perhaps based on a level of “template matching”?
2. Jer Clifton’s research on primal beliefs also found that beliefs about safety and danger did not predict political stances (as it seems MFT would?)—if I recall correctly his research found political beliefs more tied to beliefs around how sharply drawn hierarchical lines are. But now I’m wondering how his 26 primals could be reinterpreted through the lens of your theory?
3. I’d love to know more about (and thus will dive into your paper and those it collects!) what you found—if anything—on the “template” itself. Selfishly, that’s what I’m studying in my own research: so often we talk about the frames, models, schemas, representations, etc. we build to make sense of things and through which we interpret information, but I have found virtually nothing that theorizes the underlying design that puts the “materials” (Assumptions? Beliefs? Actor? Operator? Outcome?) *and* their relationships or roles (conditionals? claims? Warrants? Premises, probability? Construal level? Validity checks?) together to show what those mental structures are built of/with, and how they sit together as a structure.
Sorry for the delay! This post keeps on getting comments and I need to be better about checking.
First, thanks so much for the kind words
Great question about contra theory. We are working on a paper right now about concrete versus abstract understandings of victimhood, and we’ve argued that abstract victimhood lends itself more to disagreement because the harm is more constructed
I think that everyone’s kind of united in our general beliefs of threat and danger, but it’s the specific application of those perceptions in specific circumstances that gives rise to differences if that makes sense
I’m always happy to chat about the psychology, but if you want to know more, the best big paper on this is our personality and social psychology review in 2018. Sam Pratt and I also have a recent annual review that might be interesting
All the quibbles scientists have, make me remember the quote from Humberto Maturana, a Chilean biologist: "We're not rational beings with feelings, we are emotional beings that use reason to explain our feelings."
Really, really interesting. And the theory makes sense. It's even hopeful, in the sense that working with someone that thinks different needs some empathy and just listening (even making sense and understanding their point first, and where it comes from), not a complicated decoding process.
Great post, @Kurt Gray! I am curious, do you have a relatively lay-oriented overview of Theory of Dyadic Morality. I’m familiar with it, but I am looking to add something that is less academic and more lay-person oriented to a class I teach on ethical, evidence-based decision making. I’d like to include mention and link to source in my Course Guidebook.
Thanks Matt, and sorry for the delay, I was away for my kids’ spring break. A lot of the most popular treatments about morality or maybe a little old? We have something in the mind club, and a little article in “the psychologist“. Outraged also talks about harm based morality, but doesn’t talk About dysdic morality per se. you could look in outraged and then photocopy some stuff for your student??
I like Haidt but I've always found MFT unconvincing. The Righteous Mind is full of contradictions. "Let's be reasonable and social and treat our opponents as impervious to reason."
This is really interesting stuff. I wonder what your thoughts are in the dyadic model about “harm against one’s self”? When I discuss the Haidt incest case with my high-school students, many intuitively gravitate towards a response of “But even if nobody finds out, I will know and that’s enough”. When you talk about CEO harming baby vs. baby harming CEO it’s easier to measure. How do I measure the harm done to myself, though? Or would you consider self-harm a question that falls outside of the traditional moral matrix? Anyway—great stuff. My son is there at OSU, so I stumbled upon your work. I’ll eagerly pick up your book.
Great question and sorry for the delay. The theory really argues that people see, or really feel, intuitive harm, and so it’s kind of a gut feeling. I think most obviously they just don’t believe that harmless incest is actually harmless, which is not a bad heuristic!!.
But yes people do see harm to the future self as important, they kind of split the self into past and future, which explains some of the work on intertemporal discounting, and also when people moralize the importance of hard work as it pertains to the self! Like parents say your future self will regret if you don’t practice piano!
Having followed this "beef" for some years now, this article is very compelling! The framework of dyadic morality is incredibly helpful to characterizing natures of moral judgments, but I've been of the belief that it is not enough to bridge the gap that we tend to see in moral disagreements. It is not enough to say "You see this guy as the victim/at risk, but I see that guy as the victim/at risk!" to achieve an understanding as it collapses with the follow up question: "How is that guy at risk?" (Or at greater risk than the former) and that seems to be where Haidt's whole moral dumbfounding conjecture lies. It is necessary at that point to characterize what the damage is and how there may be different perceptions of damage that may help account for these different perceptions of victims, rather than just leaving it at "you think those harms they are genuinely perceiving are imaginary." MFT may be only useful to this end to the extent to which the foundations are accurate (which, I think it would be fair to say are only accurate to the same extent to which Aristotle's five senses are accurate), but I do believe it is necessary to make tangible these differences in perceptions if we really want to achieve the purpose suggested by both of these theories—creating understanding between those who disagree on moral issues. It is interesting to note, however, that the inspiration behind MFT—Richard Schweder's Big Three—was about contexts of the self that could experience suffering, basically characterizing the perception of possible victims. Is there a working definition of vulnerability that applies to the way it is used here that is not based around subjective perceptions of damage? Unless there is, it does seem like TDM also explains moral differences with moral differences, only left unspecified. I have the optimistic opinion that the two theories can both be simultaneously true and together form a more complete picture of differences in moral judgments.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! And sorry for the delay. I think they can maybe both be true as long as it’s a weaker version of MFT that’s not about separate modules but just ad hoc themes.
And I think the way that victim based morality is not tautological in the same way is that you can acknowledge that someone’s easily victimized or generally weak, but that doesn’t intrinsically make it about morality. As I write in the paper, you can agree that kittens are intrinsically vulnerable to harm, but that doesn’t definitionally entail moral judgment. On the other hand, claiming that someone condemns purity based on the fact that they condemn impure act is inherently tautological.
Very well said Kurt! I especially want to highlight the part about science really being decided by those with no dog in the fight as they look for some framework that works for them. I count myself as one of those and after seeing talks and papers by both you and Jon, there was just something that clicked about your framework. Much more consistent with how a mind would have evolved a moral compass across our ancient history. And it genuinely helps me understand others. Keep up the good work!!
Very fascinating piece. I will continue to follow. I’m curious about this practice you identify called “template matching”. What in your view determines the kinds of template someone will use in any given situation? I have read, going back to Gordon Allport’s book on the nature of prejudice, that prejudiced people have a harder time reading other people. So I would predict that such a person would develop a template that sees a lot of harm in violating promises and oaths, whereas someone who is better at reading others would be more forgiving of broken promises and oaths because they would still feel like they understood a person and could understand why they did it. This would suggest there is some underlying moral structure that explains why some templates get formed and others do not. I would imagine that some template formation is also cultural.
That’s a really great point. All humans are born with a basic harm based template, but based on our experiences and upbringing and culture, we elaborate on that template. Different people make different assumptions about who’s vulnerable to harm, who’s capable of perpetrating harm, and what particular acts are harmful.
When you say that we “elaborate” on our basic template, do you mean that all templates are biologically/neurologically/genetically the same, ie, different people aren’t born with different templates? It seems like a good way to test this claim would be with twin studies. Do identical twins raised apart have the same template(s) or not?
Fascinating. I wonder how this aligns with the hypothesis of 'morality as cooperation', or perhaps the research linking political orientations to psychological perceptions of boundaries and hierarchies? I will say though, I do think it generally true that people are poor at articulating their moral intuitions as Haidt observed- and that universities tend to make people not divulge their true moral intuitions because they can't necessarily rationalize them in the 'acceptable' ways of doing so. The ideas you present actually slightly align with my thinking regarding hierarchical thinking and morality; while not nearly as well-written or scientific as this article, see it here https://moralstructure.substack.com/p/the-evolutionary-psychology-of-social?r=hnzyk&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thanks for sending! And yes it connects with MaC. I think cooperation is all about preventing harm, although the authors of that theory (e.g., Curry) usually side more with Haidt and modularity. (I'm not sure why)
I’ve read Haidet’s MFT work in the popular press. Your theory makes sense. I had not noticed the biases in MFT until you pointed them out. Your theory reminds me of a study of infants who were presented with scenarios involving harm perpetrated on a circle by a triangle—very young babies would react when they saw “bullying.” So we do understand and identify victimization very early in life.
Yes exactly! I like that study very much. It’s a perfect demonstration that we are born caring about victimization. Disgust on the other hand, not so much. Kids put all sorts of gross stuff in their mouth when they’re very young!
“Criticize ideas, not the person” is foundational to nearly all groups engaged in productive discourse over any period of time. It’s corporate jargon, it’s taught in the military, but it’s wild to me that it doesn’t seem to be taught in academia.
Great point. The idea is taught in academia, and in our classrooms. But the principal can be hard to follow especially because people get so associated with their own theories!
The incentives are not well-aligned, that’s for sure.
Honest, straightforward, and a solid example of what researchers experience interpersonally. Been there. Thanks for sharing.
Ah, Kurt, this was a meta-message for all humans that are seeking the whole truth together in a never-ending quest. I like Thomas Sowell’s ‘no final solutions’ message. In your model, could it be that at times positive outcomes like aesthetic or spiritual or interpersonal joy are more important to measure than harm. Conflict over the most, the best can be potent with very little harm in the equation. Am I on to something or will you file this under ‘the little harm of missing out’ is still more important than the joy of ‘arguing over the best sunset ever seen!’ Thanks for all you do. Best wishes, Randall Paul
First, thanks for your support Randall — and for thinking carefully about the ideas here. You're onto something interesting, and I think it actually helps illustrate the framework. People can argue passionately over the best sunset or the most profound spiritual experience. Those arguments can get heated. But they don't usually feel moral — nobody walks away thinking the other person is a bad person. The moment it does start feeling moral — someone's experience gets dismissed, someone's tradition gets mocked — that's when a victim enters the picture. So the joy cases are actually good evidence for the theory: where there's no perceived victim, there's passion but not outrage. The difference is whether someone seems to be getting hurt--does that feel reasonable?
Yes it does. Thx. If you want to see a hilarious movie about how ruining an aesthetic experience can bring violent rage watch Bullets Over Broadway by Woody Allen. It will show how harm can be viewed very differently depending on the person.
Beautifully detailed article
Thanks Todd!
So may reasons to love this piece: from a beautifully understandable explanation of Kuhn’s perspective on paradigm shift, to a textbook application of that explanation to your own theory and your case for it, to the concept of the theory itself.
Thoughts and questions it inspires:
1. I’m curious how you see this connecting to construal level theory? Is the “psychological distance” that theory articulates perhaps explainable through the level of alignment on harm? Perhaps based on a level of “template matching”?
2. Jer Clifton’s research on primal beliefs also found that beliefs about safety and danger did not predict political stances (as it seems MFT would?)—if I recall correctly his research found political beliefs more tied to beliefs around how sharply drawn hierarchical lines are. But now I’m wondering how his 26 primals could be reinterpreted through the lens of your theory?
3. I’d love to know more about (and thus will dive into your paper and those it collects!) what you found—if anything—on the “template” itself. Selfishly, that’s what I’m studying in my own research: so often we talk about the frames, models, schemas, representations, etc. we build to make sense of things and through which we interpret information, but I have found virtually nothing that theorizes the underlying design that puts the “materials” (Assumptions? Beliefs? Actor? Operator? Outcome?) *and* their relationships or roles (conditionals? claims? Warrants? Premises, probability? Construal level? Validity checks?) together to show what those mental structures are built of/with, and how they sit together as a structure.
Thanks for such a thought-provoking read!
Sorry for the delay! This post keeps on getting comments and I need to be better about checking.
First, thanks so much for the kind words
Great question about contra theory. We are working on a paper right now about concrete versus abstract understandings of victimhood, and we’ve argued that abstract victimhood lends itself more to disagreement because the harm is more constructed
I think that everyone’s kind of united in our general beliefs of threat and danger, but it’s the specific application of those perceptions in specific circumstances that gives rise to differences if that makes sense
I’m always happy to chat about the psychology, but if you want to know more, the best big paper on this is our personality and social psychology review in 2018. Sam Pratt and I also have a recent annual review that might be interesting
Thanks so much for reading and for engaging :-)
All the quibbles scientists have, make me remember the quote from Humberto Maturana, a Chilean biologist: "We're not rational beings with feelings, we are emotional beings that use reason to explain our feelings."
Really, really interesting. And the theory makes sense. It's even hopeful, in the sense that working with someone that thinks different needs some empathy and just listening (even making sense and understanding their point first, and where it comes from), not a complicated decoding process.
Yes, I heartily agree with both your points. Scientists are not the total reasoning beings we think we are, and I agree that my theory is optimistic!
Thanks for getting the big idea so well!
Great post, @Kurt Gray! I am curious, do you have a relatively lay-oriented overview of Theory of Dyadic Morality. I’m familiar with it, but I am looking to add something that is less academic and more lay-person oriented to a class I teach on ethical, evidence-based decision making. I’d like to include mention and link to source in my Course Guidebook.
Thanks Matt, and sorry for the delay, I was away for my kids’ spring break. A lot of the most popular treatments about morality or maybe a little old? We have something in the mind club, and a little article in “the psychologist“. Outraged also talks about harm based morality, but doesn’t talk About dysdic morality per se. you could look in outraged and then photocopy some stuff for your student??
Thanks, Kurt! You know, you ought to write something brief and accessible up on Substack at some point. There'd probably be a lot of interest.
I like Haidt but I've always found MFT unconvincing. The Righteous Mind is full of contradictions. "Let's be reasonable and social and treat our opponents as impervious to reason."
This is really interesting stuff. I wonder what your thoughts are in the dyadic model about “harm against one’s self”? When I discuss the Haidt incest case with my high-school students, many intuitively gravitate towards a response of “But even if nobody finds out, I will know and that’s enough”. When you talk about CEO harming baby vs. baby harming CEO it’s easier to measure. How do I measure the harm done to myself, though? Or would you consider self-harm a question that falls outside of the traditional moral matrix? Anyway—great stuff. My son is there at OSU, so I stumbled upon your work. I’ll eagerly pick up your book.
And go Buckeyes!
Great question and sorry for the delay. The theory really argues that people see, or really feel, intuitive harm, and so it’s kind of a gut feeling. I think most obviously they just don’t believe that harmless incest is actually harmless, which is not a bad heuristic!!.
But yes people do see harm to the future self as important, they kind of split the self into past and future, which explains some of the work on intertemporal discounting, and also when people moralize the importance of hard work as it pertains to the self! Like parents say your future self will regret if you don’t practice piano!
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this
And thanks for visiting!!
Having followed this "beef" for some years now, this article is very compelling! The framework of dyadic morality is incredibly helpful to characterizing natures of moral judgments, but I've been of the belief that it is not enough to bridge the gap that we tend to see in moral disagreements. It is not enough to say "You see this guy as the victim/at risk, but I see that guy as the victim/at risk!" to achieve an understanding as it collapses with the follow up question: "How is that guy at risk?" (Or at greater risk than the former) and that seems to be where Haidt's whole moral dumbfounding conjecture lies. It is necessary at that point to characterize what the damage is and how there may be different perceptions of damage that may help account for these different perceptions of victims, rather than just leaving it at "you think those harms they are genuinely perceiving are imaginary." MFT may be only useful to this end to the extent to which the foundations are accurate (which, I think it would be fair to say are only accurate to the same extent to which Aristotle's five senses are accurate), but I do believe it is necessary to make tangible these differences in perceptions if we really want to achieve the purpose suggested by both of these theories—creating understanding between those who disagree on moral issues. It is interesting to note, however, that the inspiration behind MFT—Richard Schweder's Big Three—was about contexts of the self that could experience suffering, basically characterizing the perception of possible victims. Is there a working definition of vulnerability that applies to the way it is used here that is not based around subjective perceptions of damage? Unless there is, it does seem like TDM also explains moral differences with moral differences, only left unspecified. I have the optimistic opinion that the two theories can both be simultaneously true and together form a more complete picture of differences in moral judgments.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! And sorry for the delay. I think they can maybe both be true as long as it’s a weaker version of MFT that’s not about separate modules but just ad hoc themes.
And I think the way that victim based morality is not tautological in the same way is that you can acknowledge that someone’s easily victimized or generally weak, but that doesn’t intrinsically make it about morality. As I write in the paper, you can agree that kittens are intrinsically vulnerable to harm, but that doesn’t definitionally entail moral judgment. On the other hand, claiming that someone condemns purity based on the fact that they condemn impure act is inherently tautological.
Yeah?
This was like six articles, each one very well done.
Thank you!
Very well said Kurt! I especially want to highlight the part about science really being decided by those with no dog in the fight as they look for some framework that works for them. I count myself as one of those and after seeing talks and papers by both you and Jon, there was just something that clicked about your framework. Much more consistent with how a mind would have evolved a moral compass across our ancient history. And it genuinely helps me understand others. Keep up the good work!!
Thanks Christian!
And yes I agree ;)