Humans are, by nature, tribal and never more so than in politics. In the culture wars we all know the tribal stereotypes of what liberals think of conservatives: Conservatives are a bunch of Hummer-driving, meat-eating, gun-toting, hard-drinking, Bible-thumping, black-and-white- thinking, fist-pounding, shoe-stomping, morally hypocritical blowhards. And what conservatives think of liberals: Liberals are a bunch of hybrid-driving, tofu-eating, tree-hugging, whale-saving, sandal-wearing, bottled-water-drinking, ACLU-supporting, flip-flopping, wishy-washy, namby-pamby bed wetters.

Like many other stereotypes, each of these contains an element of truth that reflects an emphasis on different moral values. Jonathan Haidt, who is a psychologist at the University of Virginia, explains such stereotypes in terms of his Moral Foundations Theory (see www.moralfoundations.org), which he developed “to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes.” Haidt proposes that the foundations of our sense of right and wrong rest within “five innate and universally available psychological systems” that might be summarized as follows:

1. Harm/care: Evolved mammalian attachment systems mean we can feel the pain of others, giving rise to the virtues of kindness, gentleness and nurturance.
2. Fairness/reciprocity: Evolved reciprocal altruism generates a sense of justice.
3. Ingroup/loyalty: Evolved in-group tribalism leads to patriotism.
4. Authority/respect: Evolved hierarchical social structures translate to respect for authority and tradition.
5. Purity/sanctity: Evolved emotion of disgust related to disease and contamination underlies our sense of bodily purity.

Over the years Haidt and his University of Virginia colleague Jesse Graham have surveyed the moral opinions of more than 110,000 people from dozens of countries and have found this consistent difference: self-reported liberals are high on 1 and 2 (harm/ care and fairness/reciprocity) but are low on 3, 4 and 5 (in-group loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity), whereas self-reported conservatives are roughly equal on all five dimensions, although they place slightly less emphasis on 1 and 2 than liberals do. (Take the survey yourself at www.yourmorals.org.)

Instead of viewing the left and the right as either inherently correct or wrong, a more scientific approach is to recognize that liberals and conservatives emphasize different moral values. My favorite example of these differences is dramatized in the 1992 film A Few Good Men. In the courtroom ending, Jack Nicholson’s conservative marine Colonel Nathan R. Jessup is being cross-examined by Tom Cruise’s liberal navy Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, who is defending two marines accused of accidentally killing a fellow soldier. Kaffee thinks that Jessup ordered a “code red,” an off-the-books command to rough up a disloyal marine trainee in need of discipline and that matters got tragically out of hand. Kaffee wants individual justice for his clients. Jessup wants freedom and security for the nation even at the cost of individual liberty, as he explains:

“Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns…. You don’t want the truth because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use ’em as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it.”

Personally, I tend more toward the liberal emphasis on individual fairness, justice and liberty, and I worry that overemphasis on group loyalty will trigger our inner xenophobias. But evolutionary psychology reveals just how deep our tribal instincts are and why good fences make good neighbors. And I know that ever since 9/11, I am especially grateful to all the brave soldiers on those walls who have allowed us to sleep under a blanket of freedom.

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About the book

In The Science of Good & Evil, the third volume in his trilogy on the power of belief (the first two volumes were Why People Believe Weird Things and How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God), psychologist and historian of science Dr. Michael Shermer tackles two of the deepest and most challenging problems of our age: (1) The origins of morality and (2) the foundations of ethics. Embedded within these two problems are questions that have occupied the greatest minds in history: Is it in our nature to be moral, immoral, or amoral? If we evolved by natural forces then what was the natural purpose of morality? If we live in a determined universe, then how can we make free moral choices? Does evil exist, and if so, what is the nature of evil? Why do bad things happen to good people? Is there justice in the world beyond the social order? If there is no outside source to validate moral principles, does anything go? Can we be good without God?

In this stunning conclusion to an intellectual journey into the mind and soul of humanity, Dr. Shermer peels back the inner layers covering our core being to reveal a complexity of human motives — selfish and selfless, cooperative and competitive, virtue and vice, good and evil, moral and immoral. Shermer shows how these motives came into being as a product of both our evolutionary heritage and cultural history, and how we can construct an ethical system that generates a morality that is neither dogmatically absolute nor irrationally relative — a provisional morality for an age of science that provides empirical evidence and a rational basis for belief.

Broad in scope, deep in its analysis, and controversial to its core, The Science of Good & Evil applies the latest findings of science to offer an original model of the bio-cultural evolution of morality and a new theory of provisional ethics that challenges the reader to confront these timeless issues from a new perspective — one that suggests that both morality and immorality evolved in human biological and cultural evolution, that we can make free moral choices in a determined universe, that moral principles can have a sound rational basis supported by empirical evidence (without being dogmatically absolutist or dependent on an external source of validation), and that we can be good without God. Shermer calls for a national debate on the origins of morality, the basis of moral principles, and the need for a more universal and tolerant ethic; an ethic that will insure the well-being and survival of all members of the species, and of all species.

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