The heading of this post is a bit
misleading – I actually want to recommend a book, but later I'll link it with
what we expect to see in projective tests.
Haidt, J.
(2012). The righteous mind: Why
good people are divided by politics and religion. Vintage.
Jonathan
David Haidt
Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University. He specializes in the psychology of morality and moral emotions, and studies morality and emotions in different cultures. He is also active in positive psychology. In recent years he focused on the moral foundations of politics, and on ways to transcend the “culture wars” by using recent discoveries in moral psychology.
Here are some of the interesting ideas in
the book:
For thousands of years western philosophy
worshiped rational thinking and did not trust emotions. Haidt calls this mode of thinking "the
rational delusion".
Kohlberg, for example, based his theory
about the development of morality in children on this western rationalistic
thinking.
Moral decisions however are made,
according to Haidt, intuitively - not rationally. The rational justification is something that
is added in hindsight, after the moral decision has already been made.
Haidt distinguishes between principles
upon which people make moral decisions in western and non-western societies.
Western people have an individualistic
world view. This world view sees man as
having a separate self with clear boundaries.
According to this worldview, man is autonomic. He has needs, desires and preferences. People must be free to fulfill their desires,
needs and preferences as they wish. This
worldview puts the individual at the center and makes society its servant. Societies with an individualistic worldview
focus morally on autonomy. They make
sure that people don't hurt, oppress or cheat other people. Thus, western societies rely on three moral
principles that enable people to exist side by side peacefully without
disturbing each other too much:
1. Care/the prevention of harm – this principle evolved in human history
from our instinct to take care and protect our children. Taking care of children makes us sensitive to
signs of suffering and need. It makes us
abhor cruelty and want to take care of people who suffer.
2. Freedom/ the prevention of
oppression – this principle makes people pay attention to and resist
every attempt to control them. It
arouses a drive to unite in order to resist thugs and despots. Values of equality, the protection of
minority groups from tyranny of the majority and values of freedom
evolved out of this principle.
3.
Fairness/the
prevention of cheating – this principle evolved in human history out of
the need to enjoy cooperation with others without being taken advantage
of. It makes us sensitive to people
being good partners (or not). It makes
us want to punish cheaters. Values of
proportional social justice (the feeling that people should get a reward proportional
to their efforts) evolved out of this principle.
These are the three moral principles on
which morality is based in western society.
But most cultures in the world are not
western and not individualistic. They
are socio-centric, collectivistic. They
are based on the idea that people are first and foremost members of larger
entities like family, community or tribe.
These entities are more than the sum of the people that comprise
them. They are real, they are important
and they should be protected.
The needs of these entities are superior
to the needs of the individual. Such
societies develop moral concepts like duty, hierarchy, respect, reputation and
patriotism. Certain aspects of self –
realization are viewed in these societies as dangerous, because they weaken the
social fabric on which everyone depends.
These societies usually rely on different
blends, in different quantities, of the three principles presented above with
three other principles:
4. Loyalty/the prevention of betrayal: this principle evolved in human history in
order to enable us to form coalitions between groups of people and to keep them. It makes us sensitive to a person being a
team player (or not). It makes us trust
and reward people who are team players, and want to hurt or exclude people who
betray us or our group.
5.
Authority/the
prevention of subversion – this principle evolved in response to the
challenge of creating relationships that will benefit us in social
hierarchies. It makes us sensitive to
signs of status or rank, and to signals that other people are behaving in a way
that fits their social status (or not).
Here belong concepts of obedience, respect, subversion or defiance
towards authority or towards important traditions, institutions or values.
6.
Sanctity /the
prevention of defilement - this principle evolved in human history
in response to the challenge of living in a world full of disease, germs and
parasites. It makes us sensitive towards
physical dirt and defilement, and recoil from things that
look unclean or unhealthy. This is the
origin of the idea that the body is a kind of temple that should be taken care
of, and that people are temporary vessels with a divine soul.
Harming the body, even if it doesn't harm
anybody else (for instance by piercing or a tattoo) is wrong according to this
view, because it violates the body's sanctity.
Moral concepts like sanctity and sin, purity and defilement, going up or down in the degrees of spirituality evolved out of
this principle.
Sanctity helps bind people and make them
into a community. Defining something as
sacred unites the people who treat it this way.
Haidt stresses his argument that religion is one of the most potent
means of forming trust between people, which enables them to strive together
towards a common goal. Religion
regulates relationships (between people belonging to the same religion…)
Now, how does all this relate to
projective tests?
Take for example, the SCORS (social cognition and object
relations scale) scale. This
scale was developed to assess performance in cognitive tests and is based on
object relations theory and social cognition theories. The scale was developed by Drew Westen, a
psychologist who, like Jonathan Haidt, studies political psychology. That's why he appears in this picture in
front of a car with political bumper stickers.
It will be impossible to present the
SCORS scale here, and maybe it'll be worthwhile to devote separate posts to
it. Here is a link to its manual. From my experience, using the SCORS requires
a lot of practice and meticulous review of the examples in the manual. Using it demands the abstraction of the
principles out of the details in the projective stories.
SCORS has several versions. In its new version (SCORS – G) there are
eight scales:
1.
Complexity of representation
of people: the extent to which a person clearly discerns the viewpoints
of himself and others, sees himself and others as having stable, continuous and
multi-dimensional traits, and sees himself and others as psychological entities
having complex motives and subjective experiences.
2. Affective quality of representations: what the person expects
from relationships, and how s/he tends to experience significant others and
describe significant relationships. It is the extent to which a person sees others
as malevolent or causing pain, or sees social relations as benevolent and
enriching.
3.
Emotional investment
in relationships: the extent to
which a person treats other people as goals and not as means. The scale moves from a tendency to focus primarily on one's own needs in
relationships, to a person having tumultuous relationships, or few if any shallow
relationships, to a tendency to have deep, committed relationships with mutual
sharing, emotional intimacy, interdependence, and respect, positive
connectedness and appreciation of others
4.
Emotional investment
in values and moral standards: the extent to which moral standards are
developed and the extent to which interpersonal relations are experienced as
meaningful and committing. The scale
moves from a person's behaving in
selfish, inconsiderate, self-indulgent or aggressive ways without any sense of
remorse or guilt to a person showing signs of some internalization of standards
to a person thinking about moral
questions in a way that combines abstract thought, a willingness to challenge
or question convention, and genuine compassion and thoughtfulness in actions.
5.
Understanding social
causality: the extent to which the attribution of reasons for actions,
thoughts and feelings are logical, exact, complex and with psychological
reasoning.
6. Experience and management of
aggressive impulses: a person's ability to feel comfortable with anger
and with expressing anger in an appropriate way. This scale moves from inability to control
aggressive drives, to passive aggression, avoiding dealing with anger through
its denial or avoiding conflicts, to the ability to express anger and
aggression and to be properly assertive.
7. Self-esteem: a person's ability to perceive himself in a
relationship in a positive and realistic way.
A person's ability not to feel helpless, inferior or grandiose in a
relationship. This scale moves from seeing
the self as loathsome, evil, rotten, contaminating, or globally bad to having
low self-esteem (e.g., feels inadequate, inferior, self-critical, etc.) to the
tendency to have realistically positive feelings about him/herself.
8.
Identity and
coherence of self: the level of a
person's self-integration. This moves from
a fragmented sense of self, to wide and unpredictable fluctuations in the views
of the self to feeling like an integrated person with long-term ambitions and
goals.
How
does this relate to Haidt's book?
The SCORS scale was developed in American
western society, which is the most individualistic of western societies in the
world. I think Israeli society is less
western. We tend to be more traditional
and much more "familial". I
think that as a society, the values of loyalty, authority and sanctity are
stronger here than in the US, or at least stronger than those of the people who
developed the SCORS scale.
If we look at the Complexity of representation of people
and at the Identity and
coherence of self scales, the SCORS gives a high (and a good) score to a
clear feeling of separation between the self and others, and to a feeling of an
integrative self with long term goals and ambitions. But in non-western societies, the self has
boundaries that are less clear. In these
societies there is less preoccupation with identity and self-determination, and
a person is expected to see his personal goals and ambitions as less important
than the goals of the group to which he belongs.
If we look at the Emotional investment in values and moral
standards scale, the SCORS gives a high (and a good) score to thinking
about moral questions in an abstract way with a willingness to challenge or
question convention. Haidt writes that
in collectivistic societies challenging moral convensions can be perceived as
dangerous and as weakening the social fabric.
If we look at the Experience and management of aggressive
impulses scale, the SCORS gives a high (and a good) score to a person
who can feel comfortable with anger and to express it in a proper way. But it may be that in non – western societies
there are many impedances to the expression of anger, especially towards people
higher in social hierarchy.
