Intercultural differences in moral values and their relations to projective test stories

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.